The Other Cotton Club Orchestra

supplement to

The Duke – Where and When
A Chronicle of Duke Ellington's Working Life and Travels

Newspaper ads, announcements and reports in 1928 from various locations outside New York named the Cotton Club Orchestra, the Original Cotton Club Orchestra, and the New York Cotton Club Orchestra.

These clearly weren't Ellington's orchestra at the Cotton Club, so who were they?

In replying to my September 2018 question in Duke-LYM, Remco Plas suggested the group might have been the orchestra Ellington's band replaced when it started at the Cotton Club.

Further research confirms this to be so:

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The house band at the Cotton Club in New York from 1924 until 1927 was Andy Preer's Cotton Club Orchestra, later known as The Missourians.

After Preer died in March 1927, his band stayed on until it was replaced on December 4, when the Cotton Club, first having offered the job to King Oliver, hired Ellington and his orchestra.

The remnants of Preer's band toured in an Earl Dancer revue starring Ethel Waters, and then teamed up with a song and dance team on the vaudeville circuit.

Billed and referred to as the Original Cotton Club Orchestra, Cotton Club Orchestra and New York Cotton Club Orchestra, this band eventually returned to New York, taking up residency at the Savoy Ballroom and subbing for the Ellington orchestra at the Cotton Club during the summer of 1930. Cab Calloway was made its leader, and it once more became the house band at the Cotton Club when Ellington took his band on the road February 1931.

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• Tampa Bay Times, St. Petersburg, Fla. 1928-02-05:

  'The Cotton Club Orchestra which has been furnishing dance music at Tampa for the past few weeks has been engaged for the Whippet Club, on Gandy boulevard, at Rio Vista, starting Sunday night at one minute after twelve...This new novelty orchestra of colored musicians together with other added entertainment will be featured at the nightly parties.'

• It appears the band returned to New York for a short while. The New York Age, 1928-01-28 p.10:

  'The Metro Club will give their matinee soiree, Washington's Birthday, Wednesday, February 22, at the Manhattan Casino, 155th street and Eighth avenue.
    Dance music will be furnished by two orchestras, Duke Ellington and his Little Ellingtons and the Original Cotton Club Orchestra.'

  This can only have been the former Preer band.
• They then joined the touring company of the Earl Dancer revue, "Africana," starring Ethel Waters, and were billed as the Original Cotton Club Orchestra although one article called them Earl Dancer's Cotton Club Orchestra.
• The Columbus Dispatch, Columbus, Ohio 1928-03-01 p.24:

  'Walter Richardson, baritone, the Africana Cotton club orchestra, and the Africana quartet will broadcast from WAIU Thursday at 6:30 p.m. They are part of the colored revue "Africana," playing at the Hartman theater. The orchestra stars a girl trumpeter... '

  The presence of a female trumpeter suggests Preer's orchestra was not yet part of the show.
• Chicago Tribune, Chicago, Ill. 1928-04-01 pt. 7 p.3:

  '"Africana" with Miss Ethel Waters, in the Adelphi: a Negro show....Fourth and final week.'

• Chicago Tribune ads from March 5 to April 12 show the revue played there from March 11 to April 7. "N. Y. Cotton Club Orchestra" is only mentioned in the April 1 ad, so that may have been when the crew joined the troupe.
• The Kansas City Times, Kansas City, Mo. 1928-04-10 p.2:

  'Eight members of the Cotton Club orchestra, the "hot" jazz band in the pit and on the stage in "Africana," the Negro revue at the Shubert the-[sic] after this week, are from Kansas City and the Cotton Clubbers gained fame in New York as a Kansas City organization. Larmar Wright, formerly with Benny Moten's Victor recording orchestra here, plays the "hot" trumpet with the "Africana" orchestra. Other Kansas City men include Archie Dickerson, DePriest Wheeler, Leroy Maxey, Charles Stamp, George Scott, Walter Thomas and E. J. Brown. The other six musicians in the orchestra are from St. Louis.'/p>

• The Milwaukee Journal, Milwaukee, Wisc., 1928-04-15 p.VI-11 and 1928-04-22 p.5 has Africana opening at the Davidson for a week. The ad and plug describe it as Ethel Waters and a company of 60, saying New York's original Cotton Club orchestra kept four pianos going on and off the stage, furnishing the music for the revue.
• The St. Louis Star and Times, St. Louis, Mo., 1928-05-03 p.1:

  'The Cotton Club Boys" band in the all-negro revue, "Africana," showing this week in the Shubert-Rialto, tonight will resume the picking of instruments... and the show - dark last night when the bandsmen struck - will be resumed, it was said today. The orchestra struck yesterday after demanding pay for the rest of this week in advance and being refused by Earl Dancer, manager of the show. It was not disclosed how the differences were settled.'

