OBITUARY

Hank Medress

Henry Medress, singer and record producer: born New York 19 November 1938; died New York 18 June 2007.

Singer with the Tokens on hits including 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight'

From the Independent, 23 June 2007

The record producer Hank Medress called his favourite songs "earworms": they were the ones that you couldn't get out of your head while you were walking or showering. Medress himself was responsible for several of them, either as singer or producer - including "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" (by the Tokens, 1961), "He's So Fine" (the Chiffons, 1963) and "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree" (Tony Orlando and Dawn, 1973).

Medress was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1938 and his twin loves were music and basketball. In 1955, he met the teenage Neil Sedaka in an English class at Lincoln High School. Before the class was over, they had formed a group. The group was called the Linctones and they were accepted by a small record company based in the Brill Building. They recorded Sedaka's song, "I Love My Baby" and although Sedaka thought they sounded like "four frightened chipmunks", they had some exposure on local radio and television. In 1958, when Sedaka left to study classical music at Juilliard in New York, Medress determined to form a new group.

The new quartet consisted of Medress, Jay Siegel and two brothers, Phil and Mitch Margo. Singing together on a bus, they impressed a woman whose son had a record company and they cut "Tonight I Fell in Love" for Warwick Records in 1961. This made the US Top Twenty and led to them recording for RCA.

At RCA, the producers Hugo and Luigi Hugo and Luigi liked an African chant the Tokens sang, "Wimoweh", which came from an early Fifties record by the Weavers, but felt it needed English words. As "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", it topped the US charts and sold six million copies, reaching the UK charts early in 1962. Since then, the songwriting credits have been the source of much debate and legal proceedings: the family of the African composer Solomon Linda was only awarded royalties as late as 2004. Medress felt that he deserved something for his lyrics, but, he commented, "I was made to feel like a criminal rather than a victim."

Medress made many records with the Tokens and became intrigued by record production. When the girl group the Chiffons came for an audition and the producer intended to see them was otherwise occupied, Medress volunteered. He loved their song "He's So Fine" and they recorded it, backed by the Tokens. This record, too, became part of a court case when it was plagiarised by George Harrison for "My Sweet Lord" in 1970. Medress went on to produce the Chiffons' hits "One Fine Day" (1963) and "Sweet Talkin'Guy" (1966), as well as Randy and the Rainbows' 1963 single, "Denise" (later reworked by Blondie).

In the mid-Sixties, the Tokens founded their own label, B.T. Puppy, but although they had a US hit with "I Hear Trumpets Blow" (1966), most of Medress's subsequent success was in producing the Happenings (on "See You in September" and "I Got Rhythm"). He also produced a remake of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", a million-selling single for Robert John in 1971.

In 1968, Medress saw the Moody Blues using a Mellotron, an early synthesizer, and immediately wanted one, but the American musicians' union had thought that it would take work away from members and banned its use. Medress imported one surreptitiously and one of the first records he made with it was Brute Force's "The King of Fuh". The singer, Steve Freedland, says over and over that "The Fuh King says this" and "The Fuh King says that". George Harrison heard the single in New York and wanted EMI to release it in the UK. When they refused, Apple released it independently, pressing and distributing 2,000 copies in 1969.

When Medress and his producer friend, Dave Appell, decided to record a new song, "Candida", they wanted a singer who could sound like Ben E. King. Tony Orlando, who had had a hit with "Bless You" in 1961, was by then working as a record company executive and he agreed to do it, although it was against his employment contract. They released it under the name of Dawn. After its success, Orlando returned to performing and Medress and Appell produced Dawn's UK No 1 singles "Knock Three Times" and "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree". Orlando had thought the latter was too corny for him, but Medress said, "You sing this song and you'll never have to work again."

In 1975, Medress produced Frankie Valli's hit single "Our Day Will Come", and he also produced many albums - Melissa Manchester's Bright Eyes (1974), Olivia Newton-John's The Rumour (1988) and Phoebe Snow's Something Real (1989). Medress was in charge of production on Buster Poindexter (1987), the name being a pseudonym for David Johansen of the New York Dolls.

During the 1990s, Medress was the president of EMI Music Publishing in Canada and he also worked on a series of archive releases from the Bottom Line club in New York. In 1999, the original members of the Tokens were reunited for a television special.

Spencer Leigh