The Intro
The Lion Sleeps Tonight by manufactured group Tight Fit is a very 1982-sounding number 1. But the song dates back to 1939 and South African singer-songwriter Solomon Linda, who died in poverty.
Before
Linda was a Zulu migrant worker who led the a cappella sextet The Evening Birds, in which he sang soprano. He also worked as a packer at a record pressing plant owned by Eric Gallo. Linda’s group were invited to make music there and at their second session, without prior rehearsal, they recorded Mbube, in which Linda recalls chasing a lion while herding cattle as a child. Performed in four-part harmony, The Evening Birds chant ‘wembube’, while Linda yodels and howls over the top.
Gallo was impressed and rightly saw they had a hit (the first ever made in South Africa) in their hands. But he chose to take advantage of Linda, who couldn’t read and had no understanding of royalties. Linda sold Mbube to Gallo for 10 shillings, and despite it selling 100,000 over the next nine years, the songwriter saw out the rest of his life in poverty, in a house covered in cow manure. One of his son’s died of malnutrition, and Linda collapsed on stage in 1959 of kidney failure. When he died three years later, his family couldn’t afford a tombstone.
In the early, 50s, Gallo had sent a collection of vinyl to Decca Records in the US. Fortunately, ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax worked there at the time and rescued them from being thrown out. He handed them to Pete Seeger, singer in the hit folk group The Weavers. Seeger was fascinated by Mbube, and attempted to transcribe it word for word – but he misheard the chorus as ‘Wimoweh’. Seeger copied Linda’s wail, but to make the track more palatable for early 50s record buyers, bandleader Gordon Jenkins added a brass backing.
Released in 1951 and renamed Wimoweh, the song was credited to Paul Campbell, a pseudonym which meant royalties were shared among The Weavers, their publishers and their manager. It was a big hit, peaking at six, but began slipping down the Billboard when three of the group were accused of being affiliated with the Communist Party during the McCarthy era. Linda didn’t get credited, but Seeger later claimed he objected to this and directed his publisher to send the royalties Linda’s way. His daughters claimed this wasn’t the case.
Fast forward 10 years and doo-wop group The Tokens (Neil Sedaka had previously been a member) decided to create a new version of Wimoweh, which continued to go down a storm at Weavers’ gigs. Desperately in search of a hit for their third single, The Tokens approached songwriters and producers George David Weiss, Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore to help them with an overhaul. They kept the chant, took Linda’s final notes from the original to become the main hook, wrote brand new English lyrics and had an interesting appearance from opera singer Anita Darian, who sounds almost like a theremin on her countermelodies.
Although The Tokens weren’t keen on The Lion Sleeps Tonight, which became the B-side to Tina, it became far more popular and became the first African song to reach number 1 in the US. It climbed to 11 in the UK. The Tokens went on to become a production team and were credited on He’s So Fine by The Chiffons. Weiss, Peretti and Creatore were credited on The Stylistics’ 1975 UK number 1 Can’t Give You Anything (But My Love). Linda once again didn’t get a credit.
20 years later, Ken Gold co-songwriter and producer on The Real Thing’s You to Me Are Everything, decided to capitalise on the craze for medleys. Dutch group Stars On 45 nearly made it to number 1 twice that year with medleys of 60s hits, and Gold fancied a go himself. He assembled a group of male and female session singers, christened them Tight Fit and they made the hit single Back to the 60s, which peaked at four. For their Top of the Pops appearance, a number of actors and singers were used to mime the record. Later that year they scraped in at 33 with Back to the 60s Part 2. It looked like Tight Fit were already over.
However, producer Tim Friese-Greene saw life in the name. He had recently produced Thomas Dolby’s debut album The Golden Age of Wireless and fancied updating The Lion Sleeps Tonight for an 80s audience. Perhaps figuring that Tight Fit was a readymade name that was associated with 60s covers, he took the name but used a different set of musicians. They included Roy Ward, the drummer and percussionist from rock band City Boy, on vocals. Finally, Linda received a songwriting credit, alongside the imaginary Campbell, plus Peretti, Creatore and Weiss.
Review
Yes, Tight Fit’s The Lion Sleeps Tonight is cheesy, but it’s still lots of fun. All the elements of The Tokens’ version are there but updated for a 1982 audience, featuring phased drums, effects on the ‘wimoweh’ chanting and keyboards replacing the operatic melodies of the 1961 version. Ward’s vocal is great – why was this guy relegated to drums with City Boy, and who discovered he could sing well?
