Canada is not for sale.
We will never be your
51st state, Mr. Trump.
https://Ellingtonweb.Ca
Ellington on CD
The Dooji Collection
(Ellington record labels)
TDWAW
home page
Cotton Club |
This webpage was created and is maintained by David Palmquist Uploaded 2025-06-30 Last updated 2025-07-06 |
|
Preliminary comment:
This supplementary webpage began simply as research to date a photo of the first Cotton Club exterior provided by Steven Lasker, but it grew from there. My unsuccessful research turned up an appalling amount of misinformation in books, articles and websites about Cotton Club that needs to be addressed. This view appears to have been shared by University of Washington PhD Malcolm Womack in the first chapter of his 2013 dissertation about its history, in which he describes the competing narratives. Some of those errors will be evident here; I hope I have been able to correct many, but this document may well contain mistakes and major omissions as well. A list of my sources is at the bottom of this |
webpage. I did not read all of them in their entirety due to time constraints and repetition;
instead in many cases I relied on digital searches of those that were available online, and
with hard copy, I generally relied on the index or table of contents to find relevant material.
If you find anything you feel needs to be added or corrected, please email me at davidpalmquist@telus.net. As noted, my correspondence with Steven led to the creation of this webpage. I've drawn from his booklets "A Cotton Club Miscellany" and "The Washingtonians: A Miscellany." I am grateful not only for his ongoing contributions and assistance, but also that he introduced me to Jean-François Pitet and Keller Whalen , both of whom have been incredibly supportive. |
Mr. Whalen's fascinating collections "The Cotton Club Programs, Sheet Music & Advertising" are presented
with his permission here:
Mr. Pitet's Hi De Ho blog, dedicated to Cab Calloway, has a tremendous amount of information about the Cotton Club. For those who don't read French, each page can be translated to English easily with GoogleTranslate. I have also drawn revue information from Pitet and Whalen's generously shared "1932 Cab Calloway Day-by-Day" and Mr. Whalen's other research. |
... It quickly became apparent to entrepreneurs in the Harlem area that here was a need to be filled, so clubs began to open expressly to cater to whites from downtown ... The change happened very fast: ... by 1925 or so, according to police estimates, there were eleven "white trade" clubs in Harlem. Many ... had been opened by blacks, but by the middle of the decade, the gangsters were pushing in and had taken control, although they might permit blacks to continue to manage the clubs. "In a very short time, the big-time mobsters were in control of the Cotton Club, Connie's' and most of the other spots," said the nightclub columnist Robert Sylvester. [Robert Sylvester, No Cover Charge, Dial Press, New York, 1956] Police Commissioner Grover Whalen said flatly, "Gangdom is in control of the night clubs." [ibid.]
Of all of them, the most famous was – and is – the Cotton Club ...
Cotton Club, Harlem, Bars Colored Couple Accompanied By White Friends Giving Police Orders As The Reason.
Negro Manager, When Called, Confirmed Doorman's Action, Then Invited The White Couple To Enter The
Club.
The Cotton Club...does not cater to colored patrons and will not admit them when they
come in mixed parties.
These unpleasant fact [sic] were discovered recently by Mrs. Geraldine Dismond ... and
by James G. Cotter an Assistant U.S. Attorney, with headquarters in Chicago. Mr. Cotter is visiting in
New York and Sunday night he made up a party for a visit to the Cotton Club.
Mrs. Dismond was his companion, and with them was a prominent Jewish furrier and his
wife, both acquaintances of Mr. Cotter When they arrived at the cabaret, the doorman refused admittance
to the colored couple, saying he had orders not to admit mixed couples. When Attorney Cotter insisted
on entering the place, the doorman secured the manager, Kid Griffin, a former prize fighter, who confirmed
the statements already given.
The manager said that the cabaret had been warned by the police Department against
admitting mixed couples. When it was pointed out to him that the couples were not mixed but that it
was merely a mixed party Griffin insisted it amounted to the same thing. He invited the Jewish couple in,
but they refused to leave their colored friends.
Mrs. Dismond and Attorney Cotter were indignant at the humiliation given them and have
consulted legal [authorities] as to whether some penalty [cannot] be secured from the club for this
form of discrimination.
The Cotton Club has been operating in Harlem for the past five years and while it has
always employed a colored orchestra and has a colored revue, it has never catered to colored patrons. It
was formerly owned by Bernard Levy, well known as a bootlegger and "numbers" bankers.{sic}
Negroes were barred from the Cotton Club, the widely advertised 'Aristocrat of Harlem.' A pair of massive doormen stood at the entrance to reinforce the rule. On one occasion W. C. Handy, accompanied by Gene Buck of A.S.C.A.P., was barred admittance — this in spite of the fact that his music was the feature of the show. While few were wealthy enough to pay the club’s exorbitant cover charge, Negroes still resented the restrictions; nor were they taken in by the distribution of Christmas baskets by the Cotton Club owners. But the theatrical people aspired to appear there. For one thing, the club was famous for its high-yaller chorus; and so lucrative was it as a source of income that white girls often passed as light-complexioned Negroes to procure employment. It was here, too, that Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway made reputations as orchestra leaders.
... the Cotton Club, which was the most popular club in Harlem among whites. Except for celebrities, who could have their own table occasionally, blacks were not allowed as patrons in the Cotton Club.
In the early days of the Cotton club some blacks were allowed in, those that were rich people. It was nearly all whites because the prices really kept most of the black people away. The prices were real steep and most blacks couldn't afford them. I used to notice that our type of music wasn't really for black people; most everything we played was for whites...
... all those who were involved in production, staging, choreography, set and costume design were talented whites, and all those who performed were talented blacks.
