![]() This led to an appearance on Ted Steele's Teen Bandstand show on WOR-TV, though the single didn't catch on outside the N.Y. ![]() Cynthia's family had connections in the city at the Brill Building, which opened doors for her and Neil the quartet auditioned for Morty Craft, owner of the Willows' label, Melba, and recorded "I Love My Baby" (with a lead vocal by Rabkin) backed with "While I Dream" (lead by Sedaka), both written by Neil and another Lincoln High student, Howard Greenfield. Cynthia Zolotin, Eddie Rabkin and classical piano prodigy Sedaka decided The Tokens sounded better as a name Rabkin left the following year and was replaced by Siegel. Medress was the only member of the hitmaking '60s crew back in 1955 when The Linc-Tones came together, proudly representing Abraham Lincoln High School, the Brooklyn institution each of them attended at one time or another. But before that came about, an unexpected hit single ensured the Tokens' permanent place in pop culture: "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," their 1961 reworking of a classic African song, is one of the most recognizable recordings of all time. Some sort of triangular wax stick would have been required to metaphorically represent their other specialty, producing records, impressively so in the case of a particularly "Fine" Bronx-based girl group. But the Tokens, with guitar player Joe Venneri, took Neil one further. Street corner harmonizers Henry "Hank" Medress, Jay Siegel and brothers Philip Margo and Mitch Margo had developed as songwriters in the latter half of the '50s, following in the footsteps of former group member Neil Sedaka, who'd successfully lit both ends of the candle as a singer and composer of catchy pop tunes. The five Brooklynites who made up the ranks of The Tokens throughout most of the 1960s were much more than just a popular vocal group.
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