Monday, December 4, 2017

Mitch Margo, an original member...

...of the Tokens, who sang "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," died at age 70.

Although I especially like the woman's voice in that video, I always preferred this version by the Weavers:

 From the Times:

[The] song was based on a 1939 recording, "Mbube" — Zulu for "The Lion" — by the South African musician Solomon Linda and his group the Original Evening Birds.

Pete Seeger recorded a version in the 1950s as “Wimowe,” which is how he sang the original lyric “mbube” (pronounced EEM-boo-beh). The American songwriter George David Weiss reworked it in 1961, adding the lyrics “In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight.” That’s the version made famous by the Tokens.

While I'm at it, I always liked this song too:

It was Mr. Margo’s idea for the Happenings to do an up-tempo version of the Gershwin brothers’ “I Got Rhythm,” his nephew Noah Margo said. The record reached No. 3 on the Billboard singles chart in 1967.

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