"The Lion Sleeps Tonight" — George David Weiss is dead

The great songwriter in 1961 ".... added the lyrics, 'In the jungle, the mighty jungle' to a popular, infectious melody to create the No. 1 Billboard hit "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" for the Tokens," wrote T. Rees Shapiro in today's Washington Post obituary.

Weiss died this past Monday at the age of 89.

Excerpts from the Post obituary follow.

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The origin of his greatest success, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," was mired in controversy. The tune was originally composed in 1939 by Solomon Linda, who lived in a shanty in Soweto, a suburb of Johannesburg.

But in 1952, Linda sold the copyrights to a recording of his song -- which he called "Mbube," Zulu for lion — to a studio for 10 shillings, less than $1.

The song eventually captured the attention of Pete Seeger, who wrote out a rough transcription of the song's main lyrics, "uyimbube, uyimbube," as "wimoweh, wimoweh," and performed it with the Weavers.

Today, more than 150 variations of Linda's original song exist, and it has been featured in more than a dozen movies, including Disney's "The Lion King" (1994).

The song generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue, but when Linda died in 1962 at age 53, he was so poor his widow could not afford a headstone for his grave.

In 2004, Linda's family filed a suit against Abilene Music Inc., the publishing company that owned copyrights to "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." Two years later, Abilene agreed to pay the family the song's royalties retroactively from 1987 onward.

"This song has never died," Mr. Weiss once said of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." "I never thought of it as a song but rather a series of gimmicks thrown together. It just shows you — you can't second-guess the public."

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Margalit Fox's obituary in yesterday's New York Times had a slightly different take on the origin of the blockbuster hit: "'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' (1961), based on a South African Zulu song first recorded in the 1930s, was given a reworked melody and new lyrics ('In the jungle, the might jungle/The lion sleep tonight') by Mr. Weiss, Mr. Peretti and Mr. Creatore."

"Their adaptation, which kept the refrain — 'Wimoweh, wimoweh' — popularized in a 1950s version by the Weavers, became a million-selling hit for the Tokens."