It was Owney Madden's policy in the early years of the club to hire all his staff from Chicago - cooks, waiters, busboys - on the grounds that staff from Chicago were unlikely to hold any allegiances to gangs in New York who might prove unfriendly.
The Cotton Club ... opened in 1922 [sic]. From the beginning, its owner, Bernard Levy, imposed a strict policy of whites only, despite loud protests from the black Harlem community. He used Negro orchestras and a Negro revue and ran the club as a tourist attraction for society people who wanted to see a little of Harlem life ... When Ellington opened there, management posted guards at the doors to restrict admission to white patrons.
We knew we were being paid by the mob, but we never really got that close to them. On Saturday evening Elida Webb, the show's choreographer and manager, came backstage with a wicker tray stacked with brown envelopes, one for each artist, containing that week's wages in cash. After Sunday night's show we'd then be off until the following Tuesday evening when the next week's run commenced.
Sunday night in the Cotton Club was the night. All the big New York stars in town, no matter where they were playing, showed up at the Cotton Club to take bows. Dan Healy was the man who staged the shows in our time, and on Sunday night he was the m.c. who introduced the stars. Somebody like Sophie Tucker would stand up, and we'd play her song, "Some of These Days" as she made her way up the floor for a bow. It was all done in pretty grand style.
The Cotton Club, to begin with, was a place that commanded more respect from everybody than any place I've ever heard of. For instance, if somebody was performing on the stage, no matter whether it was the star or a secondary supporting artist, they demanded absolutely [sic] silence, and if you....started talking while somebody was singing a song, the first thing, the waiter would come over, and [whisper] "Madam, (or whoever it is) will you please be quiet," and then the captain would come over, and then the head waiter would come over, and then the next time, that cat would be, you know, beckoning for you to come on out, and out you went...There's never been anyplace like the Cotton Club before. On Sunday night, every celebrity in New York City was in the Cotton Club....to take his bow.
Beginning tomorrow the Cotton Club will close on Sundays, thus giving all employees one day off a week.
At 142nd street and Lenox avenue was a new and beautiful ballroom, the Douglass [sic] Casino... This place did not succeed in attracting any business from the Renaissance Casino and was finally closed up to be reopened again by Jack Johnson ... it in turn lived a short life. In this same spot stands today the Cotton Club... The Cotton Club, situated in Harlem, is really a Broadway spot with a Harlem location catering to the wealthy. Although there is no ostracism by the management of the place directly, the prices eliminate the poorer classes, both white and colored. The management of this place is considerate to the poor residents of Harlem and yearly distributes Christmas baskets to them.
Jeff Blunt's was the breakfast dance place, 143rd and Lenox, next to the Cotton Club.
The street-level entrance to the second floor of the New Douglas building was mid-block, the nothernmost Lenox Avenue door of the theatre building. Immediately to the north was the railing for a staircase to a basement in the second building whose storefront was a tire and battery store. At 1':40" of a YouTube history of Cotton Club the narrator says the entertainers went next door to 646 Lenox, "the basement of the superintendant." This may or may not be true; the video has mistakes and misleading footage, and cannot be considered to be reliable.According to George Hoefer, the building at the northeast corner of 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue that housed the Cotton Club was built in about 1918 as the Douglas Casino, which had a vaudeville theater on one floor and a dance hall and banquet room on another. [Rutgers vertical file] ... The Casino failed, and in 1920 the heavyweight champion Jack Johnson rented it and installed a supper club, which he called the Club de Luxe ... Once again the club failed, and in 1923 it was taken over by a syndicate of gangsters, led by Owney Madden.
About 1918 a building was constructed ... on the northeast corner of 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue ...
the Douglas Casino was ... a two-story building ... On the street floor was the Douglas Theatre ...
One flight up was a huge room, originally intended to be a dance hall ... the dance hall remained
essentially unused until around 1920. The former heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, who also happened
to be an amateur cellist and bull fiddler, and who was a connoisseur of Harlem night life, rented it
and turned it into an intimate supper club, the Club Deluxe. Even reborn as a supper club, however,
the place failed to attract attention, until Owney Madden's gang came around looking for a suitable
spot for the entertainment of white downtowners and to serve as the principal East Coast outlet for
"Madden's No. 1" beer. The Club Deluxe seated 400-500 people ... Madden's people made a deal with
Johnson under which the group would operate the place but Johnson would be kept on in a
semimanagerial position. The ex-fighter eagerly accepted ...
The exact derivation of the name Cotton Club is not known, but it is likely that the club's
intended "whites only" policy, together with intimations of the South, were behind the choice.
Comment:
Haskins seems to imply Johnson was a has-been, but he was not - see sidebar.
Jazz Odyssey III, The Sound of Harlem": Cotton Club, 644 Lenox Avenue, c. 1918 to 1946,which can be read in Discogs.com courtesy S.Lasker
Have you seen the new decoratons? Have you danced on the smoothest floor in the city? Have you heard the jazziest of jazz bands? Something doing every night. Week Days 40¢ Saturday Sunday 55¢
In 1920 [sic] Jack Johnson, the former heavyweight champion of the world, opened a club at the future site of the Cotton Club. He named it the Club Deluxe ... In 1923 the English gangster Owney Madden assumed ownership of the club, changing its name to the Cotton Club.
Comment:
Johnson, in self-imposed exile until July 20, 1920, was arrested upon his return and remained
in prison until July 9, 1921.
Madden bought a nightclub in ... Harlem from former heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson and renamed
it the Cotton Club.
One evening in the early 1920s a limousine pulled up in front of Harlem’s Club
Deluxe and a group of well-dressed men strolled through the front door and asked to see the owner.
