That was almost us! Hit songs stolen by someone else

[Amor de Cosmos]

Black is Black is 1966. Not the best song, not your favourite song, but the most ubiquitous. It has an immediate association for me. I was working on a building site that Summer. One of the apprentice brickies was a member of The Niteshades, until then Stevenage’s biggest band. For a few minutes they even had an actual recording contract and appeared in a movie. They even cut the original version of Black is Black. However for reasons unknown, or unexpressed, it never saw the light of day. And every tea break that Summer we never heard the last of it — “That shoulda been us! Why is that effing version better than ours? I can’t hear it… I just can’t hear it! Can You?" Well no, because we’d never heard the ‘Shades classic rendition, no one had. So we just stared into our tea filled jam-jars and shook our heads sympathetically.

Anyway, from a year earlier, here's The Niteshades moment of fame, the finale, and title song, of Be My Guest. Keep your eyes open for a glimpse of Stevie Marriott, who co-starred with David Hemmings.

[Jah Womble]

That's quite a tale, Amor - and one that calls to mind one of pop music's most tragic stories. Not so much 'stolen' as 'appropriated', Without You was originally recorded by Badfinger, having been penned by principle songwriters Pete Ham and Tom Evans. (It first appeared as pretty much a 'filler' on the group's 1970 album, No Dice.)

Of course, Harry Nilsson got a hold of it and turned it into a massive global hit, then winning them the Ivor Novello Award in 1972. Despite this, a less-than-favourable contract - courtesy of notorious manager/crook Stan Polley - saw the duo receive almost no money for the song during their lifetimes, which following Mariah Carey's chart-topping 'rework', would/should have run into tens of millions for the composers.

These lifetimes, however, were cut short by Ham and Evans's respective suicides in 1975 and 1983...

Always read the label, folks.

[Sits]

Well it wasn't exactly stolen, but Kirsty MacColl's They don't Kmow was certainly appropriated very successfully by Tracey Ullman. I always wondered why this was but I hadn't realised just what the circumstances were behind MacColl not getting the big hit with her own song.

[G-Man]

One of the most foul stories of songwriting theft must be the story of "Mbube" (the song known more widely as "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" or "Wimoweh"), with even the venerable Pete Seeger involved in the deceit; though he comes out of it a lot better than others.

The man who wrote and first recorded it, Solomon Linda, died virtually penniless, having been duped into selling the rights to the song for a pittance to the Italian-born South African record label owner Eric Gallo. Gallo pocketed the royalties of the prodigious South African sales, in return allowing Linda to work in his packing plant. Apart from performing on stage in South Africa, where he was a musical legend in the townships, Linda worked there until his death at 53 in 1962 — nine years after Seeger and the Weavers had a US #6 hit with it, and a year after The Tokens scored a huge hit with the song in a reworked version. No laws were broken in this deplorable story of plagiarism, but the rules of ethics and common decency certainly were.

Seeger adapted a fairly faithful version of the song. Still, Seeger didn’t even transcribe the word “uyiMbube” properly, even though he had received a record of the song (from the great music historian Alan Lomax), which had a label stating the title on it. And surely it should have been possible to research a song which had sold a 100,000 copies in South Africa, especially if Alan Lomax is your friend.

Seeger later pleaded ignorance about the intricacies of music publishing, and, to his credit, deeply regretted not insisting firmly enough that Linda be given the songwriting credit. He had sent his initial arrangers’s fee of $1,000 to Linda and insisted that the song’s publishers, TRO, should keep sending royalties to the South African. Apparently they periodically did so, though Linda’s widow had little idea where the money — hardly riches (about $275 per quarter in the early ’90s) — came from. Some family members say the payments started only in the 1980s. Whatever the case, neither Linda nor Seeger were credited for the song now known as Wimoweh. The credit went to Paul Campbell, a pseudonym used by TRO owner Harry Richmond to copyright the many public-domain folk songs which TRO published.

