'Oleseng's voice mine' - Young muso sang 'sick-bed' ditties

| Wednesday July 28, 2010 00:00

The label allegedly used a trailblazing Pretoria- based musician to sing all Oleseng's ditties on his album Tribute To Oleseng and lied that the alto-voiced musician recorded the songs when he was ill. It emerged this week that this was a ruse to fool the award-winning muso's battalion of fans into buying the album. This revelation was made by budding musician Tebogo Motaung after Cool Spot reneged on its agreement to pay him R100 000 for the nefarious job.

Motaung says he was approached by the owner of Shuping's record label, who asked him to record an album under the pretext that it was recorded by the artist himself. He said Shuping, who died of pneumonia earlier this month, was wheelchair-bound and couldn't croon as one of his lungs was damaged in a car accident he was involved in about four years ago.

Motaung says he agreed to do the job after being told that his voice was exactly like Shuping's and that the latter's fans would buy what they would believe to be his comeback album. 'I recorded his solo album and that of his group Atteridgeville Boys and handed it over to the company.  They were excited and even announced on radio that Shuping recorded an album from his sick bed,' he says.

Motaung says the company then defaulted on their original promise to pay him R100000. 'They told me they would pay me only R2000 for the job, which I saw as an insult,' he says. 'I told them I needed the R100000 they promised me and not R2000, but they refused and said they would erase my voice from the album if I didn't accept the chickenfeed.'

Motaung then took the legal route and contracted advocate Jerry Koma to represent him. 'After deliberations with the company's MD, Ken Haycock, we agreed that we should meet on Monday,' Koma says.'It will depend on the outcome of that meeting whether we should proceed with our litigation process,' he says.  Haycock, meanwhile, rejected Motaung's allegations.

'We never made such an agreement with him. That is a pack of lies. We asked him to work on a project, but never said he should pretend to be Oleseng,' said Haycock. Haycock refused to discuss the matter further. (Sundayworld.co.za)