"The Lion Sleeps Tonight" is an acclaimed song recorded by
The Tokens and written as
Mbubeby Solomon Linda.
"Mbube" (Zulu for "lion") was first recorded by its writer,
Solomon Linda, and his group, the Evening Birds, in 1939. Gallo
Record Company paid Linda a single fee for the recording and no
royalties. "Mbube" became a hit throughout South Africa and
sold about 100,000 copies during the 1940s. The song became so
popular that Mbube lent its name to a style of African a
cappella music, though the style has since been mostly replaced
by isicathamiya (a softer version).
Alan Lomax brought the song to the attention of Pete Seeger
of the folk group The Weavers. It was on one of several records
Lomax lent to Seeger. In November 1951 after having performed
the song for at least a year in their concerts the Weavers
recorded their version entitled "Wimoweh", a mishearing of the
original song's chorus of 'uyimbube' (meaning "you're a lion").
Pete Seeger had made some of his own additions to the melody.
The song was credited exclusively to Paul Campbell, a
fictitious entity used by Howard Richmond to copyright material
in the public domain.
Pete Seeger explains in one recording, "it refers to an old
legend down there, [about] their last king [of the Zulus], who
was known as Shaka The Lion. Legend says, Shaka The Lion didn't
die when Europeans took over our country; he simply went to
sleep, and he'll wake up some day." (See "Senzenina / Wimoweh"
on Seeger's
With Voices Together We Sing (Live).)
cf. sleeping hero
It was published by Folkways, a subsidiary of Richmond/TRO.
The Weavers 1952 version, arranged by Gordon Jenkins, became a
top-twenty hit in the U.S., and their live 1957 recording
turned it into a folk music staple. This version was covered in
1959 by The Kingston Trio.
New lyrics to the song were written by George David Weiss,
Luigi Creatore, and Hugo Peretti, based very loosely upon the
meaning of the original song. The Tokens' 1961 cover of this
version rose to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and still
receives fairly frequent replay on many American Oldies radio
stations. In the UK, an up-tempo, yodel-dominated rendering was
a top-ten hit for Karl Denver and his Trio. In 1971 Robert John
also recorded this version, and it reached #3 on the Billboard
Hot 100 in 1972. Since then, "Wimoweh" / "The Lion Sleeps
Tonight" has remained popular and frequently covered.
Pete Seeger later said in the book
A Lion's Trail,"The big mistake I made was not making
sure that my publisher signed a regular songwriters’ contract
with Linda. My publisher simply sent Linda some money and
copyrighted The Weavers’ arrangement here and sent The Weavers
some money."
Seeger's publisher was The Richmond Organization (TRO),
which also goes by a number of other names, including Ludlow,
Cromwell, Essex, Hollis, Melody Trails, and Folkways Music
Publishers. Since Solomon Linda's 1939 "Mbube" was apparently
not under copyright protection, TRO founder Howard Richmond had
himself claimed authorship to "Wimoweh" using a pseudonym, in
this case "Paul Campbell". This was not illegal but was
customary in the music business, the purpose of the pseudonym
possibly being to avoid embarrassment, so that it wouldn't look
like, for example, that Howie Richmond had claimed authorship
for an old song like "Greensleeves" (a song he claimed author's
royalties for under the name Jessie Cavanaugh). The songwriter
and publisher's share of the royalties are customarily split
50-50, with the performers, song pluggers', and agents' shares
usually come out of the composer's half. By claiming author's
rights, TRO thus secured for itself a portion of the
songwriters' royalties as well as all of the publishers' share
of the song's earnings.
"Originally they were going to send the royalties to Gallo
[a huge South African music publisher] ," Seeger recalled. "I
said, 'Don't do that, because Linda won't get a penny.'"
Anti-apartheid activists put Seeger in touch with a
Johannesburg lawyer, who set forth into the forbidden townships
to find Solomon Linda. Once contact was established, Seeger
sent the Zulu a $1,000 check and instructed his publisher to do
the same with all future payments. He was still bragging about
it fifty years later. "I never got author's royalties on
'Wimoweh'," Seeger said. "Right from '51 or '52, I understood
that the money was going to Linda. I assumed they were keeping
the publisher's fifty percent and sending the rest."
Unfortunately, Solomon's family maintains that the money
only arrived years later, and even then, it was nothing like
the full writer's share Seeger was hoping to bestow.
In 2000, South African journalist Rian Malan wrote a feature
article for
Rolling Stonemagazine, highlighting Linda's story and
estimating that the song had earned U.S. $15 million for its
use in the movie
The Lion Kingalone; this prompted the South African
documentary
A Lion's Trailby François Verster that documented the
song's history. Screened by PBS, in September 2006, the
documentary won an Emmy Award.
In July 2004, the song became the subject of a lawsuit
between the family of its writer Solomon Linda, represented by
Dr. Owen Dean of Spoor & Fisher and Disney. The suit
claimed that Disney owed $1.6 million in royalties for the use
of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" in the film and stage production
of
The Lion King. Meanwhile, TRO/Folkways, publisher of The
Weavers' "Wimoweh", began to pay $3,000 annually to Linda's
heirs.
In February 2006, Linda's heirs reached a legal settlement
for an undisclosed amount with Abilene Music, who held the
worldwide rights and had licensed the song to Disney. This
settlement has applied to worldwide rights, not just South
Africa, since 1987.