When was wimoweh composed

The Lion King was originally released on June 15, , with a positive reaction from critics, who praised the film for its music , story, and animation. And is still in the top 25 highest grossing animated films of all time. The surrounding publicity prompted a lawsuit against Abilene Music, who had licensed the song to Disney.

In , 44 years after Linda had died in poverty, he was acknowledged as the composer of the original song and his estate was awarded the rights to past and future royalties.

Scroll through, take a listen and let us know which one is your favourite. You can also view all posts in a category or sub-category by clicking the links in the categories list. If you have any questions, or need additional help, please contact us at [email protected]. A 'Trainee' Simply Music Teacher is the first level of teacher status.

Trainees have begun their journey into the Simply Music Teacher Training Program however, they have yet to finalize their training and elevate to Licensed status. A 'Licensed' Simply Music Teacher is the second level of teacher status. Inquire with them to find out when and if they are ready to teach. By , TRO was little more than a crypt for fabulously valuable old copyrights, manned by a skeleton crew that licenses old songs for TV commercials or movies. Larry Richmond was an amiable bloke in an open-necked shirt and beige slacks.

There was a story about the hospital in India, to which the Richmonds made generous donations. I was hoping Larry would give me a formal interview on the subject, but first I had to get some sleep. It was a mistake. So there I was in New York, with no one to talk to. I called music lawyers and record companies, angling for appointments that failed to materialize.

I wandered into Billboard magazine, where a veteran journalist warned that I was wasting my time trying to find out what any song had ever earned and where the money had gone.

At the time, Johannesburg was a hick mining town where music deals were concluded according to trading principles as old as Moses: record companies bought recordings for whatever they thought the music might be worth in the marketplace; stars generally got several guineas for a session, unknowns got almost nothing.

No one got royalties, and copyright was unknown. He walked out of that session with about ten shillings in his pocket, and the music thereafter belonged to the record company, with no further obligations to anyone.

Howie was tall and handsome, Al was short and heavy, but otherwise, they were blood brothers, with shared passions for nightlife and big-band jazz. After World War II, Howie worked as a song promoter before deciding to become a publisher in his own right. Al joined up in , and together they put a whole slew of novelty songs on the hit parade. Then they moved into the burgeoning folk-music sector, where big opportunities were opening up for sharp guys with a shrewd understanding of copyright.

After all, what was a folk song? Who owned it? It was just out there, like a wild horse or a tract of virgin land on an unconquered continent. The object was to claim writer royalties on new versions of old songs that belonged to no one. The aliases seem to have been a way to avoid potential embarrassment, just in case word got out that Howard S. Leventhal started out as a gofer for Irving Berlin and wound up promoting concerts for Bob Dylan, but in between, he developed a serious crush on the Weavers.

In , he showed up at the Village Vanguard with an old friend in tow —Pete Kameron, a suave charmer who was scouting around an entree into showbiz. Leventhal advised; Kameron handled bookings and tried to fend off the redbaiters.

Howie and Al took on the publishing, arranging it so that Kameron owned a fifty-percent stake. The Weavers sang the songs and cut the records, and together they sold around 4 million platters in 18 months or so. Toward the end of , these men found themselves contemplating the fateful 78 rpm record from Africa and wondering exactly what manner of beast it could be.

On the surface of things, Paul Campbell was thus one of the most successful songwriters of the era, but of course the name was just another alias used to claim royalties on songs from the public domain. As the song found its fans, money started rolling in.

Every record sale triggered a mechanical royalty. Solomon Linda was entitled to nothing. He was still bragging about it 50 years later. In addition to being ace producers and buddies of Presley, these men were also wild-horse breakers of the very first rank. But they had made a mistake. He set his lawyers on The Tokens and their allies, and what could they say?

It must have been deeply embarrassing. Why urgent? This put Richmond and Brackman in a position to dictate almost any terms they pleased. And why not? It was no skin off their teeth. Huge and Luge and Weiss were happy. Doctors diagnosed kidney disease, but his family suspected witchcraft. If true, this would make Linda a victim of his own success. Strangers hailed him on the streets, bought him drinks in shebeens.

He was in constant demand for personal appearances and earned enough to afford some sharp suits, a second bride and a wind-up gramophone for the kinfolk in mud huts back in Msinga. A thousand bucks from Pete Seeger aside, most of his money came from those uproarious all-night song contests, which remain a vital part of urban Zulu social life to this day.

Most weekends, Solly and the Evening Birds would hire a car and sally forth to do battle in distant towns, and they always came back victorious. Her sister Elizabeth works as a nurse in a government clinic, but she announced, giggling, that she was a sangoma, too. Elizabeth thought a water snake might be useful, too, and wondered where she could obtain such a thing. They live in an urban slum but are deeply Zulu people, down to the cattle horns on the roof above the kitchen door — relics of sacrifices to the spirits of their ancestors.

Their aunt, Mrs. Beauty Madiba, was the one who brought it up. The singer was at the peak of his career at the time, and he had no trouble raising the ten cattle their father was asking as the bride price. The wedding feast took place in , and Regina went to live in Johannesburg. Beauty joined her a few years later and had a ringside seat when Linda was brought down by dark forces. He grew so sick that he had to stop singing. Everyone sighed. Latter-day Mbube stars like Ladysmith Black Mambazo sent gifts to this very house when they made it big, a tribute to the spirit of a man they venerated.

