Wimoweh lion sleeps tonight movie#

It might be unfair to say that Pete Seeger and The Weavers flat-out stole this song from Solomon Linda. Library of Congress If you’re trying to preserve a folk song, you could do a lot worse. That copy of 'Mbube' definitely caught his ear, and over the next couple of years, Seeger had adapted the song with his band The Weavers into their single “Wimoweh,” which peaked at #6 on the charts. Lomax had sent the records to his friend, folk legend Pete Seeger, to see if there was anything in there that piqued his interest. In 1949, a copy of 'Mbube' found its way into a stack of albums that American ethnomusicologist (fancy word for music snob with a passport) Alan Lomax had saved from being thrown away at his job at Decca Records. But his legacy lived on through his music, and his biggest hit inspired a new genre of African a cappella music called Isicathamiya, also referred to as Mbube.ģ How Mbube Came to America and Became Wimoweh Even though he and his music were still popular at the time of his death, he died in such poverty that his family couldn’t afford a tombstone for his grave for another 18 years. Solomon Linda died of kidney failure in 1962. Via Wikimedia Commons Let’s take a moment to admire the Evening Birds in their slick suits before, predictably, the story turns soul-crushing. He got paid to perform his hit song at gigs, but not from royalties. What it didn’t make him, however, was a lot of money. The next year, while recording other songs in the studio, Linda and the Evening Birds started riffing on some melodies and lyrics and came up with 'Mbube.' The song became a huge hit, selling over 100,000 copies in 1939, and made Solomon Linda a celebrity in South Africa. This helped Linda and his group, The Evening Birds, to get the attention of one of Gallo’s lead talent scouts. He worked as a record packer at the Gallo Record Company in Johannesburg, South Africa, which just so happened to run the only recording studio not just in South Africa but in the whole region of sub-Saharan Africa. His day job, however, helped him get his foot in the door. In 1938, Solomon Linda was living a life that’s all too real for a lot of musicians: working a boring day job to keep the bills paid between gigs. We’re gonna start with the one everyone is most familiar with and work our way back to the beginning of this whole sordid affair. In order to help give this story better context, we first have to provide samples of the three songs at the center of the story. The fight for proper songwriting credit (and royalties) for 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' has taken some weird turns along the way, including bad contracts, international copyright laws, greedy music executives, political witch hunts, and of course, Disney had to get tangled up in this mess as well. It turns out that even the original recording of 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' is a rip-off of a different song, and the song it’s based on isn’t original either.

Wimoweh lion sleeps tonight movie#

'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' is one of those songs that we’ve all heard a million times, and it’s been covered so many times that anytime you hear it pop up in a movie or TV show, you probably wouldn’t be able to recall if it’s the same version you heard the last time.