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I hadn't realized that the Weavers song was filched, lock, stock and barrel:

http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=254362006

Seeger even got the lyrics wrong, probably because he didn't speak Zulu. It's "Mbube".

I'd heard a similar story about Richard Dyer Bennet's "You've got to cross that lonesome valley". Not a folk song at all, but a RDB original composition.

They don't mention, though, how Seeger was able to "sample" it... good thing it wasn't written today

Pinkard and Bowden used that melody to write "The Bobbit Song" that was played nationally on the John Boy and Billy Big Show. It was an "R" rated tune that gleefully described Lorena's enthusiastic removal of John Wayne Bobbit's talleywacker. When I sing this song in a mixed crowd I always notice a lot more amusement among the women than the men.

The story is reminiscent of the creators of Superman--Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. They began their legal plight with DC Comics in 1946 when they left the company to try to start some of their own Superman projects==DC Comics said NO. It wasn't until 1975 that they won their case. Much of this was cosmetic, such as a tag on such TV shows as Lois and Clark and Smallville: Superman Created by Jerry Siegel and Joseph Shuster. They also earned a small annual stipend and residuals for current Superman projects. Jerry Siegel died in 1996. Joe Shuster died in 1992.