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Clarence Johnstone (2)

American vocalist (b. 1885, d. 1953). Part of the American vocal duo “Layton & Johnstone”, Johnstone, along with Turner Layton, sold ten million records between the years of 1924 and 1935. Layton & Johnstone were one of most successful vocal Duettists in the 1920s and 30s, performing for the British nobility at the most prestigious estates and halls. That was until 1934, when Johnstone was implicated in a scandal involving the wife of Albert Sandler, a Violinist in the Palm Court orchestra, the trial was described as follows: “An appeal by Mr Clarence Nathaniel Johnstone, the coloured variety singer, against an award of £2,500 damages to Mr Albert Sandler, the violinist because of the misconduct of Johnstone and Mrs Sandler was heard in the Court of Appeal. The suit came before the President of the divorce division, Sir Boyd Merriman, and a special jury on March 6 and 7, and Mr Sadler was granted a desree nisi.” Johnstone and Mrs Sandler were then married in December of 1935, a month after the Layton & Johnstone split. After which Johnstone returned to America with the former Mrs Sandler, moving into an apartment in Harlem. He found work as messenger for Western Union, 8 years later his wife left him, causing him to fall into a depression, for the next few years he worked as a janitor, dying in a sanitarium in 1953, aged 68.