Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

The home of music journalist Nicholas Jennings, author of Lightfoot, the definitive new Gordon Lightfoot biography from Penguin Random House.

The Lion Sleepwalks Tonight

Some songs live forever. Infused with musical elixir, they transcend time and space and even their original language. The Gipsy Kings, for instance, do Sinatra's signature tune "My Way" their way. And the raunchy Latino standard "La Bamba" has been sanctified by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, no less. For all we know, Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode," now hurtling somewhere out in space aboard the Voyager II, will become a hit on Neptune when it reaches the planet sometime in the next millennium. So how to explain the longevity of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," which made Brooklyn's The Tokens a one-hit wonder in the '60s? Despite its trite lyrics ("In the jungle, the mighty jungle," etc.) the song...

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