They may be forever defined by 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight', their huge universal
hit of 1961, but the enduring influence and importance of The Tokens - who once
featured Neil Sedaka in an early line-up - stretches much further. Before Elvis
and the rock & roll revolution and before The Beatles and the beat boom, the
hottest records around were made by the male vocal groups creating a style known
as doo-wop, which had its beginnings in Afro-American communities in the 1940s.
Having their start as school friends at Abraham Lincoln School in Brooklyn, New
York, The Tokens emerged i...