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Tony Williams of the Platters & Group - Live in Concert- 2/1/75

Once the golden voice of the original Platters, Samuel "Tony" Williams (1928-1992) suffered from emphysema, chronic alcoholism, and cardiovascular disease in his later years. Despite being in poor health, he continued to travel and perform until shortly before his death. Little film footage of Tony in his final years exists and unfortunately these performances are in stark contrast to the stirring recordings he made less than 20 years earlier. They are presented for historical purposes and within the context of the concert as a whole and understanding Tony’s professional and personal situation at the time. On Saturday evening, February 1, 1975, promoter Drew Cummings of Monsey, New York staged a 20th anniversary of Rock’n’roll concert at the Rockland Community College Field House in Suffern, New York under the Barmann’s Concerts and Productions Inc. banner. The event offered general admission seating and all tickets were priced at $6.75. By comparison, that’s just over $38 in 2024 money. The bill contained six of the most popular and beloved vocal groups from the era: Original lead singer Tony Williams and his Platters group, the Drifters, Skyliners, Five Satins, Coasters, and Johnny Maestro and the Brooklyn Bridge. Television and concert host Clay Cole (1938-2010), a staple on New York’s WPIX and WNTA from 1959 to 1968, was hired to serve as emcee. In addition, the producers arranged to have the concert filmed for syndicated national television broadcast. Two one-hour cuts of the program, “20 Years of Rock & Roll”, were edited, produced, and broadcast on American television in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Most of the acts – primarily in their late 30s and early 40s, gave a fine accounting of themselves for a highly enthusiastic sold-out audience of over 5,000 who were aware the event was being filmed. After leaving the Platters to go solo in 1960, Tony recorded several albums for Reprise and Philips Records. Some songs were excellent, others were mediocre, and sales were light. Eventually he was relegated to re-recording his original hits. During the rock’n’roll revival of the early 1970s, Tony and his wife, Helen Williams (1918-2005), who were living in New York City, organized a touring group. Ernest Wright of Little Anthony and the Imperials, Tony Middleton, formerly of the Willows, and others, including Derek David and George Reese came and went. By 1975, the group consisted of Tony, then 46, his wife, Helen, 56, her son, Nathaniel “Ricky” Shadd Jr., 31, Ricky Black, and bass singer Bob Rivers. Former Platters Paul Robi, Zola Taylor, and Williams were involved in multiple lawsuits regarding use of the Platters name in the early 1970s with the original corporation, Five Platters, Inc. A 1974 judgement canceled Five Platters Inc.’s trademark and prohibited them from challenging Robi’s rights to use the name. For his part, Williams petitioned the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board in the early 1970s to cancel the Five Platters Inc.’s registration of the Platters’ name, but when Tony failed to respond to a motion for a summary judgement, a pre-trial request to try and resolve the litigation, his petition was dismissed. Several years later, Williams was sued by the Corporation, who claimed that in 1967, he had sold all his stock and agreed to refrain from using the group name for $15,000 in compensation. Despite this, his group was billed as Tony Williams and the Platters in various appearances. In this film, his group was erroneously billed as The Platters. Tony's group was chosen to close the show and delivered a set of approximately 30 minutes which, according to reviewer Nancy Cacioppo, “was the only disappointment in an otherwise musically entertaining evening.” The group performed at least “Only You”, “The Great Pretender”, “I’m Sorry”, “Twilight Time”, “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”, and “My Prayer”. With Williams obviously under the influence of alcohol, only “Twilight Time” and “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” were deemed passable enough to be included into one of the film edits and even at that, Tony’s leads, and the group’s harmonies, are off-key and embarrassing. Teddy Williams, known professionally as Ted E. Fame, performed with Tony Williams for the last 10 years of the singer’s life and recalled, “We traveled all over the world, but we never seemed to be invited back to a place we had played before. You could see the excitement and anticipation on the faces of the people in the audience when we came out on stage and then, the disappointment when Tony started singing and they realized he had lost that voice. It was sad. He drank every day and wouldn’t go on stage without drinking.” By the late 1980s, newspaper reviewers didn’t mince words, accusing Williams of taking the stage drunk, but in 1975, Cacioppo gently remarked “because of audio problems or vocal delivery, Tony Williams was, at times, almost inaudible. Most of the crowd dwindled away while they were still on stage.”