Jack Johnson, the former world heavyweight boxing champion, was a hero to African Americans and was well
known to Owney, a connoisseur of the fight game. Jack, a huge, amiable fellow as handy on the cello as he
was with his fists, was a familiar figure in Harlem nightlife. After retiring from the ring, he had
invested in an old, run-down property on the corner of Lennox and 142nd Street and turned it into a supper
club.
Comment:
Bull-twaddle, to be polite.
Bud Levy, eminent night club and cabaret man,...is the originator of the cabaret idea in entertainment. In 1924 he introduced the DeLuxe Cafe, now called the Cotton Club, in New York. Jack Johnson, then the heavyweight contender, was the star of the floor show. Also listed in the cast were Ada Ward and Ethel Waters...
... the owners of the New Douglas Theater in Harlem ... had announced that they were going into partnership with [Johnson] to turn an old second-floor dance hall into a glittering new cabaret. The renovations had been completed by the spring of 1923, and the thousand-square-foot [sic!] Cafe de Luxe had been fitted out with what a handout called ten thousand dollars' worth of "beautiful decorations à la Parisienne." Johnson's "partner" in this enterprise – actually, his employer – was Budd Levy, the mob-connected proprietor of a chain of New York billiard parlors and bowling alleys ... The Cafe de Luxe was a hit – so much of a hit that representatives of ... gangster Owney Madden decided to take it over ... to peddle his "Number One" beer to white customers ... By the end of the year, Madden's men were in charge, the club's decor had been altered once again to suit its new name, the Cotton Club, and Johnson soon found himself back on the road ...
McLaurin and Marshall are at the Club De Luxe Revue, New York City.
HARLEM HOOTCH HOUNDS BOAST OF CONTROL OF PROHIBITION OFFICERS
Lack of Cooperation Between Federal Enforcement Agents and Local Police Force Is Evidenced by
Developments in the Hootch Situation Particularly in Harlem.
... Hyman is extending his activities into the cabaret business, according to
information from bootlegging circles. He is interested with one Levy in the Club de Luxe at 142nd street
and Lenox avenue, formerly the DeLuxe Cabaret which boasted Jack Johnson as its manager. The former
heavyweight champion pugilist did not prove the attraction its promoters thought he would be so the
De Luxe Cabaret went up the spout. Then Levy and Hyman came in, and are reported to have spent some
$27,000 in refurnishing this resort in the hope of attracting a bunch of high-fliers from down town,
as Connie [Zimmerman] has done ...
Application to the License Bureau for authority to operate was made recently by
Levy backed up by Hyman, but a considerable opposition developed and Commissioner Glatzmayer reserved
decision on the application. It is rumored that the license will not be granted, but just what will be
th [sic] eoutcome [sic] is not yet known.
The cabarets of Harlem are all going in heavy on "revues." The most pretentious of the new floor shows opened Saturday at the Club De Luxe, 142d street and Lenox avenue. The revue includes among others the Brassfield orchestra, Greenlee and Drayton, Buck and Bubbles and a chorus of 10 formerly with the Plantation (all colored), Leona Williams and Minto Cato.
... Miss Cornell is one of the beauties in the revue at the "Club De Luxe" cabaret, New York City ...
Plantation Revue, with Hamtree Harrington, is at the De Luxe.
One day Owney Madden took my arm. "Come on upstairs," he said, "I’ll show you around." We climbed the stairs to the Cotton Club roof. Never will I forget the sight that confronted us. The entire roof was covered with cages of pigeons. There were nearly 200 of them. The pigeons were all pedigreed and registered, each with its own leg tag. Owney warned me: "Don’t touch any part of the railing–these birds are well protected." The wire round the railing carried more voltage than the Sing Sing electric chair. The pigeons were Owney's pride and joy, perhaps partly because they were the bearers of good tidings. When one came fluttering home with its leg message attached, Owney knew that the latest load of alcohol had gotten through.
Dorothy Fields, quoted in Haskin p.48:They were such gentlemen ... That was my first job as a lyric-writer, doing the Cotton Club shows with Jimmy McHugh. The owners were very solicitous of me; they grew furious when anyone used improper language in my presence . . . Stark took me up one day to see his prize pigeons. He lived over the club and kept the pigeons on the roof. He was very attached to them. He had become acquainted with pigeons in prison, when they had perched on the window sill of his cell. He had considered them his only friends there.
The next concern was to stretch the seating capacity of the room to the limit. In the classic cabaret manner, it was arranged in a horseshoe shape, with the audience seated on two levels. Some of the tables surrounded the dance floor in front of the tiny proscenium stage, some were on a raised area in the back. The walls were lined with booths, and as many tiny tables as could fit were crammed in on both levels. Seating capacity was thus raised to about 700.
... the Cotton Club was a second-story [sic] walk-up that held between six and seven hundred people who sat in two tiers of tables surrounding the dance floor ...
You went up a long set of stairs upstairs, turn right and you'd be facing across the dance floor, and if you went across to the middle of the dance floor and turned left, you'd be facing the bandstand.
This suggests the floor plan was something like this:... they had a place upstairs where the gangsters used to have a separate entrance, it was an evening place where the betting went on...
... its backstage dressing room was probably the worst a performer could ever encounter – a long corridor, divided in two by a pole over which a curtain was draped. Men dressed on one side and women on the other ... A narrow staircase, one body wide, led down from the room directly into the wings. During the show, when the stairs got busy, you couldn't change your mind halfway down and decide to go back up. Only the main star and band leader had their own personal dressing room, located beneath the staircase ...
The world-famous Cotton Club, supreme in the Night life of New York, is located in
the heart of Times Square – at Broadway and 48th Street. Here in the most beautiful room in the
world you may enjoy the greatest value in entertainment, food and liquor, and dance to American's
best music on a spacious floor.
