Wimoweh: Evening Birds. Solomon Linda Sleeps Tonight: RIP

Wimoweh: Evening Birds

Written by Solomon Linda, the cleaner in a South African record studio in the '20s, recorded in 1939.

Bear in mind that this was sung with no amplification or sophisticated sound engineering at all: It was probably a group sitting around a 1939 recorder far inferior to our tape recorders of the '60s.

And then, Pete Seeger & The Weavers in the late '40s or early '50s, still unsophisticated by today's standards, but recorded by a professional group in a (in those days) state-of-the-art studio:



And then finally The Tokens in 1961:



Solomon Linda died in 1962 with a net worth of $25. You'd think The Tokens could have slipped him a few grand. (For all I know, maybe they did.  In any event, The Lion owes its success to Solomon Linda.)