Toney Awards

President and Mrs Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson, His Excellency The President of Liberia and Mrs Tubman, Duke Ellington

A recent interesting item for sale on eBay confirms the spelling of the first name of vocalist (to use an antique term) Toney Watkins who was a fixture of the personnel of the late period of the Duke Ellington Orchestra. His name was often spelled 'Tony' even here on the programme for a concert given at The White House on 27 March, 1968. There is signatory evidence to the contrary, however, since this particular document had been autographed by Watkins himself, as the photographs show.

Here is a screen shot from the ever-reliable Duke Where and When website, with information about the White House concert...

The reception was held in honour of the President of Liberia, William Tubman and the music was played by the Duke Ellington Octet. I should certainly like to hear those selections from Liberian Suite played with that instrumentation. It is unlikely any recording was made of the event.

There is a fascinating link on the Where and When website to an article about the reception  entitled Jeff Castleman: Bass Player and Lone Survivor. The colour photograph which headlines this post is taken from that source.

Here are the photographs of the programme for the concert...

Date with the Duke

Recently listed on eBay, this inscribed powder compact... 

The vendor describes the item as follows:

"Guaranteed legitimate Duke Ellington signature. My mother was born in 1921 went to a show that featured Duke Ellington. She had him sign the powder puff from her compact. She kept this all her life, but gave it to me shortly before she died in 2015. I am going to guess that this was probably signed around 1940. Could be shortly before or shortly after. It was signed in Evansville Indiana but I don’t know at what venue. It has been stored out of the sunlight and separate from the compact. There are still powder in the compact."

I don't know about Ellington's appearance in Evansville around 1940. Numerous broadcast performances from 1945 survive, however, from the Treasury series... "your Saturday Date with the Duke."

It isn't beyond the bounds of possibility that the owner of that compact was in the audience for the recording of one of the shows and one could hear today, in the words of the poet, her hands "tiny in all that air applauding..." 

And on the subject of Date with Duke, to round out this reminiscence, here is the George Pal 'puppetoon' of that title from 1947, Duke and the orchestra playing, appropriately enough, selections from The Perfume Suite...

Date with Duke - 1947 from Clint on Vimeo.