As you enter the Cotton Club you may pause at the bar before being seated in the
magnificent room dominated by a raised stage where the Cotton Club Parade is presented to you. There are
four entrances to the stage. Stairs rising above the bandstand at the rear of the stage lead to a small
balcony Newly decorated Drops give a beautiful setting for the show. The immense mural covering one entire
length of the room is entitled "The Drama of Cotton" and measures 75 feet long by 20 feet high and is the
largest mural of its kind in the country The new murals decorating the bar represent "The Evolution
of Swing."
IN [sic] decorating the Cotton Club, Herman Stark instructed Julian Harrison, who conceived and decorated it, to spare no expense in giving the Patrons the most beautiful and most comfortable room in which to enjoy the "Cotton Club Parade." The setting in which this magnificent assemblage has found itself is an immense room with a high ceiling which gives you a feeling of relaxation and comfort. Intimate boxes surround the room and are elevated sufficiently to assure a perfect view of the performance. The ceiling includes 10,000 square feet of fresco. It depicts minstrels, crows, and cupids in amusing consummation of their varied tasks and is the largest fresco of this type in America. The carpet has been especially designed and woven to harmonize with the surroundings. The immense mural covering one entire length of the room is entitled, The Drama of Cotton." Adjoining the main room is the bar featuring Julian Harrison's conception of the "Evolution of Swing" done in black and white. We have reproduced these murals in printing and are shown on this page for you. Five murals titled Jungle Fever, Boogie Woogie, Congo Conga, Jitter Bugs and Jam Session are dimly reproduced. The latter shows, among others, Bill Robinson, Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington.
Riot of Color at Cotton Club
The Cotton Club, formerly the Club de Luxe, at Lenox Avenue and 142nd Street, has
taken the entire Plantation Revue from Broadway and made it the biggest attraction that has ever invaded
a cabaret in Harlem. Ham Tree Harrington and Cora Green are the featured stars, and they are well worth
seeing, as they can make you laugh and entertain you in real Southern style.
Eddie Rector and Leonard Ruffin are two boys who know how to handle their feet, as
they are considered dancers par excellence. Grace Rector is a charming lady who sings and dances with ease.
Danny Small, a clever boy who sings as sweet as sugar cane and knows how to deliver pathetic ballads; Alma
Smith, who makes you feel you want to get up and cheer as she has a wonderful idea in putting over her songs
and dances, also are there. There is a smart trio in Danny Small, Billy Kane and Alma Smith, who knew how to
put their stuff across. The Plantation chorus is smart and peppy and worth seeing. The Plantation Revue was
produced by Lew Leslie, and under the personal direction of Bert Jonas. Searchy Sellis and Ben Marden, owners
of that beautiful rendezvous, are making everyone feel right at home, and certainly have given the public a
treat in making the Cotton Club one of the best places in town. There are two shows nightly. The dances are
played by the best colored orchestra in history, Will Vodery's Plantation Orchestra featuring Johnny Dunn.
New York City's newest after-theater rendezvous,the Cotton club [sic], formerly the Club de Luxe, has been opened under the management of Searchy Sellis and Ben Marden at 142d Street and Lenox Avenue. They are presenting Lew Leslie's plantation [sic] review [sic] twice nightly, direct from Plantation on Broadway ... Johnny Dunn and his Plantation orchestra are also being featured. The place is under personal direction of Bert Jonas. Dancing all evening.
The ad names the orchestra "Will Vodery's Plantation Orchestra, with Johnny Dunn," but is otherwise consistent with the plug.... Hamtree Harrington and Cora Green, Eddie Rector and Leonard Ruff in [sic] from the Cotton Club ...
... on Saturday evening last, there was a fire in the Club DeLuxe, operated in the New Douglas Theatre building, 142nd street and Lennox avenue, which has put that resort out of business. So Harlem is rid, for the present at least, of two of the most notorious of its resorts known among the downtown White Light District spots as "black and tan" cabarets, because of the fact that of the patrons about as mamy or more were white as were colored. The clubs and cabarets now being conducted are supposed to be carried on by race proprietors.
This would seem to date the fire July 5, 1924, but, being a weekly, The New York Age might have meant the previous Saturday, June 30.The popular Cotton Club, burned out last week will not go out of business. A new home will be built and when completed, it will be one of the show places. It will be on the old site and will be ready about the middle of October with a big revue, "The Plantation."
Billy Page ... is visiting the city ... and will remain until Wednesday evening when he will return to New York to play at the Cotton club, formerly owned by Jack Johnson.
A new revue recently opened at Connie's Inn ... It was staged by Leonard Harper, who is also staging a new revue for the De Luxe, 142nd and Lenox avenue, which is now the Cotton Club
A bevy of well known, fast-stepping cabaret lights feature Leonard Harper's "Colored Scandals" at the Cotton Club, Lenox avenue and One Hundred and Forty-second street. They are Searchy Sellis, Edith Wilson, "Doc" train [sic], Julius Foxworth, Jack and Jim, Julia Moody and Tommy Woods. The Ten Creole Cotton Steppers are another attraction.
Cotton Club, 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue Presents Leonard Harper's Colored Scandals Twice Nightly Featuring Edith Wilson & Doc Strain [sic], Broadway Favorites, Julius Foxworth of Foxworth & Friends, Jack & Jim, Keith Vaudeville Headliners, Julia Moody, Syncopated Record Star, Tommy Woods, Late Featured Dancer with Shuffle Along, Creole Beauty Chorus, Music by Cotton Club's Plantation Orchestra Under Personal Supervision of Bert Jones [sic]. Dancing All Evening. American and Oriental Cuisine.
