Posted on 05/27/2024 1:14:54 PM PDT by Twotone
Every generation has a sleeping lion just waiting to wake and roar up the charts. In the early Eighties "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" got to Number One in Britain for Tight Fit. Can't quite place Tight Fit? It sounds like a vaguely parodic name for a boy band, but in fact they were a coed combo - one boy, two girls, a male model and two female dancers, hired as a photogenic front after the record had already been made. The girls had failed to make the cut at an audition for the more successfully contrived group, Bucks Fizz, and were shortly booted out of Tight Fit, too. But for a few weeks in 1982 on the BBC's "Top Of The Pops" they did well enough moving about in synchronized "Wimowehs" while the male model mouthed to a vocal track actually sung by a guy from the band City Boy:
The bottom inevitably drops out of the Tight Fits of the music biz, but "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" roars on regardless. It's one of the biggest songs ever about a lion, apart from the Oscar-winning "Born Free" and the Eagles' "You can't hide those lion eyes". "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" has been a hit in every medium - on movie screens all over the world, in Disney's The Lion King, and then on Broadway, in the stage version. Before Tight Fit, it was a Billboard Number Three for Robert John in the Seventies, a Number One for the Tokens in the Sixties; under the title "Wimoweh", it was a hit for the Weavers in the Fifties, and in the Forties, as "Mbube"... Ah, but that's where the story gets murkier.
Who wrote those words about the mighty jungle? It was a guy called George Weiss...
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
The article shows the 1982 video from Tight Fit! I just laughed! Such a video could never be made today! I am glad I was in college in 1982 instead of today!
The article shows the 1982 video from Tight Fit! I just laughed! Such a video could never be made today! I am glad I was in college in 1982 instead of today!
Great stuff!
Does anyone remember John Boy and Billy radio show and the song “The Bobbit Sleeps Tonight”?
That lions not asleep, his eyes are open! Hilarious video, got to be the most ridiculous one I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying something!
Amazing how many times that song has been recorded since 1939
“Lion Eyes”! LOL. Did he really say that?
Remember 500 miles?
Thanks for posting.
Great story! Thanks for posting.
I’m never sorry I read a Mark Stein article.
No,but I have searched for the song, ‘Run, Bambi, run’ for years. Bambi
Bembenek that is.
Anybody know of that one I’d love a link.
Anyone remember “Wonder Where the Lions Are” by Bruce https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6Lpx6JIMmk
I always kinda’ liked the song, it’s catchy with a good hook. But that video is garbage.
Eh? It isn't "Ain't No Woman Like the One-Eyed Goth"?
Aweem Awep.
Classic Steyn play on words. I wish I were 10% the wordsmith he is.
CA....
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