• The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis, Mo. reported 1928-05-03 p.3 quoted Earl Dancer:

  '"Oh boy," when that curtain rang down last night it was just like I had shot an ace-deuce for $56,000. That's what this band is going to cost me. We've had one tough break after another on the road since Easter.
    We had such a touch time in Milwaukee last week that when we got here I decided this would be our last week. Ethel Waters and I were going on the Orpheum Circuit after this week. We planned to take about 40 members of the :Africana" company with us. But I was indiscreet. I let the news get out and the orchestra boys wanted to know if I was going to take them, too. I couldn't afford to take more than eight, so the other five raised a rowl. They all belong to the union and they insisted I must take all 13. Thirteen is an unlucky number, anyway, so I decided we couldn't afford any more hard luck. I refused to carry more than eight and they demanded their money before it was due. When I wouldn't pay, they wouldn't play.
    "Africana," which has had fairly good reviews during its 46 weeks tour of the country, charged a top price of $3.30 and reserved the first floor for white patrons. Negro playgoers resented the discrimination, it is said, and white patrons found the show a little rough, so between the two the "Box Office Blues" developed.
    James Smith, manager of the orchestra, said he was advised by a member of the local Musicians' Union not to play after Dancer refused to advance his men $250 of the $1300 Smith claims would have been due them at the end of the week. The management of the Shubert-Rialto announced it had tried unsuccessfully to effect a compromise.
    Producer Dancer, after a talk to the boys today, was confident the show would reopen tonight, barring unforeseen developments. The orchestra's most popular piece in the show is "Smiles." '

• The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported 1928-05-04 on p.27 that the revue failed to show May 3 for the second successive performance, and at 9 o'clock the audience of 600 was told the performance was off and the St. Louis engagement was cancelled. The paper said the review would open the next week at a vaudeville theatre in Milwaukee in a condensed form.
• A smaller version of the revue appeared from May 6 to 12 at the Palace in Milwaukee, according to ads and a review in the Milwaukee Journal from May 4 to 12. The May 8 review said

  'Almost the entire cast of 56, including the negro orchestra, helps Ethel Waters to present the cutdown version of her black musical show. If anything, it is better at the Palace than it was at length because there is less of it. An hour of the good dancing and fair singing is about right. Three hours were too much, at least it was too much for this writer... '

• Chicago Daily Tribune, Chicago, Ill., 1928-05-11 p.37 announced Ethel Waters was released from her tasks in "Africana" and would appear the next week at the Palace.
• In June, the Philadelphia Inquirer carried daily ads for Ethel Waters in "Africana," beginning June 11, so it seems the show was revived without the former Cotton Club orchestra. The June 9 ad in the Pittsburgh Courier named the orchestra as African Symphony Orchestra and on June 16, the Africana Symphony Orchestra. The show, described as the 1928 edition of "Africana," wound up with a week at the Lafayette Theatre in New York but had problems on opening night a railcar of sets and costumes was misdirected to New Jersey and Miss Waters had a stomach ailment an hour before curtain time. The show did open, however, with Bill Robinson explaining the delay to the capacity audience.
• While Wikipedia says The Missourians toured with Ethel Waters, The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, Milwaukee, April 20, and the St. Louis Star and Times, April 28, have them as Ethel Waters and "The Original Cotton Club Orchestra" in "Africana."
• Syracuse Herald-Journal, 1984-11-18, pp.D-1, D-4, quotes reedman George Scott:

  'I hadn't joined the original orchestra when the Cotton Club opened. That band came from the west-Robinson's Syncopators. I don't know the date that they started at the Cotton Club...I had played with the leader of Robinson's Syncopators while I was on the road. His name was Andrew Preer.
    When he came to New York and found me playing in the Lafayette pit orchestra, it was like old home week. He asked me to join his group. This was in September of 1925. As far as I know, that was the first band at the Cotton Club. Of course, they changed their name to "The Original Cotton Club Orchestra.
    Duke Ellington replaced us either the fourth or fifth of December, 1927...We went out on the road. But naturally, leaving the Cotton Club, we had to drop that name because Duke inherited it. Our road band went out with Ethel Waters, who had a big show-fify, sixty people-called "Africana," and we traveled all over the old Loew's Poli Circuit.
    After the show broke up in St. Louis, Jimmie Smith, the band's bass player, hooked us up with a song-and-dance act named Brown and McGraw. They were a real hot team, too!...
    In 1929, Calloway was an entertainer, not a bandleader. The manager of the Savoy saw in The Missourians (our band's name at [the] time) and in Cab a combination that put together, would make something great.
    I left the band in 1929, when I heard that we were going to be under Cab Calloway, that we would lose our identity. The nucleus of "The Missourians: stayed on, however, and became the band that the world knows as Cab Calloway's band... '