... o'fay spenders began to turn their backs on Harlem ... Only the Cotton Club continued to draw crowds and to stage more and more elaborate revues. The current spring show there is the equivalent of two acts of a Negro musical on Broadway ... The Cotton Club was started by Jack Johnson, who lost a fortune in it.
With the coming of the Joe Louis-Primo Carnera fight at the Yankee Stadium slated for June 25, the nite club impresarios are planning to enterain the out-of-towners in a gala fashion, and the Cotton Club, "the aristocrat of Harlem," which heretofore has catered to the Nordics, has finally extended an open invitation to colored visitors.
Whereas the club paid its stars generously it was a totally different story for the black waiters and kitchen staff ... Some reckoned that if it hadn't been for the tips, which were considerable, the staff would would have had a little reason to remain. By the end of 1935, the club was no longer the most fashionable nightspot in Harlem and attendance figures had fallen dramatically. Fewer customers meant fewer tips, and amid growing disquiet the waiters staged a strike. A statement issued to the press by an anonymous steward implied they received no salary at all and were expected to pay the busboys 25 cents a day and buy their own uniforms costing $17.50 from their tips. Such revelations of slave labor had a disastrous effect on the club's reputation ... On February 16th 1936 The Cotton Club finally closed its doors signalling the end of an era. ... Herman Stark took heed of local bitterness and relocated the premises in a more acceptable area, downtown ... in the heart of the theater district.
Herman Stark of the Cotton Club says he has no kick to make about the World's Fair. That makes Stark different. He says that the Cotton Club, starring Bill Robinson and Cab Calloway, has averaged weekly gross receipts of $30,000 since it opened three months ago. Bill Robinson ... gives two performances daily ... at the fair and three performances nightly at the Cotton Club.
Indictments charging failure to pay amusement taxes, and in some cases, embezzlement, were returned today to the Federal Grand Jury against corporations and individuals operating night clubs in Manhattan ... The corporation which operates the Cotton Club, at 200 west Forty-eighth street; its president, Herman Stark; its accountant, George Goodrich, and its secretary-treasurer, Noah L. Braunstein, are named. The individuals are charged with failure to pay texes and with embezzlement.
Broadway's Cotton Club Closes; May Reopen With New Kirk Show In July
Spot Closes After Union Asks Back Pay; Rent Cut Is Refused
B-U-L-L-E-T-I-N-!
NEW YORK, June 20–Andy Kirk and his band will go back into the Cotton Club when it opens
again in July, it was reliably reported in a communication from the office of Glaser
Consolidated Attractions here this week.
By NELL DODSON
(Staff Correspondent)
New York City, June 20–The famed Cotton Club at 48th and Broadway, which closed its doors last
Saturday night, with performers telling the world that the inauguration of a new summer policy of Sunday
closings was going into effect the next day has not reopened since, may or may not reopen in the near
future, and if and when it does Andy Kirk may or may not open with it.
In response to rumors going the rounds for the past month that the Club was losing
money, owed back salaries, and was on the verge of folding for the summer, Local 802 of American
Federation of Musicians, requested the back salaries owed to Andy Kirk's band, within a two-day limit
last week, but the Club closed before the two days were up. Under union rules the house cannot reopen
until Kirk's salary is paid.
...Latest developments at the Club, however, have it that Michael Todd, wealthy
producer of "The Hot Mikado," and the current World's Fair "Gay New Orleans," and "American Jubilee," is
rehearsing a new show at the Club for a July opening, and will take care of the back salaries that must be
paid before the night spot reopens...
The story of the Cotton Club as told to the Courier is a long one dating back to the
time some of the thought-to-be biggest attractions in show business were playing there. It was then,
it is claimed, the Club went approximately $83,000 in debt. The Cotton Club had no desire to see its own
attractions hurt by the reputation of a failing Cotton Club, we are told. Only hope for the place lay in
the pull of the Louis Armstrong Band which paid off some $31,000 of their obligations. Maxine Sullivan,
too, helped in accruing the sum for the Cotton Club.
Sometime later, Herman Stark, who was handling the business for the Club secured the
services of Andy Kirk, teamed with Buck and Bubbles. This combination was successful but to increase the
revenue to meet obligations it was urged that Ethel Waters be secured. However Maxine Sullivan was again
signed and a reduction of the rent on the Cotton Club was asked of the owners of the Cotton Club property.
In going over the books of the Cotton Club, to determine the need for the reduction,
the real estate owners found that the Club had operated when attractions that pulled considerably less had
played there some time before. The request for the rent cut was denied and failing to get the reduction,
it is said, the Cotton Club closed.
The decision ... to have him returned to prison resulted from testimony brought out in the inquiry into the laundry business ... which followed the receipt of information that laundrymen were being harassed by gansters and racketeers who sought to "muscle in" and obtain tribute for providing "protection." Madden had informed parole officers that he was employed by Israel Levy, president of Hydrox Laundry and Dry Cleaning Corporation...Levy, at a public hearing...denied he ever had employed Madden, although he admitted having been acquainted with him. Madden told detectives he had been working as investigator for a coal company...
Syracuse Journal's 1932-02-20 p.5 sympathetic profile of Madden by columnist Mark Hellinger can be read here.
Reports that a $1,000,000 bribe had been offered for the freedom of Owney Madden...from prison in 1932,
brought an admission today that members of the state parole board had been carefully approached by
purported friends of the convict apparently trying to "fix" his case.
Major Frank I. Hanscom, a member of the parole board, said suggestions were made when
Madden was arrested for violating his parole that perhaps matters could be arranged so the racketeer
would not have to go back to Sing Sing to serve the rest of a 20 years to life sentence for manslaughter.
There never was a definite or tentative offer of a bribe made," Major Hanscom said.
