I was going to reveal the secret of the universe but never mind! The darn Wordpress will not let me post more than half the time and always delays my post. It's most annoying!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoUOrLe4vlY Broken

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OAGh07idXs Nutshell

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4mDtR4rPJ0 Fastcar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l44FI9Pzqxg If You Could Only See

So Long (It's Been Good To Know Yuh) - The Weavers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XyywLgbFtk

I once heard an interview with Hank Medress long ago in which he stated that what inspired the Tokens to do the song was that he had heard the original version done by The Weavers. I always liked the song (though I admit to being partial to the live version done by the Weavers at Carnegie Hall in 1963). It's one of those tunes that just stays in your head once you've heard it. RIP Hank.

So was Hank the famous falsetto voice behind the Tokens?
I take it he was. Many sites have commented on his death.
I came along watching the Beatles on Ed Sullivan.
But what fan of the era doesn't remember the group, the song, the singer?
Thanks for the entertainment dude.

"he worked as a consultant to Sound Exchange, a nonprofit group helping musicians collect royalties?"

How ironic. The song was originally recorded in about 1932 by the Rhodesia and Nyasaland Cold Storage Band. The song is an African lullabye written by Solomon Linda who died penniless and broke. Another victim of the disgusting music business.

Cool thread & video, RIP to a very interesting man.
Perhaps this might be of interest, regarding the author of the "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"

In the Jungle, the Unjust Jungle, a Small Victory
By SHARON LaFRANIERE
JOHANNESBURG — As Solomon Linda first recorded it in 1939, it was a tender melody, almost childish in its simplicity — three chords, a couple of words and some baritones chanting in the background.

But the saga of the song now known worldwide as "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" is anything but a lullaby. It is fraught with racism and exploitation and, in the end, 40-plus years after his death, brings a measure of justice. Were he still alive, Solomon Linda might turn it into one heck of a ballad.

Born in 1909 in the Zulu heartland of South Africa, Mr. Linda never learned to read or write, but in song he was supremely eloquent. After moving to Johannesburg in his mid-20's, he quickly conquered the weekend music scene at the township beer halls and squalid hostels that housed much of the city's black labor force.

He sang soprano over a four-part harmony, a vocal style that was soon widely imitated.

By 1939, a talent scout had ushered Mr. Linda's group, the Original Evening Birds, into a recording studio where they produced a startling hit called "Mbube," Zulu for "The Lion." Elizabeth Nsele, Mr. Linda's youngest surviving daughter, said it had been inspired by her father's childhood as a herder protecting cattle in the untamed hinterlands.

"The lion was going round and round, and the lion was happy," she said. "But my father was not happy. He had been staying there since morning and he was hungry." The lyrics were spartan — just mbube and zimba, which means "stop" — but its chant and harmonies were so entrancing that the song came to define a whole generation of Zulu a cappella singing, a style that became known simply as Mbube. Music scholars say the 78 r.p.m. recording of "Mbube" was probably the first African record to sell 100,000 copies.

From there, it took flight worldwide. In the early 50's, Pete Seeger recorded it with his group, the Weavers. His version differed from the original mainly in his misinterpretation of the word "mbube" (pronounced "EEM-boo-beh"). Mr. Seeger sang it as "wimoweh," and turned it into a folk music staple.

There followed a jazz version, a nightclub version, another folk version by the Kingston Trio, a pop version and finally, in 1961, a reworking of the song by an American songwriter, George Weiss. Mr. Weiss took the last 20 improvised seconds of Mr. Linda's recording and transformed it into the melody. He added lyrics beginning "In the jungle, the mighty jungle." A teen group called the Tokens sang it with a doo-wop beat — and it topped charts worldwide.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/22/international/africa/22lion.html?ei=50...

that's a great video, and skippy's late nite music club used it last march. tho the tokens are older, aren't we all? and it's just a great song!

but skippy's sunday nite music club tonite features 3/5 of the yardbirds, as jimmy page (after kicking heroin) plays w/eric clapton and jeff beck on an instrumental version of stairway to heaven (also included, a live version of zep doing the same song).

Now, this news really bums me out. Damn.

Sphinx -

Long time no see. I hope life is treating you well.

Annoyed Canuck! Hi! How great to see you. I know you like Bjork..

Bjork - It's Oh So Quiet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8Z1MpcyqQU

From this site...

http://www.3rdearmusic.com/forum/mbube2.html

In The Jungle --- it is one of the great musical mysteries of all time: How American music legends made millions off the work of a Zulu tribesman who died a pauper. After six decades, the truth is finally told.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, a small miracle took place in the brain of a man named Solomon Linda. It was 1939, and he was standing in front of a microphone in the only recording studio in black Africa when it happened. He hadn't composed the melody or written it down or anything. He just opened his mouth and out it came, a haunting skein of fifteen notes that flowed down the wires and into a trembling stylus that cut tiny grooves into a spinning block of bees wax, which was taken to England and turned into a record that became a very big hit in that part of Africa.
Later, the song took flight and landed in America, where it mutated into a truly immortal pop epiphany that soared to the top of the charts here and then everywhere, again and again, returning every decade or so under different names and guises. Navajo Indians sing it at powwows. Japanese teenagers know it as TK. ____________ Phish perform it live. Cybersurfers recognize it as the theme song of a hugely popular British website. It has been recorded by artists as diverse as R.E.M. and Glen Campbell, Brian Eno and Chet Atkins, the Nylons and ___ schlockmeister Bert Kaempfert. The New Zealand army band turned it into a march. England's 1986 World Cup soccer squad turned it into a joke. Hollywood put it in Ace Ventura Pet Detective. It has logged nearly three centuries of continuous radio air play in the U.S. alone. It is the most famous melody ever to emerge from Africa, a tune that has penetrated so deep into the human consciousness over so many generations that one can truly say, here is a song the whole world knows.

Its epic transcultural saga is also, in a way, the story of popular music, which limped pale-skinned and anaemic into the twentieth century but danced out the other side vastly invigorated by transfusions of ragtime and rap, jazz, blues and soul, all of whose blood lines run back to Africa via slave ships and plantations and ghettos. It was in the nature of this transaction that black men gave more than they got and often ended up with nothing....

For more go to the website and read on.

Peace

s

The Lion Sleeps Tonight...

Everything passes but not all leave a mark. Thank you Hank.

For the love of my life----I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know
Ellliot Yamin Live
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZrU4R-AWEc

[...] Hat tip to Crooks and Liars [...]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88IPyGqDb1k

So sorry to hear this . . .

His lead vocals on that song were forever ingrained in THIS boomer's ears and heart.

I was, HOWEVER, always kilt with the soprano above his voice, and man that gal has to sing up HIGH, she does . . . . wee mo way indeed though and may this singer be blessed on his way back home to the veldt . . . . so many losses, as us boomers move thru our years.

I'm only 54 . . . . . I'm missin a lot of them, already . . .

Harumph.

The only thing is in this clip Hank isn't in this clip.
Peace, jason

Rest in peace, Mr. Medress. You will be missed, sir.

My thoughts and prayers go out to his friends and family.

I remember being a little kid, driving down to the Jersey Shore with my family in our '53 Chevy singing along with this song. It was, and still is, a classic. What a velvetine voice, even at the age of this video.

Sleep well. Thanks for the memories.

Years ago my son and I were riding in the car and 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' came on the radio. I asked my son what he thought of the song, (he was 15 and it was 1985), and he said he really liked it. I told him how old the song was, and he couldn't believe it. RIP Hank, and thanks for the memories. Mr. Linda will not be remembered as well I'm afraid, but those of us here will always remember him.