Sold Date: August 16, 2022
Start Date: April 16, 2021
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A VERY GOOD COPY OF THIS CLASSIC AFRICAN TUNE TRANSCRIBED ONTO DISC BY FOLK LEGEND PETE SEEGER AND THE WEAVERS

WIMOWEH (lion sleeps tonight)

b/w OLD PAINT

"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. After having performed the song for at least a year in their concerts, in November, 1951, 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. Their 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.

The Weavers were an influential American folk music quartet based in the Greenwich Village area of New York City. They sang traditional folk songs from around the world, as well as blues, gospel music, children's songs, labor songs and American ballads, selling millions of records at the height of their popularity. They inspired the commercial "folk boom" that followed them in the 1950s and 1960s, including such acts as The Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul and Mary.

The Weavers group was formed in November 1948 by Ronnie Gilbert, Lee Hays, Fred Hellerman and Pete Seeger. (In 1940 and 1941, Hays had sung with Seeger's Almanac Singers.) The name came from an 1892 drama of the same name by Gerhart Hauptmann. After a period of being unable to find much paid work, they finally landed a steady engagement at the Village Vanguard jazz club. This led to their discovery by arranger-bandleader Gordon Jenkins and their signing with Decca Records. The group had a big hit in 1949 with Leadbelly's Goodnigh Irene, backed with the 1941 Israeli song Tzena, Tzena, Tzena. In keeping with the commercial taste of the time, these and other early Weavers releases had violins and orchestration added behind the group's own guitars and folk instruments.

The Weavers' records and concerts helped popularize many of the songs now considered standards in the folk repertoire, including "On Top of Old Smoky" (with guest vocalist Terry Gilkyson), "Follow the Drinking Gourd," "Kisses Sweeter than Wine," "The Wreck of the John B," "Rock Island Line," "The Midnight Special," "Pay Me My Money Down," and "Darling Corey." The Weavers encouraged sing-alongs in their concerts, and Seeger would sometimes shout out the lyrics in advance of each line.

Film footage of the Weavers is relatively scarce. The group appeared as a speciality act in a B-movie musical, Disc Jockey (1951), and filmed five of their record hits that same year for TV producer Lou Snader: "Goodnight Irene," "Tzena Tzena Tzena," "So Long," "Around the World," and "The Roving Kind."

The Weavers eventually came under political pressure because of their history of singing protest songs and folk songs favouring labour unions, as well as for the leftist political beliefs of the individuals in the group. They avoided recording the more controversial songs in their repertoire, and refrained from performing at controversial venues and events. The left wing press derided them as having sold out their beliefs in exchange for popular success. Despite their caution, however, they were placed under FBI surveillance and blacklisted by parts of the entertainment industry during the McCarthy era, from 1950. Right-wing and anti-Communist groups protested at their performances and harassed promoters. As a result of the blacklisting, the Weavers lost radio airplay and the group's popularity diminished rapidly, reducing them to playing smaller venues for occasionally hostile audiences. Decca terminated their recording contract and deleted their songs from its catalogue in 1953.

Pete Seeger continued his solo career after the group disbanded in 1952, although he continued to suffer from the effects of blacklisting. In December 1955, the group reunited to play a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall. The concert was a huge success. A recording of the concert was issued by the independent Vanguard Records, and this led to their signing by that record label (by the mid-1950s, folk music was surging in popularity and McCarthyism was fading).

The Weavers were hired to provide the vocals for a TV commercial, the product being a brand of cigarettes. Seeger, opposed to the dangers of tobacco and discouraged by the group's apparent selling out to commercial interests, spent his last year with the Weavers honouring his commitments, but feeling like a prisoner. He left the group on April 1, 1958.

This classic version did not make it into the UK charts and is hard to find..

DISC DETAILS:

UK BRUNSWICK 04884   10" 78rpm SHELLAC

SIDE 1 :- WIMOWEH

SIDE 2:-  OLD PAINT 

CONDITION:  E-

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