![]() I’ve never been disappointed in their sound. I’ve seen Jay Siegel and the Tokens a number of times (At least 5 or 6 in the last 3 years since I started actively attending oldies concerts as time and money has permitted me, I am only 26 after all, and work full time for a living). Top photo left to right- Jay Traynor, Jay Siegel, and Bill Reidīottom photo Hank Medress, Jay Siegel, Phil and Mitch Margo Jay changed the melody to make the lyric fit the meter … and the rest is history!”įOR THE TOURING SCHEDULE OF JAY SIEGEL AND THE NEW TOKENS VISIT THEIR WEBSITE When we came to the recording session, they handed Jay the lyric as he was about to go on microphone. Hugo and Luigi said they wanted to put a lyric to it. They said, “That’s a hit! What does the lyric mean?” We told them Jay had checked with the African consulate and it was about a lion hunt, etc. ![]() Then they asked if we had anything else? I said there’s a song we sing on the beach. First we played them our original songs, but they weren’t very interested. Hank continued, “We had an audition with Hugo and Luigi at RCA. He was a big Pete Seeger fan and he loved his version of ‘Wimoweh’.” Jay Siegel was the one who turned us on to that song. That was the song we used to sing on street corners. I was riding the subway home to Brighton Beach, some lady overhears me talking about the record we just made, says she and her son have a record company … they release it and we have our first hit! On that same session, we recorded ‘Wimoweh’, before it became ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’. I borrowed $60 and we made a demo of the song. Right away we all started writing songs together, which included ‘Tonight I Fell In Love’. I went down to Ocean Parkway to check them out. When I interviewed Hank Medress, for Spectropop, just before he passed away, I asked him how the group got together and how they came to record “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” Hank said, “I knew Jay Siegel from school, and Neil Sedaka, who was still halfway in our group, thought Jay sang great! Then I heard about these two brothers, Phil and Mitch Margo. Although I never got a single cut with any of their artists I enjoyed playing material for them and engaging in the knock hockey tournaments they held in their offices at 1697 Broadway. The original group, Hank Medress, Jay, Phil, and Mitch Margo in addition to making hit records themselves produced classic hits for other artists, The Chiffons (“He’s So Fine”, “One Fine Day”) Tony Orlando and Dawn (“Knock Three Times”, “Candida”). I talked to my old friend Jay a few days ago, and was amazed when he told me that he hasn’t lost the stratospheric top notes in his vocal range, which is probably why i guess Jay Siegel and the New Tokens do so incredibly well on the oldies circuit…they sound like the hit records! ![]() One of the defining records of the sixties that is still so fresh it could have been recorded yesterday. ' Wimoweh' only to find myself pondering the question of whether pouring a blastocyst down the drain of a laboratory sink at a fertility center is abortion.It’s hard to believe that it’s been 50 years when we first heard “THE LION SLEEPS TONIGHT” and the incredible falsetto of Jay Siegel of the Tokens. I first became aware of it with Karl Denver's version renamed " Wimoweh". When I heard the song ' Wimoweh' on a compliation from the folk group The Spinners at the age of ten I thought it was their own composition. The song has since then been reworked and its title changed to " Wimoweh" in 1951/2 by Pete Seeger and into It became known as " Wimoweh" and rose to number six on the United States music charts.Īn American music publishing house has offered to pay all future royalties on the song " Wimoweh" to the family of its South African author, lawyers for the late composer Solomon Linda said on Monday. In 1961 a group of young American musicians called The Tokens sang " Wimoweh" with some English lyrics added to make a song called "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," which became an international number-one hit. Mbube, in case you don't know, is what got turned into 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' when Pete Seeger misheard the singers and wrote out ' Wimoweh'.Īlso, I think the original lyric is 'dead,' not 'sleeping' Michael Sigman: 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' at 50: A Song for the Ages By the '50s, it had become a repertoire staple under the title " Wimoweh" for Pete Seeger and his hugely successful folk group The Weavers.
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