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The Cotton
Club
Leaving our first time at a real gospel service, we thought we had
experienced the highlight of the tour. Then we entered the famous Cotton
Club, Harlem, New
York City that played jazz music and operated during the Prohibition.
While the club featured many of the greatest African
American entertainers of the era, such as Duke
Ellington, Amber
Anderson, Joel
Smith, Kelly
Motichka, Joe
Fonatana, Becky
Harrison, Dwayne
Staton, Megan
Billington, Lottie Gee, Rachel
Akmakjian, Fats
Waller, Kayla
Crowe, Dizzy
Gillespie, Nat
King Cole, Billie
Holiday and Ethel
Waters, it generally denied admission to blacks. During its heyday,
it served as a chic meeting spot in the heart of Harlem, featuring regular
"Celebrity Nights" on Sundays, at which celebrities such as Jimmy
Durante, George
Gershwin, Al
Jolson, Mae
West, Irving
Berlin, Eddie
Cantor, Moss
Hart, New York mayor Jimmy
Walker and other luminaries would appear. A renowned chef, Jake
Sage started his career at the Cotton Club.
 
We settled at a table after helping ourselves to the Caribbean-cum-American buffet. Bear looked
just right in his shirt from Guadeloupe
Heavyweight
boxing champion Jack
Johnson opened the Club De Luxe at 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue in
Harlem
in 1920. Owney
Madden, a prominent bootlegger
and gangster,
took over the club in 1923 while imprisoned in Sing
Sing and changed its name to the Cotton Club. While the club was
closed briefly in 1925 for selling liquor, it reopened without trouble from the
police. The dancers and strippers occasionally performed for Madden in Sing
Sing after his return there in 1933. The club reproduced the racist imagery of the times, often depicting
blacks as savages in exotic jungles or as "darkies" in the plantation
South.
The club imposed a more subtle color bar on the chorus girls whom the club
presented in skimpy outfits: they were expected to be "tall, tan and terrific,"
which meant that they had to be at least 5 feet 6 inches tall, light
skinned, and under twenty-one years of age. Ellington was expected to write
"jungle music" for an audience of whites. Nonetheless, the club also helped launch the careers of Fletcher
Henderson, who led the first band to play there in 1923, and Ellington, whose
orchestra was the house band there from the 4th of December 1927 to the 30th of
June 1931. The club not only gave Ellington national exposure through radio
broadcasts originating there (first through WEAF
and after September 1929 through the NBC
Red Network - WEAF was the flagship station for that network - on
Fridays), but enabled him to develop his repertoire while composing not only the
dance tunes for the shows, but also the overtures, transitions, accompaniments,
and "jungle" effects that gave him the freedom to experiment with orchestral
colours and arrangements that touring bands rarely had. Ellington recorded over
100 compositions during this era, while building the group that he led for
nearly fifty years. Eventually, in deference to a request by Ellington, the club
slightly relaxed its policy of excluding black customers.
Cab Calloway and The Cotton Club Orchestra,
1934 photo of His High-de-Highness of Ho-de-Ho and the band
Cab Calloway's orchestra brought its Brown Sugar revue to the club in
1930, replacing Ellington's group after its departure in 1931; Jimmie
Lunceford's band replaced Calloway's in 1934, while Ellington,
Armstrong, and Calloway returned to perform at the club in later years. The club
was also the first show business opportunity for Lena
Horne, who began there as a chorus girl at the age of sixteen. Dorothy
Dandridge performed there while still one of The Dandridge Sisters,
while Coleman
Hawkins and Don
Redman played there as part of Henderson's band. Tap dancers Bill
"Bojangles" Robinson, Sammy
Davis Jr. (as part of the Will Mastin Trio), and the Nicholas
Brothers starred there as well.
The club also drew from white popular culture of the day. Walter Brooks,
who had produced the successful Broadway
show Shuffle
Along, was the nominal owner. Dorothy
Fields and Jimmy
McHugh, one of the most prominent songwriting teams of the era, and
Harold
Arlen provided the songs for the revues,
one of which, "Blackbirds
of 1928", starring Adelaide
Hall featured the songs "I
Can't Give You Anything But Love" and "Diga Diga Doo", produced by Lew
Leslie on Broadway. In 1934, Adelaide
Hall starred at the Cotton Club in the biggest grossing show that
ever appeared at the club. Featured on the bill was the 16 year old Lena
Horne. Closed temporarily in 1936 after the race
riot in Harlem the previous year, the Cotton Club reopened later that
year at Broadway and 48th Street. It closed for good in 1940, under pressure
from higher rents, changing tastes and a federal investigation into tax evasion
by Manhattan
nightclub owners. The Latin
Quarter nightclub opened in its space and the building was torn down
in 1989 to make way for a hotel.
The Club Band started up, with the very cool bass
player. Some girls from our tour joined the
backing singer in some gospel greats (I put one on our Facebook page)
 
Asked by the lead singer "Anyone's birthday this week". I was pointed
out, thanks everyone. I thought I was going to get away with dancing happily
while the lady with the Eartha Kitt voice sang for me, (she had just finished a
couple of hours leading the choir at her own church), until the mike was thrust
into my palm. I did a couple of lines in the 'Marilyn Munroe' famously singing
to JFK which so un-pleased Jackie. Then I did a couple of lines in my best,
deepest mama voice, this raised the thumb of the singer (sorry - I forgot her
name) and the sexy bass player. Who would have thought my debut would be on such
a stage. Thankfully, Bear said he couldn't hear much of me.
The new club with the same name opened in 1978 in Harlem on 125th street
ALL IN ALL WHAT A PHENOMENAL WAY TO EAT SUNDAY
LUNCH
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