"The Lion Sleeps Tonight" pays off for writer’s heirs

[cheaptrick77]

(by MICHELLE FAUL | The Associated Press)

 

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP)— Three impoverished South African women whose father wrote the song known as “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” have won a six-year battle for royalties in a case that could affect other musicians.

 

The story surrounding the song that never seems to go out of date amounts to a rags-to-riches tale, replete with racial overtones.

 

No one is saying how many millions will go to the daughters of the late composer Solomon Linda, who died in poverty from kidney disease in 1962 at age 53. But the family’s settlement last month with New York-based Abilene Music gives Linda’s heirs 25 percent of past and future royalties and has broad implications.

 

Linda composed his now-famous song in 1939 in one of the squalid hostels that housed black migrant workers in Johannesburg. According to family lore, he wrote the song in minutes, inspired by his childhood tasks of chasing prowling lions from the cattle he herded. He called the song “Mbube,” Zulu for lion.

 

It was sung, in true Zulu tradition, a cappella. Linda’s innovation was to add his falsetto voice — an overlay of haunting “eeeeeees” — to the baritone and bass main line. To this day, this style is called “Mbube” in South Africa.

 

The song sold more than 100,000 copies over a decade, probably making it Africa’s first big pop hit.

 

In the 1950s, at a time when apartheid laws robbed blacks of negotiating rights, Linda sold the worldwide copyright to Gallo Records of South Africa for 10 shillings — less than $1.70.

 

The song became one of the best known songs in the world as “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” attributed to George Weiss, Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore. American singer Pete Seeger adapted a version that he called “Wimoweh,” making it a folk music staple.

 

Of Linda’s three surviving daughters, only the youngest has a job, as a nurse, and she still lives in the family home in Soweto, a satellite suburb set up for black workers under apartheid. Her sisters never reached high school. One runs a home-based grocery. The other recently lost her job cleaning a doctor’s office and supports a daughter who gets occasional work cleaning homes.

 

Linda’s fourth daughter died of AIDS in her 30s in 2002 as the lawsuit dragged on, without money to buy drugs that could have saved her life.

 

Owen Dean, South Africa’s leading copyright lawyer, argued successfully for Linda’s family that under the British Imperial Copyright Act of 1911, which was in force in South Africa at the time Linda composed his song, all rights revert to the heirs, who are entitled to renegotiate royalties.

 

“Now the way has been shown,” Dean told The Associated Press. “Others in similar circumstances can fight such injustice, and I have no doubt that there are other people in this position.”

[clawsnstripes]

good for them. seems like you hear lots of stories about early recording artists/writers in the same boat. maybe this will be a step in the right direction.

[tdsteele]

This story obviously has been going on for years. You would think that somebody would make a movie or mini-series about it but I guess the powers that be in the movie business are too busy recycling The Dukes of Hazzard and Dallas to have time for a meaningful script.

[Texashurdler]

Only if...i had a million or 100!

[BallaHolic30]

Thats a cool story!