The History of the Alabama Song

Following the premiere of Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny in 1931 in Leipzig. The opera came to the German capital, Berlin with Lotte Lenya, Kurt Weill’s then wife, performing the role of Jenny.

Lenya was a multitalented performer. She won a Tony award for her performance as Jenny in The Threepenny Opera, another opera written by Weill and Brecht. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961). And most famously she played the villain Rosa Klebb in the James Bond movie From Russia with Love.

The American rock band The Doors formed in 1965. Led by the iconic frontman Jim Morrison, the band were keyboard player Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger, and drummer John Densmore.

Their version of The Alabama Song is called The Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar). It is on their debut album “The Doors” which contained the smash-hit single “Light My Fire”.

This album is frequently citied as one of the best rock albums ever recorded. In 2015, the United States Library of Congress selected The Doors for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.

British singer/songwriter/actor David Bowie is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. He sold an estimated 100 million records in his lifetime.

Bowie first performed The Alabama Song on his tour in 1978. The song had a great reception so Bowie went into the studio and recorded it. His version came out as a single in 1980 and reached Number 23 in the UK charts.

British singer and actress Marianne Faithfull was part of the “British Invasion” of the US Charts in the 1960s together with a myriad of musicians including The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Shirley Bassey and Tom Jones.

Faithfull became interested in the music of Weill and Brecht when she appeared on stage playing Pirate Jenny in The Threepenny Opera in 1997. This led her to record 20^th Century Blues an album of mid-century songs that include several by Weill and Brecht – “Pirate Jenny,” “Salomon Song,” and “Surabaya Johnny”.

British director Edgar Wright choose to put The Alabama Song (The Doors’ version) in his science-fiction comedy film The World’s End.

The film is about a group of five middle-aged men trying to recreate their youth with a 12-pub pub crawl called “The Golden Mile” in their hometown. However, during their evening, they find themselves battling an alien invasion.

Starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Martin Freeman, the Alabama Song plays as the men walk between pubs.

In February 2026, ENO perform Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at the London Coliseum. In the role of Jenny, is soprano Danielle de Niese.

Called “Opera’s coolest soprano” by the New York Times, de Niese regularly appears on the world’s most prestigious opera and concert stages and is also a prolific recording artist, television personality, and philanthropist.