Dead, Not Forgotten

Few songs are so well known to people of all ages as The Lion Sleeps Tonight by The Tokens. The 1961 hit was sung by Hank Medress. Medress started the musical collaborations that eventually became The Tokens in high school in Brooklyn, New York where his partners included future star Neil Sedaka.

Though The Tokens had a couple of minor hits it is still easy to write them off as “one-hit-wonders.” You could not say that of Hank Medress though. His name may not be well known but his work as a producer is. Among others he produced hits by artists like the Chiffons (”He’s So Fine”), Tony Orlando and Dawn (”Knock Three Times”) and Buster Poindexter (”Hot, Hot, Hot”).

In recent years Hank Medress worked as a consultant for SoundExchange, a nonprofit organization that helps recording artists collect royalties. Ironically, the composer of The Lion Sleeps Tonight died with only $24 in his pocket having earned no royalties after selling his copyright to the song for about $0.87.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight was written in 1939 by Solomon Linda in South Africa. The song became a huge hit in Africa in the 1940s and is believed to be the first African record to sell more than 100,000 copies. Originally named, Mbube, the song springs from Linda’s experiences guarding his family’s animals from predatory lions. The version sung by The Tokens has additional lyrics and utilizes the various changes made to the song as people “interpreted” the original Zulu language words over the years.

Hank Madress died of lung cancer in New York on June 19, 2007 at age 68.

For more information:
Read an interview with Hank Medress shortly before his death
Learn how the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight came to be
Learn about efforts by the family of the original composer to receive back royalities
Here is a fascinating list of recordings of The Lion Sleeps Tonight

Popularity: 15%

I would be surprised if there is even one person of school age in the U.S. that is not familiar with the iconic WWII image of a group of Marines raising a flag on the island of Iwo Jima, Japan. It served to mark a milestone in the war against Japan; gaining the upper hand with the first invasion of Japanese territory, and, it went a long way towards keeping the American people focused on a war that was then years old. The one thing it didn’t do was capture the “real” event.

Charles W. Lindberg was one of the original flag raiser but was not one of the soldiers in the famous photo. (In the photo shown here of the original flag raising, Lindberg is standing in the background on the right.)

Near noon on the morning of Feb. 23, 1945, Lindberg, a Marine flamethrower operator, joined five other members of Easy Company fighting their way to the top of Mount Suribachi.

In an interview with The Associated Press in 2003, Charles W. Lindberg said, “Two of our men found this big, long pipe there. We tied the flag to it, took it to the highest spot we could find and we raised it.

“Down below, the troops started to cheer, the ship’s whistles went off, it was just something that you would never forget,” he said. “It didn’t last too long, because the enemy started coming out of the caves.”

According to Lindberg, his commander, Captain Dave Severance, ordered the first flag replaced and safeguarded out of fear that someone would take it as a souvenir. He had a second larger flag raised about four hours later. It is that raising that is memorialized in the famous photo. Both flags (from the first and second flag raisings) are now located in the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Virginia.

Charles W. Lindberg returned home to North Dakota and eventually became an electrician, but WWII and Iwo Jima were never far from his mind. The image of the second flag raising became so popular that people would not believe that he was one of the people that raised the original flag on Iwo Jima. Even at the Marine memorial that features a statue of the famous image only the names of the participants in the second event were recorded.

Lindberg spent many years speaking to veteran groups and school children to educate them about the first flag raising.

Charles W. Lindberg, a recipient of the Silver Star for bravery, died June 24, 2007 at Fairview Southdale hospital in Edina, Minnesota. He was age 86.

For more information:
See this group of pictures related to the flag raising on Iwo Jima, Japan
Read an eyewitness account as told by Charles Lindberg

Popularity: 22%

I remember hearing the results of a survey years ago that explored why consumers liked McDonald’s fast food restaurants. The biggest reason was that you got the exact same food no matter which location you went to. Edwin Traisman really “supersized” the restaurant’s ability to deliver on that score in 1962 when he discovered a way to reduce moisture in peeled, cleaned and cut potatoes, allowing them to be successfully stored frozen.

His achievement led to many advances for McDonald’s: Traisman’s method improved the consistency, flavor and texture of the fries. Because they could be stored frozen, there was no longer a need for year-round sources of russet potatoes throughout the entire country. It also eliminated the need for each location to clean, peel and cut the potatoes by hand every day, reducing the cost of labor used for french fry prep.

Before McDonald’s, Edwin Traisman worked as a food scientist at Kraft Foods where he contributed to other iconic processed food products like Cheez Whiz and instant pudding.

At the time of his contribution to McDonald’s history he had left his career in favor of buying a McDonald’s franchise in the late 1950’s, proving his uncanny understanding of popular American food trends. He eventually owned five of them in Wisconsin. Traisman also used his restaurants to support public causes: he’d host fund raisers for The Capital Times’ Kids Fund (then the Kiddie Camp) in Madison by earmarking a percentage of a day’s McDonald’s proceeds from all of his locations for the fund. The paper would promote the event, sending families of fast food fans for frozen fries freshly fried the Ed Traisman way.

In 1968 the preparation of McDonald’s fries took another leap when McDonald’s food scientist Ken Strong developed a process involving quick-frying the cut potatoes prior to freezing and a short steam-blanch that preserved the sugars and other flavors of the potato. The combined techniques are called the Traisman-Strong method and make McDonald’s fries what they are today.

After selling his restaurants in the early 1970’s Traisman continued his career in food sciences as a senior research program manager for the Food Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. There, he was instrumental in projects dealing with additives and contamination of meat products. He also served until his death as the editor of the Food Research Institute’s quarterly research report.

Edwin Traisman died of a heart attack June, 5 2007 in Madison Wisconsin at age 91.

For more information:
Excerpt from “Fast Food Nation”

Popularity: 24%

Millions have been eating Cap’n Crunch cereal since its introduction in 1963, but how many of them knew that they had Pamela Low to thank for its sweet taste?

Pamela Low conducted her career at the crossroads of industrial food processing and contracted technology services. As more and more of our foods were being processed by large companies in large quantities, there arose a need for scientists who could find ways to overcome the inherent loss of flavor in these products.

Pamela was one of these people, a flavorist. Wikipedia says, “A flavorist, also known as flavor chemist, is someone who uses both chemistry and art to engineer artificial and natural flavors.”

Her degree in microbiology might have given her technical background but in the case of the Cap’n Crunch coating, her inspiration was her Grandmother. Pamela Low based the coating on the sauce of a recipe that her grandmother, Luella Low, made for Sunday dinners at their Derry, New Hampshire home, consisting of rice with a butter-and-brown sugar sauce.

Pamela Low developed the now-famous coating while working for Boston’s Arthur D. Little consulting firm, which pioneered the concept of contracted technology research. In addition to flavoring products, the company played key roles in the development of operations research, the word processor, the first synthetic penicillin, and NASDAQ.

During her three decades at Arthur D. Little, Low was also involved in flavoring snacks such as Almond Joy and Mounds candy bars.

Pamela Low died June 1, 2007 at New London Hospital in New Hampshire. She was age 79.

For more information:
Read this article about flavorists
Review these technical articles for flavorists

Popularity: 31%