Noriyuki Asakura & GANG/The Kingtones -- The Lion Sleeps Tonight

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Have you heard that old-fashioned standard, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"? Well, I only found out today that it had evolved from a song known as "Mbube" which was first released in 1939 by South African musician Solomon Linda and an acapella group known as The Evening Birds. I also read that Linda never got his due accolades or remuneration for his creation according to the Wikipedia article for the song. I think his descendants are still fighting on that one.

As the decades passed by, the song got transformed into pieces covered by various artists such as the American doo-wop group The Tokens with their 1961 "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". The song was also titled "Wimoweh" in other versions. I first heard it many years ago and I think The Tokens' version is the one that is most cited among the covers.

I also remember one cover that was done by a fairly obscure UK pop group called Tight Fit back in 1982. The music video showed up on an episode of the local music show "The New Music" here in Toronto. 

Recently, I read that the song had a pretty important role in the both of the "Ace Ventura" movies starring Jim Carrey. Although I enjoyed him in "The Mask" and "Liar, Liar", maybe he just got a little too "carrey-ed" away in those for my liking (I will see myself out for the rest of the paragraph, thank you😁).

Anyways, the Japanese music industry was also aware of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" since I managed to find out that there were at least two recordings of the song. One was by musician and singer-songwriter Noriyuki Asakura（朝倉紀行）with his group GANG, also in 1982. Asakura has provided a lot of songs to aidoru and other singers since he basically switched over to composing and arrangement but back in those early days, he came up with his own very frantic version of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" under the ironic title "Lion wa Okiteiru"（ライオンは起きている...The Lion is Awake）, although the original English title is also clearly labeled at the top of the single cover. As would befit the times, Asakura's version feels New Wave but somewhere in the middle, things slow down significantly for a bluesy turn.

The GANG cover was used as the theme song for the dramedy "Keiji Yoroshiku"（刑事ヨロシク...Detective At-Your-Service） starring comedian and future movie auteur Beat Takeshi（ビートたけし）. And yep, those opening credits for the show may have inspired the man. By the way, the translations into Japanese were done by Arisu Sato（佐藤ありす）.

Japanese doo-wop vocal group The Kingtones（ザ・キング・トーンズ）had given their own cover of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" back in 1969 in one of their albums.