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Wimoweh tokens5/27/2023 ![]() 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. Hope you enjoyed “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” by The Tokens.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. Thank you for stopping by The Daily Doo Wop. ![]() Please click here for the Daily Doo Wop YouTube channel, to which you can subscribe. Every weekend, there is a Golden Oldie Juke Box Saturday NIght, and the juke box is full of song requests from the 1950s and 1960s. You are welcome to listen to any of the 40+ selections there. After a song is featured, it then goes into the juke box. The Daily Doo Wop Rec Room has daily featured doo wop, rock and roll, R&B, or rockabilly songs that were hits during the first era of rock and roll (that is, from about 1952 until the British invasion in 1964). The lion sleeps tonight” For More Golden Oldies Music (A-weema-weh, a-weema-weh, a-weema-weh, a-weema-weh) Here are the lyrics to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” by The Tokens: The Tokens were also record producers of several artists, including The Chiffons, Randy & The Rainbows, The Happenings, and Tony Orlando and Dawn. Group personnel changed over the years, but for this record, the members included Jay Siegel, Hank Medress, Mitch Margo, and Phil Margo with Joe Venneri on guitar. The Tokens were from Brooklyn, NY, and originally had singer/songwriter Neil Sedaka as one of their members. ![]() Many people today know the song via Walt Disney’s The Lion King. In 1961, the version by the doo-wop group The Tokens went to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #7 on the R&B Chart. There were many covers, including those by Jimmy Dorsey, The Weavers, Miriam Makeba, and The Kingston Trio. Also known as “Wimoweh” or “Wimba Way,” this song was originally recorded by South African Solomon Linda with the Evening Birds in 1939 and called “Mbube.” The lyrics were in Zulu. The golden oldie “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” by The Tokens, a doo wop style vocal group, has an interesting history. ![]()
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