And then I came along asking questions about money. I asked to see documents, but they had none, and they were deeply confused as to the size and purpose of the payments. It intimates that malfeasance has occurred in the management of the funds, despite the available evidence being to the contrary. The suspicions are based on the unfulfilled expectations of the heirs. A proper understanding of the case shows those expectations to be unrealistic.

The material on this site is for law firms, companies and other IP specialists. It is for information only. Please read our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Notice before using the site. All material subject to strictly enforced copyright laws. For help please see our FAQs. Instant access to all of our content. The order came into effect on January 1st, , just as the song set forth on a new cycle of popularity.

That year, a new recording of the song hit the Japanese charts. Pow Wow's version made Number One in France, in Then someone at Disney wrote a cute little scene in which a cartoon wart hog and meerkat pranced together, singing, "In the jungle, the mighty jungle. Every kid on the planet had to have the video and the vast array of nursery CDs that went with it. The Tokens' recording bounced back onto the U. George Weiss could barely contain his glee. It's going wild! I have to say God smiled at me.

I was hoping to talk to Weiss about God and Solomon Linda, but his lawyer said he was out of town and unavailable. On the other hand, he was visible in the New York Times' Sunday magazine last August, which ran a spread on his awesome retreat in rural New Jersey. I drove out to Oldwick and found the place -- an eighteenth-century farmhouse in a deer-filled glade, with a pool and a recording studio in the outbuildings -- but Weiss wasn't there.

Maybe he was in Santa Fe, where he maintains a hacienda of sorts. Maybe he was in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, where he and his wife were building a house on a bluff overlooking the sea.

I gave up, returned to my hotel and wrote him a letter. Weiss faxed back almost immediately, saying he was "distressed" to hear that Solomon had been shabbily treated in the past. While we had no legal obligation to Mr. Linda whatsoever, when we gained control of our song, we did what we thought was correct and equitable so that his family would share in the profits.

A nice gesture, to be sure, but what did "Lion" earn in the Nineties? A million dollars? And what trickled down to Soweto? Handwritten and unsigned, the notes appeared to be royalty statements, but there was no detailed breakdown of the song's overall earnings, and Weiss' business people declined to provide one, despite several requests. Twenty grand was nice money in Soweto terms, but split several ways it changed little or nothing. Solomon Linda's house still had no ceiling, and it was like an oven under the African summer sun.

Plaster flaked off the walls outside; toddlers squalled underfoot; three radios blared simultaneously. Fourteen people were living there, sleeping on floors for the most part, washing at an outdoor tap. Only Elizabeth was working, and when she moved out, most of the furniture went with her. Last time I visited, in January, the kitchen was barren save for six pots and a lone Formica table.

Solomon's youngest daughter, Adelaide, lay swooning under greasy bedclothes, gravely ill from an infection she was too poor to have properly treated. A distant relative wandered around in an alcoholic stupor, waving a pair of garden shears and singing snatches of "Mbube. All the sisters were there: Fildah, with her sangoma's headdress swathed in a bright red scarf; Elizabeth and Delphi in their best clothes; Adelaide, swaying back and forth on a chair, dazed, sweat pouring down her gaunt cheekbones.

I'd come to report back to them on my adventures in the mysterious overseas, bringing a pile of legal papers that I did my best to explain. I told them about Paul Campbell, the fictitious entity who seemed to have collected big money that might otherwise have come their way, and about Larry Richmond, who wept crocodile tears on their behalf in a legal proceeding that might have changed their destiny, if only they'd been aware of it.

And, finally, I showed them the letter in which George Weiss assured me that the amounts his underlings were depositing into the bank account of their mother, "Mrs. Linda" who had been dead and buried for a decade , were a "correct and equitable" share. The daughters had never heard of any of these foreigners, but they had a shrewd idea of why all this had happened. Maybe he was signing many papers. Once upon a time, a long time ago, a Zulu man stepped up to a microphone and improvised a melody that earned many millions.

That Solomon Linda got almost none of it was probably inevitable. He was a black man in whiteruled South Africa, but his American peers fared little better. Robert Johnson's contribution to the blues went largely unrewarded. Lead Belly lost half of his publishing to his white "patrons. All musicians were minnows in the pop-music food chain, but blacks were most vulnerable, and Solomon Linda, an illiterate tribesman from a wild valley where lions roamed, was totally defenseless against sophisticated predators.

Which is not to say that he was cheated. On the contrary, all the deals were perfectly legal, drawn up by respectable men. No one forced him to sell "Mbube" to Eric Gallo for ten shillings, and if Gallo turned around and traded it at a profit, so what? It belonged to him. The good old boys of TRO were perfectly entitled to rename the song, adapt it as they pleased and allocate the royalties to nonexistent entities. After all, they were its sole and uncontested owners.

Solomon was legally entitled to nothing. The fact that he got anything at all seemed to show that the bosses were not without conscience or pity. So I sat clown and wrote long letters to George Weiss and Larry Richmond, distancing myself from pious moralists who might see them as sharks and even suggesting a line of reasoning they might take.