The Tokens’ version took even greater liberties. But this time nobody could claim ignorance because Miriam Makeba, who grew up with the song, released it in the US in 1960, a year before The Tokens’ version was created, as Mbube, or The Lion (mbube means lion). It is fair to say that George David Weiss, who rearranged the song for The Tokens, at their request, should not be denied his songwriter credit (that would be the same Weiss who co-wrote Elvis’ Can’t Help Falling In Love with mafia associates and RCA producers Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore ). Weiss dismantled and restructured the song, turning a very African song into an American novelty pop song.

Peretti and Creatore claimed co-writing credit and the rights to the song, arbitrarily deciding that Mbube was an old African folk song, not a near-contemporary pop hit, and therefore in the public domain. They might well have thought so in good faith, but a minimum of research would have established the facts, even before the age of Google. Or perhaps not: they pulled the same stunt with Miriam Makeba’s Click Song (the clicking is a distinctive sound in the Xhosa language), which the Tokens released as Bwanina. They got away with that, because Makeba’s number was itself based on an old folk song. Not so with The Lion Sleeps Tonight, to which Gallo, the record label owner from South Africa, had asserted his US rights in 1952 and then sold it to TRO. A whole lot of wheeling and dealing took place, with the upshot that the credit now included TRO’s fictitious Paul Campbell. Again, Linda was left out in the cold.

It was only at the beginning of the 2000s that Linda’s family took legal action, and that only after Richmond, Weiss and the mafia pals started to wrangle about the ownership to the song on the back of its use in The Lion King. Solomon Linda’s family eventually won a settlement which entitles them to future royalties and a lump sum for royalties going back to 1987, largely due to an extensive Rolling Stone exposé by South African one-book wonder novelist Rian Malan. By some estimates, Mbube/Wimoweh/The Lion Sleeps Tonight has accrued royalties in the region of $15 million. Linda’s family initially sued Disney for $1.5 million for the song’s use in The Lion King – happily they are now due royalties from other versions. Malan and the family’s lawyers are still trying to find versions of the song against which to claim royalties.

Here’s the kicker: Solomon Linda was quite delighted at the international success of his song; he didn’t realise that he should have received something for it — even if that something was just an acknowledgment that he wrote the song.

[Satchmo Distel]

Boney M's Rivers of Babylon has a similar history. Frank Farian did not credit original writers Brent Dowe and Trevor McNaughton on the first pressings and the Rastafarian references in the Melodians' version were altered to Christian ones.

[WOM]

I don't remember all the details, but I remember there being a story about Norman Greenbaum being exceptionally hard to find when Doctor and The Medics remade Spirit in The Sky. Apparently a large royalty cheque floated around for quite a while before he was located, alive and farming or something.

[Amor de Cosmos]

I wonder how Karl Denver's version of Wimoweh was credited? IIRC It was more or less contemporary with The Tokens, but sounds entirely different. A fair sized hit in the UK, it also ended Denver's career as he destroyed his voice performining the vocal contortions night after night.

[G-Man]

It's credited to the ficticous Paul Campbell.

[3 Colours Red]

Frank Farian did not credit original writers Brent Dowe and Trevor McNaughton...

Did Frank Farian do anything that didn't have an air of deceit?

[G-Man]

He had a fairly long career as a Schlager singer which, a couple of shitty hits aside, was more honest than wildly successful. His debut in 1967 was in English, though: a cover of Otis Redding's "Mr Pitiful". Because given the choice between Otis Redding and weedy Farian, you'll obviously go for Farian. Of course, all good soul music needs a heavy German accent. The fraudulent fuck also claimed Brown Girl In The Ring, a traditional West Indian children's song, as his own composition.

[San Bernardhinault]

Isn't Superstition the classic example of this?

[Satchmo Distel]

I don't think so, but it's a thread in it's own right: song written for someone else that the author decided to keep.

Tears Of A Clown and What's Going On started as very different arrangements for acts other than those who had the hit, but I would class that as part of the normal Motown process of developing work that can change its purpose as it evolves.

The difference with, say, Rivers of Babylon is that the latter was a complete artistic work which is at least the equal of and arguably superior to the Boney M hit. There is also no cultural appropriation in the Motown cases whereas The Lion Sleeps Tonight and Rivers of Babylon are outright cultural theft by the "developed" capitalist pop machine from cultures that have fewer privileges.

