![]() Linda’s improvised vocals were distinctive and soared over the top of the rest - even though the lyrics to "Mbube" are in the Zulu language, Linda's high lead vocals are clearly the same pitch and pattern as the English lyrics that would later be written. The group was known for their four-part harmonies and improvised lyrics which worked remarkably well. They had to chase them away to keep them from eating their animals. Other parts of the song were inspired by their reminiscences of chasing the wild lions who would prey on their families’ livestock at night. The chanted chorus of "Mbube" - the "wimoweh" part - was inspired by the traditional call and response chants of birds native to that specific part of the world. ![]() Their distinctive music style was reminiscent of their humble upbringings. Solomon Linda’s band was inspired by their native Zulu roots. As a young man, Linda relocated to Johannesburg and formed the Evening Birds, who enjoyed a huge following. Of Zulu heritage, Linda never learned to read or write but was well known as a talented singer. This post The Number Ones: The Tokens’ “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” first appeared on Stereogum.Solomon Linda was born in 1909 near Ladysmith, near KwaZulu-Natal, in South Africa. Even divorced from its fascinating history, it’s a perfect song, a dive into some pop-music dreamworld.īONUS BEATS: Here, of course, are Timon and Pumba covering “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” in The Lion King: But it doesn’t take anything away from the liquid, incandescent weird-pop joy of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” which just might be the greatest novelty song ever to reach #1. It’s a sad story, and a sadly predictable one. In 2006, more than 40 years after his death, Linda’s family won a settlement from the publishers of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” Seeger once sent him a $1,000 check after realizing that he hadn’t been getting royalties, but that was it. Linda should’ve become a millionaire for writing the song instead, he died broke. Nobody ever thought to pay Solomon Linda songwriting royalties for the song, and most of the people who sang versions of it assumed that it was a public-domain traditional. The story of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” is, of course, a story of deep music-business fuckery. Most of the people involved in putting together and selling “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” probably heard it as a weird little novelty - it started out as a B-side before radio DJs championed it - but it ended up resonating on some deeper level, and it’s been rattling around in the pop consciousness ever since. It sounds less like the doo-wop of its moment, more like a broadcast from some much older civilization - which, if you look at the song’s whole history, is basically what it is. (For a much better and longer version of the song’s story, read this great story that Rian Malan wrote for Rolling Stone in 2000.)īy the time it reached its final form, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” had gone through a few different layers of translation, and it had been thoroughly Americanized, but it remains a deeply weird song, a cascade of falsetto howls over a pulsating chant and a timpani roll. ![]() And that’s what eventually got to #1, decades after the first version of the song had been improvised in the studio. And that’s what he did, giving it near-gibberish lyrics about a lion sleeping in the jungle. But the song didn’t strike the Tokens’ producers as a pop song, so they hired songwriter George David Weiss to turn it into one. Nearly a decade later, the Tokens, group of Jewish teenagers from Brooklyn who sang doo-wop, were figuring out what to record after scoring a top-20 hit with their single “Tonight I Fell In Love.” (Neil Sedaka, who’d get to #1 in 1962 with “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do,” was an original Token, but he’d left the group by this time.) Tokens leader Jay Siegel knew “Wimoweh” from the Weavers record, and he wanted to record it. (It remains probably the strongest vocal I’ve ever heard from Seeger.) “Wimoweh” became a national hit in 1952, just before Seeger was blacklisted as a Communist, effectively killing the Weavers’ career. He couldn’t understand the lyrics, so he sang them phonetically when he and his band the Weavers adapted the song, giving it the new title “Wimoweh.” “Wimoweh” was a part of the Weavers’ live show for years before they recorded it, with Seeger singing the living hell out of these words that he couldn’t understand. Seeger loved the song, and he tried to sing it himself. A vinyl copy of “Mbube” ended up in the hands of the famous folklorist Alan Lomax, who played it for his friend, the folksinger Pete Seeger.
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