This version has aged very well sonically, and hearing it now takes me back to playing it over and over as a young lad. I even confess to pretending I was the self-obsessed Tarzan in the video. However, once you learn about the cultural misappropriation through the years, you can’t help but be left with a bad taste in your mouth and a need to apologise on behalf of white people who can’t see a problem with cultural theft.
The video is cheap and tacky, but fits the mood of the song well, as Tarzan preens lazily among people in bargain-basement lion and gorilla outfits. The cast of the video featured dancer and model Steve Grant, plus singers Denise Gyngell and Julie Harris, who had been assembled by Friese-Greene to be the new Tight Fit for promotional purposes.
After
Tight Fit’s huge success resulted in Friese-Greene deciding to give Grant, Gyngell and Harris a shot at recording the next single. Fantasy Island, which had been an entry for The Millionaires in the Dutch Eurovision Song Contest heats, did very well, climbing to five in May (a very timely release, considering it coincided with the Falklands War – see ‘Meanwhile…‘). However, the appeal of Tight Fit ran out just as they found themselves recording an album and rehearsing to go on tour. The next single, Secret Heart, only got to 41, and Gyngell and Harris subsequently left, complaining over lack of royalties and poor wages. Two new female singers were brought on board, but it was over. A year later, in a bid to pacify Grant, a cover of Stephen Stills’ Love the One You’re With was credited to Steve Grant and Tight Fit. It made no difference to their chart prospects.
Grant, Gyngell and Harris continued to chase fame separately – Grant released singles in his own name, then joined a three-piece group called Splash! (terrible name). Gyngell teamed up with her brothers to become He She Him (awful name). Harris formed Julie and the Jems (shit name), followed by Chopper Harris (so bad it’s actually a pretty funny name).
Gyngell and Harris reformed as Tight Fit in 2008 to tour the UK’s nightclubs, with Grant occasionally joining them before officially rejoining in 2010. They released the album Together in 2016. You don’t need me to tell you it failed to chart, but, to paraphrase the excellent podcast Chart Music, they’ve been on Top of the Pops more times than I have.
As for Friese-Greene, well, he was enlisted by Talk Talk to remix their 1984 album It’s My Life, then became an unofficial member of the band, producing and co-writing their classic trio of albums The Colour of Spring (1986), Spirit of Eden (1988) and Laughing Stock (1991).
The Outro
The Lion Sleeps Tonight continued to be a popular tune, and royalties remained a source of contention. In 1989, a judge ruled that The Tokens’ version should be considered a separate composition to Wimoweh, but that 10 percent of performance royalties should go to Linda’s family. In 1994, the use of The Lion Sleeps Tonight in Disney’s The Lion King made the song even more famous.
In 2000, South African Rolling Stone journalist Rian Malan wrote an essay telling the story of Mbube and explained that despite The Lion Sleeps Tonight earning $15 million in royalties, Linda’s family were still living in poverty. Two years later, the documentary A Lion’s Tail helped keep the background to the song in the public eye.
Finally, there was justice, to a degree. In 2004, with the backing of the South African government and the Gallo Record Company agreeing to pay legal fees, Linda’s family sued Disney for $1.5 million for using the song in The Lion King. The case was settled in 2006, with Abilene Music, who then owned The Lion Sleeps Tonight, agreeing to a lump sum payment, future royalties and a co-composer credit at long last. Not that this was the end of it, as the settlement with Disney ended in 2017 and since then the corporation has used the song for their live action remake of The Lion King in 2019.
The Info
Written by
Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore, George Weiss, Solomon Linda & Paul Campbell
Producer
Tim Friese-Greene
Weeks at number 1
3 (6-26 March)
Trivia
Deaths
7 March: Conservative MP John Hare, 1st Viscount Blakenham
8 March: Conservative MP Rab Butler
11 March: Author Edmund Cooper
13 March: Bridge designer William Fairhurst
14 March: Calligrapher Alfred Fairbank
15 March: Poet Edgell Rickword
16 March: Scientist Sir Geoffrey Vickers
18 March: Silent film actress Barbara Tennant
21 March: Actor Harry H Corbett
22 March: Motorcyclist Bob Foster/Actor Harold Goldblatt
Meanwhile…
18 March: Nosy old fuddy duddy Mary Whitehouse’s legal case against the National Theatre’s The Romans in Britain ends after an intervention from the Attorney General.
19 March: Argentine scrap metal dealers illegally arrive at South Georgia, Falkland Islands – a British overseas colony – and raise the Argentine flag.
25 March: Social Democratic Party co-leader Roy Jenkins wins the Hillhead by-election in Glasgow. At this point, the SDP were leading many opinion polls.
