What kind of music was played at the Cotton Club?
jazz and blues
Weekly radio broadcasts spread the fame of the club and its musicians to a national audience. Among the many seminal figures of jazz and blues who performed at the Cotton Club, bandleader Duke Ellington was perhaps the most closely associated with the venue.
Who performed at Cotton Club?
The Cotton Club was Harlem’s premier nightclub in the 1920s and 1930s. The club featured many of the greatest African American entertainers of the era, including Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday, and Ethel Waters.
Who composed music for the floor shows at the famous Cotton Club?
It was 1927; the same year Duke Ellington made his Cotton Club debut that the 23-year-old, fledgling lyricist Dorothy Fields began collaborating with composer Jimmy McHugh on songs for Cotton Club floorshows.
What did Duke Ellington do at the Cotton Club?
In late 1927, the Cotton Club began broadcasting through radio, providing Duke Ellington with the opportunity of being the first black band leader to have nationwide reach, in turn catapulting him to a new level of fame.
Why is it called Cotton Club?
Owney Madden, who bought the club from heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson, intended the name Cotton Club to appeal to whites, the only clientele permitted until 1928. The club made its name by featuring top-level black performers and an upscale, downtown audience.
Why did they call it the Cotton Club?
What happened at the Cotton Club?
The Cotton Club was a whites-only establishment with rare exceptions for black celebrities such as Ethel Waters and Bill Robinson. It reproduced the racist imagery of the era, often depicting black people as savages in exotic jungles or as “darkies” in the plantation South.
Does the Cotton Club still exist?
The Cotton Club closed permanently in 1940 under pressure from higher rents, changing taste, 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 build a hotel.
Where is the Cotton Club today?
The current Cotton Club is at the gateway to Sugar Hill, way on the west side of 125th Street. Set up largely for groups and rented out for private parties, they do bring back the heyday of the Harlem swing tradition with a full size big band and vocalists.
Was the Cotton Club a speakeasy?
In 1920, Jack Johnson, the world’s first African-American heavyweight boxing champion, opened a club on 125th Street in Harlem. This club (Club De Luxe) would become one of the most infamous speakeasies of the Prohibition era.
Why did the Cotton Club close?