Do you know what happened to this song? Something to do with James Brown…
André-Marie Tala, musicien Camerounais, perd sa mère à 4 ans, son père 12 ans plus tard et la vue à 15 ans. Quasiment seul, il se réfugie dans la musique. Il crée le groupe les Rock Boys, qui deviendra les Black Tigers, avec Sam Fan Thomas à la guitare.
Dans les années 70, il obtient un énorme succès en Afrique et l’un de ses hits, “Hot Koki”, est “emprunté” par James Brown (sous le nom “Hustle“), ce qui lui vaudra un procès qu’il perdra…
Pour la petite histoire, Hot Koki chante la gloire d’un plat typique de l’Ouest du Cameroun, en le comparant aux spaghettis et autres fastfoods qui font “grossir”…
BendSkin Beats!
6 replies on “André-Marie Tala – Hot Koki”
Are you going to share an answer with us? Didier J. MARY I’ve been waiting since you posted yesterday…
Cedric McCay was waiting for someone to react at some point… 😉
This track is a lesser known example of plagiarism by an American musician of an originally African tune.
Tala, a well known singer in early 70’s Congo, made a demo of this song and passed it to James Brown when he toured Cameroon. Seemingly the Godfather liked it a lot, because he re-recorded it and released it as his own song, the single ‘Hustle’. In doing so, he took all credit for composing.
Tala got wise and sued Brown, and he actually won the case!
Wow! Didier J. MARY sounds like MJ and…. Manu Dibango?
Cedric McCay even worse… MJ/Manu was a small snippet. Here, that was the whole composition…
Il était bon ce mec. Où vas-tu paysan? Avec Ton Boubou neuf….lol Merci pour le post Didier J