![]() That friend was the folksinger Pete Seeger. Even the Tokens’ 1962 hit single, another version of the Weavers’ hit Wimoweh, entitled The Lion Sleeps Tonight, only helped sustain the Weavers’ reputation. Without actually hearing any of the records in a box sent from Africa, Lomax thought a friend of his might be interested in the box’s contents. ![]() But the story might have ended there had a copy of the record not made its way to New York City in the early 1950s, where it was saved from the slush pile at Decca Records by the legendary folklorist Alan Lomax. The story begins in Johannesburg, South Africa, where in 1938, a group of Zulu singers and dancers called Solomon Linda and the Evening Birds stepped into the first recording studio ever set up in sub-Saharan Africa and recorded a song called “Mbube”-Zulu for “the lion.” “Mbube” was a regional hit, and it helped make Solomon Linda into a South African star. Wimoweh, also known as The Lion Sleeps Tonight, was originally recorded in 1939 by Solomon Linda’s Original Evening Birds, which outstanding record features on my list for that year Solomon Linda, who was a South African Zulu singer, wrote the song in the 1920s, with lyrics written in Zulu. ![]() ![]() Howie Richmond, TRO’s founder, signed folk. ![]() The song that topped the Billboard pop chart on December 18, 1961, was an instant classic that went on to become one of the most successful pop songs of all time, yet its true originator saw only a tiny fraction of the song’s enormous profits. Folk singer Pete Seeger came across the song in 1949, transcribed it and called it Wimoweh, from the Zulu uyiMbube, which means he is a lion. ![]()
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