Folkways then filed a copyright infringement action in the district court. Lastly, the Songwriters requested they be awarded all revenue Folkways had received since the beginning of the renewal term stemming from use of the Lion version. In their demand, the Songwriters sought a declaration that they were "the sole and exclusive owners of all rights in and to the, including worldwide copyright, since the composition entered its United States renewal term of copyright." They also sought to compel Folkways to notify its licensees that it no longer had any interest in the copyright in the Lion version. This original term expired on December 31, 1989. This contract transferred and assigned all rights in the Lion version to Folkways, including "the right to secure copyright therein throughout the entire world and to have and to hold the said copyright and all rights of whatsoever nature thereunder existing, subject to the terms of this agreement." On December 18, 1961, Folkways registered a claim to copyright in the Lion version. In addition, the parties entered into a "Standard Popular Songwriter Contract" ("the Agreement") also dated November 6, 1961. On November 6, 1961, Folkways drafted a letter which was signed by the Songwriters, providing for a distribution of public performance royalties payable by Broadcast Music, Inc., Folkways' performing rights society, for uses of the Lion version. Two of these documents are central to the disposition of this case. The Songwriters allegedly executed five documents, including acknowledgements of the infringement and assignments of rights in the Lion version to Folkways. Here's the Wikipedia article on the song.In response, Token ceded its rights as publisher of the Lion version to Folkways and the Songwriters entered into the agreement which is the subject of this suit. I taped the show when it was broadcast a couple of years later and we watched it several times with our children it is, as they used to say, fun for the whole family.
It's from a 1990 PBS Great Performances show called Spike Lee & Co. I guess I've watched it a dozen times over the years and it still delights me.
#Wimoweh definition full#
Lastly, bringing the song full circle from American pop to its African roots, here are The Mint Juleps, an a cappella British group, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo, with an arrangement that brings together the commercial and folk variants. As the article notes, this unjust practice was standard at the time-American blues singers were treated similarly-and while this was clearly a rip-off, it was a practice that came into being when recorded music was still something of an afterthought to a performing career. The article Paul provided tells the whole story of the song's recording, the money made from it, and where it went, which was not to Solomon Linda and the Evening Birds, who were paid nothing beyond a very small recording fee. I believe I hear a piano tinkling in the background there, though these voices hardly need any accompaniment. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Solomon Linda and the Evening Birds singing "Mbube" (you'll probably need to turn the volume up to hear it clearly): Of course I had to hear it, so I went straightaway to YouTube, and, not too surprisingly, because everything seems to be on YouTube now, there it was. The original recording-and it was a commercial product, not a folklorist's discovery-was made in South Africa, in 1939. But it wasn't until last week, when I posted that Paul Simon/Ladysmith Black Mambazo tune, that Paul, in the comments, clued me in to its origin, via this very fascinating piece. I had always assumed that the Weavers, or perhaps just Seeger, learned it from one of those field recordings that the folklorists of the early 20th century were always producing and discovering, the work of a collector who had gone into Africa for that purpose the way the Lomaxes had ventured into the American South. It had some chart success and I think that's where The Tokens, or someone at their record company, heard it. Some years later I learned that The Weavers, Pete Seeger's pop-folk group of the late '40s and '50s, had recorded it. I remember seeing its name on an American Bandstand Top 10 list before I actually heard it, and being intrigued by the title. I guess anyone who's been in earshot of a radio very often over the past fifty years has heard The Tokens' 1960 hit version of this song.
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