SUIKERBOSSIE (EK WIL JOU HE)
Created on 11/03/2006Latest update on 22/04/2024
Artist: Orkes Malan & sy Kerels
Author: Fred Michel
Label: Columbia
Year: 1933
The author (a barber from Cape Town) and his band, with Frankie and/or Pierre Malan, credited for musical arrangement. The heirs of Fred Michel contacted the same lawyer who won the court case against Disney regarding the rights to The Lion Sleeps Tonight, written by black South African Solomon Linda, who just like Fred Michel, didn't live long enough to enjoy the fruits of the claim. See: Mbube. All this while the melody of Suikerbossie should have been credited to Malaisian and Indonesian slaves in the first place. Popular as marching song among South African soldiers during WW II.
Covers:
- 1936:
Dawid De Lange [South African singer selling quart a million copies (on Gallotone)]
- 1946:
Jozef Marais [for Decca as Sugarbush]
- 1950:
- 1952:
Marais & Miranda [Jozef and his Dutch girlfriend; in medley with Dutch well-known En We Gaan Nog Niet Naar Huis-tune]
- 1952:
- 1952:
Eve Boswell [as Sugarbush; her signature tune and a career alternating between England and South-Africa]
- 1952:
Doris Day & Frankie Laine [idem, top 10 US & UK, including the En We Gaan Nog Niet Naar Huis-medley]
- 1952:
Stargazers [idem]
- 1952:
Fred Rauch [as Zucker Lili]
- 1953:
Annie Cordy [as La Petite Marie (see there)]
- 1954:
Peter Alexander & Ernie Bielen [als Zucker Lili]
- 1977:
Bert Kaempfert [as Sugarbush]
- 1995:
- 1999:
Nádine [South African hit]
- 2001:
Stef Bos [in Dutch]
Suikerbossie is a flower growing at the foot of Table Mountain (Protea repens), since 1976 the official national flower of South Africa. Here it is used as a pet name.