[Satchmo Distel]

As an aside, to expand G-Man's point, there is sometimes a tendency to misread Jamaican and African songs as folk when they are actually modern pop songs, as in the Mbube and Rivers of Babylon cases. They might have African folk ancestry but then so does all pop to a degree.

[G-Man]

Well, "What's Going On" wasn't directly written for somebody else. Obie Benson wanted an early version, with a different melody, for the Four Tops, who rejected it for being political. Gaye, who wrote the melody, had it in mind to give it to The Originals, but Benson told Gaye to record it himself. There was no arrangement yet. But, yeah, on Motown many songs were recorded by different artists before they decided which version to go for. And sometimes a cover would appear shortly after the original, undercutting the first version. I Heard It Through The Grapevine is an example of that (though Gladys Knight already was having a hit with it).

Another notable example is Papa Was A Rolling Stone, which was first recorded by The Undisputed Truth. Who in turn had their one big hit, Smiling People Sometimes, with a song first recorded by The Temptations. Who also first recorded Edwin Starr's War.

[Satchmo Distel]

I misremembered the history of Superstition. It was a song by Stevie Wonder that Jeff Beck and Stevie were both going to record. Beck's version was supposed to come out first but the recording of his album was delayed, so Stevie's version, which was already finished for the Talking Book album, got the hit.

[steveeeeeeeee]

I watched the Don McLean documentary on BBC4 the other day and the best thing in it had to be the Lori Lieberman sub-plot regarding her poem which became "Killing Me Softly With His Song", the credit of which is given to songwriters Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel along with the millions of dollars of royalties. Just another tale in the compendium of shameless criminal acts by the music industry, thank god for its demise.

Don McLean comes across as one of the true good guys. I'm probably at an awkward age that I'll never relate to him due to American Pie's ubiquity (I had a similar thing with Joni Mitchell due to Big Yellow Taxi, thank god I got over that one).

[Jah Womble]

Don McLean comes across as one of the true good guys.

If one ignores the domestic violence incidents, yes.

[steveeeeeeeee]

They skipped over that bit.

[G-Man]

I watched the Don McLean documentary on BBC4 the other day and the best thing in it had to be the Lori Lieberman sub-plot regarding her poem which became "Killing Me Softly With His Song", the credit of which is given to songwriters Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel along with the millions of dollars of royalties. Just another tale in the compendium of shameless criminal acts by the music industry, thank god for its demise..

Norman Gimbel remembers it differently.

[Satchmo Distel]

The Kingston Trio recorded Rod McKuen's English translation of Seasons In The Sun in 1963. The Beach Boys made an unsuccessful attempt to record it in 1972-73 then Terry Jacks recorded the UK No. 1 version.

Brian Wilson wrote Time To Get Alone for Redwood but his bandmates insisted on recording it themselves.

[Various Artist]

I only saw the latter half of the Don McLean documentary, but recorded the 2am repeat so will catch up at some time soon I hope.

I immediately thought of this thread during the bit I did watch, however, as I hadn't known before about the American Pie album concluding with a song called Babylon – which uses several of the same motifs as Rivers of Babylon and is clearly based on the same source: "By the waters, the waters of Babylon / We lay down and wept, and wept, for thee Zion". If I'm interpreting the album's Wikipedia page correctly, it's credited as 'traditional', with McLean listed only as arranger.

[G-Man]

Well, The Melodians borrowed these motifs from the Old Testament. Melodically it has no resemblance to Rivers of Babylon, and musically it sounds like an old Jewish song of lament.

[Jah Womble]

I don't remember all the details, but I remember there being a story about Norman Greenbaum being exceptionally hard to find when Doctor and The Medics remade Spirit in The Sky. Apparently a large royalty cheque floated around for quite a while before he was located, alive and farming or something.

I can only assume that he was too busy playing Farmville when that Pop Idol gimp also took it to number one in 2003...

[Satchmo Distel]

Eric Clapton having the UK hit with I Shot The Sheriff is criminal given his views on multiculturalism.

[G-Man]

Well, the deputy was white, so Clapton did follow Enoch Powell faithfully.