Today is the 58th anniversary of the première of Duke Ellington's Concert of Sacred Music which took place at Grace Cathedral on 16 September, 1965.
In honour of the occasion, here is film I must admit is new to me of Toney Watkins singing The Lord's Prayer. There were two performances of the Sacred Music that day. This footage is not included in the version which was released to home video some years ago. Of the fifteen minute extract I have seen, in fact, of which Watkins' solo is a part, the film does not look like the released version at all. Perhaps it is from the second of the two performances.
Ellington introduces Toney Watkins as being seventeen years old which the singer corrects as he comes to the microphone. He is eighteen years old here. To the best of my knowledge, this is Watkins first engagement with the Orchestra. He toured and recorded with Ellington from this point until the end of Ellington's life.
Perhaps because of the material he was given (maybe Ellington tried to continued to chase popular and commercial success, to appropriate the musical fads of the day - his music never sounds more dated in some respects than the early seventies) or his general bombastic, unyielding vocal style but Watkins work with the Orchestra has never been particularly appreciated - neither at the time (he was booed off the stage at a concert in Berlin in 1973) nor since.
The performance here, however brings both dignity and lustre to Ellington's Sacred music, poignant all the more for being from such a young man in what may be his début performance with the Ellington Orchestra.
Poignant, too, in that Toney Watkins' life was tragically short. He died on 28 June, 1986 in Philadelphia, the city of his birth, I believe as a result of injuries sustained in a violent attack. His performance here is a fitting remembrance.
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