"There was merely the suggestion that perhaps we would be willingt to talk the matter over. If a bribe
offer had been made we should have had the person who made it arrested."
A similar but lengthier report was printed in The Citizen-
Advertiser 1935-05-17 p.6
Sidewalks of New York
That million dollar bribe that is alleged to have been put up to spring Onwey Madden from
Sing Sing is one tremendous laugh...To those, including your correspondent, who know the inside of the
affair...Isn't it about time that they stopped riding this gent?...Who feeds and clothes the poor of the
West Side...He's more than paid his due to society...
[elipses in original]
...The New York Age has been kindly disposed to Owney Madden because of his many acts of charity from which the needy in Harlem have benefitted, and has reasoned that one so humane must have a big heart and should be encouraged to gain a rightful place in society. In recent months the editor of this publication joined with others in petitioning the Parole Board to permit Owney Madden to temporarily leave town to visit a health resort, his attending physicians having given testimony regarding his poor physical condition...Owney Madden has more than paid his due to society...as long as he is making an honest and determined endeavor to traverse the straight and narrow path, he should be encouraged, not discouraged; given a helping hand and not an unfriendly foot. Human lives are not to be salvaged by unrelentless persecution.
... The Cotton Club was started by Jack Johnson, who lost a fortune in it.
While Johnson might have been a welcome attraction during the early days of Cotton Club, he owned Club De Luxe until its premises were taken over by Cotton Club.
assisted at times by Johnson, the officers of the corporation were Sam Sellis, president and Frenchy DeMange, secretary. Owney Madden was an officer. The New York Times 1925-06-23 p.23 identified Madden as secretary and Sam Sellis as president, saying Sellis had been arrested many times, especially for picking pockets.
Walter Brooks, with a track record as a successful producer of African American musical entertainment behind him, was nominally the manager of the Cotton Club. In reality, his job was a thinly disguised front for some of the most unpleasant mobsters on the planet ...
... Madden bought the club ... kept a low profile and allowed one of his henchmen, Harry Block, to front it ... Harry Block hired the staff and supervised the daily running of the establishment and was ably assisted by Herman Stark, a former machine gunner who took his job as stage manager very seriously.
When the club reopened at the end of 1925, Stark fired Leslie as producer and hired Dan Healy to take over.
One guy who knew the club inside out was Harry Sobol ... He did public relations for the club and some of the performers and he was around all the time.
Sobol, quoted in Calloway, p.96, named the syndicate who owned the club as Big Frenchy DeMange, a small man with blue eyes; Mike Best, bookmaker; Little Frenchy (Gustave Guillaume per The Citizen-Advertiser, Auburn, N.Y. 1932-02-12), ex-welterweight fighter, ; Terry Riley , "Shylock" and killer, and said Stark, a personable ex-bookkeeper, softspoken, handsome and a family man of good reputation, fronted the club. He said the speakeasy also owned Club Napoleon, and Club Argonaut. He names Kid Griffin as the headwaiter, name-drops the newspapermen and celebrities who came to the club, including the mayor and the Sing Sing warden. He provides tidbits about the production people and entertainers: Harold Arlen, songwriter; Dan Healy, producer and emcee; Clarence Robinson,choreographer; Ethel Waters, star.As the only woman hanging around at rehearsals among the creative team, musicians, and club characters, Dorothy [Fields] was treated with kid gloves. "I must say all the boys were simply wonderful," she recalled. "I was the little sister. They were very solicitous of me, very careful not to say anything wrong in front of me, and they got furious if anyone used improper language in my presence. No one was allowed to say 'Darn.' During afternoon rehearsals, they’d go into the kitchen and bring out cookies and tea."
...Changes in ownership enabled the Cotton Club to reopen and Mr. Stark, the new license holder and stage manager, took over in 1929 according to his son...Stark, who was an Army sergeant and machine-gunner in World War I, was described by acquaintances as gruff, stout and cigar-smoking...When business began to decline and the profits had gone out of high-cost entertainment, Mr. Stark sold out in 1940 and moved to Miami...
Floyd G. Snelson, The New York Age 1939-04-15, citing "Uncle Sam," said Stark made $52,000 in 1937.Herman Stark, former Cotton Club manager and a machine-gun insructor in the last war, is getting a commission in the Army.
The Cotton Club customers had seen these revues and had come uptown to get a closer look. The Cotton Club orchestra thus had to be a show orchestra, playing to an audience that often had just left one of the top revues and wanted to hear music in the same slick commercial style.
...Dan Healy began producing revues for this spot and their revues became senstional, so sensational that theatrical critics on the opening nights were on hand as if they were going to the opening of a new show on Broadway...
...I spent a lot of time up in Harlem ... I had seen many of the Ziegfeld shows and I figured thay had no story in Ziegfeld shows, it was strictly a revue with great songs, with beautiful costumes, beautiful girls, good dancing and I figured these race ... these black peple, can do it better. If I could only put these things together, get these dancers and great singers and comedians ... I could put on my own black revue and it was a case of finding a spot where to do it and I tried several places until I hit the Cotton Club, it was called the Cotton Club at that time, and they had just had an orchestra and three acts, a dance team, a comedian and a singer... I met Herman Stark, the manager, and I said,'How would you like to have a little revue on there, with a chorus, beautiful girls, put a whole production together?' and he said 'You have to take it up with Frenchy, the boss,' and he said, 'Would you do it?' What was involved in here, they weren't out to spend a lot of money, they didn't understand putting a show on in a club, and I talked with Frenchy and he said, 'We'll try one.'
According to Variety, the first show under the Cotton Club name was actually Lew Leslie's Plantation Club floor show which moved to the CC when the Plantation closed.