• In the late summer of 1928, a vaudeville act, Brown and McGraw, with the "Cotton Club Orchestra," appeared in advertisements and plugs in Michigan and northern New York.
• The Times, Hammond, Ind. 1928-08-04 p.8 has an ad that bills The N.Y. Cotton Club Orchestra with Herb Brown and Naomi McGraw at the Palace theatre in Gary, Indiana, about 10 miles away. The accompanying publicity says the band had 11 talented musicians. Nearby, The Times, Muncie, Ind. 1928-08-04 p.8 announced the Gary date.
• Davenport Democrat and Leader, Davenport, Iowa 1928 08 30 p.3 plug for Brown & McGraw, the Cotton Club orchestra, and other acts announced for the Capitol Theater, described CCO as 11 talented melody makers.
• Rockford Republic, Rockford, Ill., 1928-09-04 p.5:

  'The Cotton club orchestra...is the headliner of the current bill. The act is illuminated with the dance steps of Brown and McGraw. Picture a scheduled 22-minute act of this type, skilled musicians offering smouldering tunes and a pair of clever dancers. The audiences Sunday and yesterday went wild with joy and the troupe offered numerous encores. This one act alone is worth the price of admission.'

  Page 18 shows this was the troupe's last night in Rockford.
• The Rockford Morning Star, Rockford, Ill., 1928-09-04 p.3:

  'Cotton Club Group Headline New Bill at Palace Theater
    Syncopation as only the negro race can play it warms up the new show at the Palace theater. The players, whose antics and hot melodies are a popular feature, are the Cotton Club orchestra. They have little specialties which catch hold solidly, one a camp meeting travesty that is very smartly done. There is no time when the band is not in action and no time when it is not going at a dizzy pace after the opening number...'

• Ads for The New Orpheum, Orpheum Circuit Vaudeville in the Wisconsin State Journal, Madison, Wisc. 1928-09-05, 1928-09-06, 1928-09-07 p.11 and 1928-09-08 show Herbert Brown & McGraw Naomi with the Cotton Club Orchestra of 12.
• The Sioux City Journal, Sioux City, Iowa 1928 09 12's ad for The New Orpheum, Sioux City's Amusement Center, says Brown & McGraw with the Cotton Club Orchestra "starts tomorrow."
• The Evansville Courier, Evansville, Ind. 1928 09 19 p.14 has Brown & McGraw and Cotton Club Orchestra and others opening the next day at New Grand Theatre (Keith Orpheum Vaudeville).
• The Saturday Spectator, Terre Haute, Indiana, 1928-09-22 p.20 carries an ad and a plug for Herbert Brown and McGraw Naomi with the Cotton Club Orchestra in New Rythm at Keith-Albee's Indiana theatre.
• The orchestra appeared in Lansing, Mich. Oct. 3, where The Lansing State Journal 1928-10-03 p.15 described it as

  '...11 musicians whose performance is said to be graced with speed, artistry and charm.

• Detroit Times, Detroit, Mich. 1928-11-11 pt.3 p.9 - plug for the show that opened that day at the Oriental for a week:

  '...Something different in the way of orchestration and dance steps is featured in the headline Keith act which comes Sunday. Herbert Brown and Naomi Brown, originator of many dance steps are at the head of this revue which includes the Cotton Club orchestra...'

• Syracuse Herald, 1928-11-25 p.2, 1928-11-26 p.15, 1926-11-27 p.17,1926-11-28 p.11: When it appeared in Syracuse, N.Y. the week of Nov. 25, the Syracuse Herald, 1928-11-26 p.15 mentioned it:

  '...The 'Camp Meeting' musical satire and the 'New Rhythm' number of the Cotton Club Orchestra's repertoire. And if you have a penchant for African stepping you should like the work of Herbert Brown and Naomi McGraw, featured with the jazzologists... '

• Wikipedia tells us the band returned to New York in 1928 as The Missourians, taking up residency in the Savoy Ballroom where Cab Calloway led them intermittently in 1929 and in 1930 would lead them as Cab Calloway and His Orchestra. They would sub for Ellington's orchestra at the Cotton Club from June to September 1930, then go on tour, returning to the Cotton Club to replace Ellington's orchestra when it left in February 1931.
• Full Circle!