Esquire Magazine Award, presented to Duke Ellington

This award was presented to Duke Ellington from Esquire magazine in 1947. It features a stylized gold-tone statue of a man playing a trumpet, Esquire magazine’s pop-eyed mascot “Esky,” on a brown-stained wooden base with an embossed and engraved metal plate. The metal plate is marked:

Esquire's
ALL AMERICAN BAND
GOLD AWARD
BAND
AWARDED TO
DUKE ELLINGTON
1947

Esquire is an American men’s magazine founded in 1933. The magazine featured its first jazz awards, All-American Jazz All Stars and All-American Jazz Band, chosen by Esquire’s board of leading jazz artists, critics, and writers, in 1944. The inaugural winners included Billie Holiday, Roy Eldridge, Jack Teagarden, Barney Bigard, Coleman Hawkins, Art Tatum, Al Casey, Oscar Pettiford, and Sidney Catlett.

The “Esky” mascot was created by African American cartoonist E. Simms Campbell (1906-1971).