Whalen's source is Variety 1924-07-02 p.44:According to small paster ads placed in the alamac Hotel's taxicabs, the Cotton Club, 142nd street and Lenox avenue, is housing [sic] Lew Leslie's colored floor show that formerly played at the Plantation, one of the Salvin chain recently closed.
An ad for "Lew Leslie's Plantation Revue" appeared in Morning Telegraph, 1924-06-01. On the same page:The Plantation chorus is fast and peppy and worth seeing. The Plantation revue was produced by Lew Leslie, and under the personal direction of Bert Jonas. Sarchy Sellis and Ben Marden, owners of that beautiful rendezvous, are making every one feel at home, and certianly have given the public a treat in making the Cotton Club one of the best places in town. There are two shows nightly. The dances are played by the best colored orchestra in history, Will Vodery's Plantation orchestra, featuring Johnny Dunn.
Harper has the contract to stage the show for the De-Luxe, now the Cotton Club, at 142 street and Lenox avenue, expected to open this month.
Floyd G. Snelson also mentioned this (The Pittsburgh Courier 1924-09-27 p.9):[A revue at Connie's Inn] ... was staged by Leonard Harper, who is also staging a new revue for the De Luxe ... which is now the Cotton Club.
This may have been Colored Scandals, which was advertised in New York American 1924-10-19, 1924-10-26, 1924-11-16 and 1924-11-23.“Brownskin [sic] Vamps” is the initial revue created by Leonard HARPER and Walter BROOKS accompanied by our bunch of musicians. Starting November 29, 1924, they are first billed as “The Cotton Club Jazz Fiends” and after “The Cotton Club Syncopators”.
This revue, "25 Hot Brown Skin Babies", played twice nightly, at 12:15 and 2:30 a.m. It was mentioned in New York American 1924-11-26 p.10 and advertised in that paper 1924-12-07 and 1924-12-14 as "Walter Brooks' Brown Skin Vamps."A second version of the Cotton Club revue starts in January 1925 and finds in the cast singer Lucille HEGAMIN, and soon to be famous Ivie Anderson. Maxey is possibly the drummer on the April 22ca, 1925 recording session with Lucille Hegamin for Cameo.
Walter Brooks and Leonard Harper who already wrote the previous revue are maintained as authors for the spring show simply called “The Cotton Club Revue”. Danny Small, Marie Maxwell & Bert Chadwick, Bernice Ellis, Ivie Anderson, and Honey Brown light up the stage with songs like Out of the Way, The Dancing Fiends, A Touch of Charleston, Twilight on the Nile, and Barnyard Strut. The revue will last until June, when the Cotton Club briefly closes till Sept 1925 for Federal prohibition violations ...
The Cotton Club (colored) is presenting an entertainment which has many elements of success. As
the Cafe de Luxe, flashing to name of Jack Johnson, this place did not do so well, but now that it has
discarded the supposed glamour of the name of an ex-champion boxer who could hardly be held up as a credit to
his race, it promises to do better as a place of real entertainment and a money maker.
Johnny Hudgens [sic] is the star and he twinkles quite merrily. Only slightly less in
magnitude are the two other luminaries, Brown and McGraw ...
The chorus has some sprightly and comely colored lassies who do their stuff well. Some
able critics have said this is the best presentation of colored femininity in New York ... Johnny Hudgins is
the clown par excellence. His antics, in which his make-up is not handicap are of the sort to keep the crowd
in a roar. The dancing and twisting of McGraw andBrown are such as to please the patrons. The Cotton Club
syncopators furnish the music and are justly popular.
Cover charge here is $2.50. The show lasts nearly an hour and seems best patronized
right after midnight.
The Cotton Club orchestra which has been playing in St. Louis will put on a conception of a colored camp meeting at the club. Bobby Barrows, cornetist, is the preacher, and he simulates on his instrument the intonations and esctatic shoutings that characterize negro religious meeetings.
"Brown Skin Vamps of 1926," Brown and McGraw stars, Mildred Hudgens and Blanche Thompson, Billy Wallace ...
The Cotton Club Orchestra has been there for three years, and what they don't know about making music is negligible. They are going strong up to the time of closing, and the last is as good as the first.
Blushing Browns ...was the last revue backed by the Cotton Club Orchestra ... .
The band arrived in New York the very day of the Cotton Coub opening, having rehearsed the new score as best it could in Philly. In New York there wre some hasty run-throughs with the dances and singers...
Cotton Club Alleged to Have 'It' Up Its Sleeve, by Kay O'Hare
The Cotton Club, which has been doing a very gratifying amount of business, is
planning the opening of a new review November 15. The interior will be decorated in the manner of
an old Southern mansion. The Cotton always has gone in for something a little different in the way
of decoration and show, and apparently we'll see none of the trite pleated silk interiors which
characterize most of the other clubs around town.
Dan Healy of "Follies" fame, who staged the present show, is again to
demonstrate his ability as a producer. If one may judge by the present review, it should be original
and entertaining. What Dan doesn't know about dancing is scarcely worth mention, and the show at the
Cotton has exploited dancing in almost equal proportion to singing, so he can shine brilliantly.
Ada Ward, who was understudy to the late Florence Mills, and has caught some
of her spontaneous technique and has a deal of charm all her own, will be in the cast. The two little
Berry Brothers, who created quite a sensation with their work, remain; Edith Wilson, who has done very
good work, and Henri & La Pearl, the dancing team who do notably good ballroom exhibition dancing,
will continue with the show. Cora LaRedd and an ensemble of fifteen beautiful cafe-au-lait maids
complete the material with which Dan Healy will create another extravaganza.
Night Club Forecast Now Fair and Warmer Plus, by Kay O'Hare
The Cotton Club opening which was slated for last Tuesday won't come off for
another week. In the meantime, they are doing very nicely. They are another outfit that knows what
they want, and keeps it. The new review promises to be quite amusing. The Cotton has long since
discarded the large expense of the undraped for talented entertainers, and find it pays better than
the old system.
At the present writing the forecast seems to be fair and warm with all
inconvenient things like the curfew, forgotten.
Kay O'Hare
"Piping Hot Show Served in New Cotton Club Revue" Dan Healey [sic] smacked another
one over that long rightfield fence on Sunday night with his new revue at the Cotton Club and among the celebs
who witnessed the clean hit were Van & Schenck, Benny Rubin, George Beban, Lew Fields and family and so many
others we lost count. Our eyes were so busy watching the show we didn't see half of the folks, and now our
mind is so full of the tuneful melodies with which the show is chockful that we can't remember half of those
we did see.
This popular young producer and ex-"Follies" star must have had some early training as
a chef. He has taken a handful of red-hot tunes, a hand-picked dozen of Creole peaches, several molasses-
coated voices, one dance team a la Maurice, garnished with spicy "colorful" comedians and served it piping-hot
at midnight.
Aida Ward, who understudied the famous Florence Mills, sings delightfully and emulates
the style familiarized by the late Florence.
As exponents of classical ballroom dancing, Henri and La Pearl rate 100 per cent.
Edith Wilson and Jimmy Ferguson handle most of the comedy, their skit is subtle and
mirth provoking.
Mae Alix gathered her share of applause with a new dance, called the "Harlem River
Quiver," assisted by the entire ensemble, this number is undoubtedly the outstanding hit of the show.
The Berry Brothers are pocked editions of Williams and Walker, in fact, the elder of the two does
the neatest strut we have ever seen since the days of the incomparable George Walker [who died in 1910].
The Duke Ellington Band needs no introduction, suffice it to say they continue to
play in their inimitable style and rhythm.
Snow, rain, slush and cold all combined could not prevent the genial Danny's many
friends from turning out to give his newest brainchild the once over.
Fields and McHugh wrote the songs "Hottentot Tot,” “Freeze and Melt,” and “Harlemania.”
Opening night, December 4, 1927, was packed with a glittering crowd, including the entire Fields family
and ... columnist Walter Winchell. ...[When] the team’s first song came up. The singer, Aida Ward, began the
song, but rather than sing the lyrics Dorothy had written, as Dorothy later recalled, "She belted out three
of the most shocking, ribald, bawdy, dirtiest songs anyone had ever heard in the 1920s. I looked at McHugh,
McHugh looked at me, my father didn’t look at my mother; my brothers and sister looked down at their plates;
and nobody dared look at Walter Winchell. My father said, ‘You didn’t learn those words home.’ I said, ‘I
didn’t write those words.’” Lew Fields, in a rage, went to find one of the owners, and supposedly threatened
to take him outside if he didn’t correct the situation...The club promptly made an announcement that the song
that Miss Ward had just sung had not been written by Fields and McHugh.
Originally I had engaged a violinist who was accustomed to conducting shows and all the – that was a normal picture in those days, the violinist is standing up, conducting the orchestra for the show, and I found out that I was more familiar with shows with my experience at the Kentucky Club than he was, so I put the piano around in the middle, conducted from the piano.
(This violinist was Ellsworth Reynolds.)The band always lined up in the same way. Looking at the band from the dance floor, left to right, in the front was the trumpets, the piano was smack in the middle, then Otto Hardwick, me and Harry Carney. In back, on a raised up little platform, would be the trombone, the drums right behind the piano, then Wellman Braud with his bass, and Freddie Guy on guitar sat right back of me.
Re. Deborah Grace Winer: Songs from the first revue with Ellington (opened 1927 12 04) included Harlem River Quiver and Doin' the Frog. Red Hot Band was likely another song from this revue, as the credited composers on the label of Vocalion 1153 are "Fields-Heely [sic]-McHugh. ("Heely" is Dan Healy.) Hottentot Tot and Harlemania are from Hot Chocolate (opened 1928 10 07). Hot Feet, Arabian Dance and Freeze and Melt are from Spring Birds/Springbirds (opened 1929 03 31). Fields and McHugh wrote all of these songs for Cotton Club revues.
See Lasker's comment at "Spring Birds," below....new fall floor show recently produced by Dan Healy...our first time to witness such an array of talented Negros in one show of such magnificent proportions. There was an [illegible] twenty minutes of refined entertainment, including solos by [illegible - Adelaide?] Hall, specialty song numbers by Margaret Beckett and dainty [illegible], whole chorus strut numbers by the Cotton Club girls, dressed in new full dress suits – cane, high silk hat and everything. The Cotton Club dancing boys did pleasing numbers in new walking suits and the pretty chorus girls – oh, boy, how they danced! And what money those many costumes must have cost! Kramier's son was a winner in his "Chinese," a jazzy strut number, and in a native dance with a comely Miss [sic] Danny Small, of Keith fame, with his lovely wife took many bows. There was Leonard Ruffin, too, in his dances that brought him fame long since. Then there were the little fellows, the team of Berry brothers...whose mimicry, dancing and fast turns just about clocked the show. All this finery of an evening's pleasure, while hundreds looked on, could not have been so sweet but for the musical strains of Duke Ellington's wonder band. It was a great night – rather, a great morning – when we came home.... Danny Small ... is no "smut" merchat, that's why he and and wife are in demand as a team. Just now Danny is playing Loew and Keith dates in New York and doubling at the Cotton Club.
...The Cotton Club in Harlem is laying itself out in entertainment, but the price tops the best of the downtown competition by $5. Up there the customer will lay $25 on the counter before he sits down...
Rian James (Brooklyn Daily Eagle 1929-03-12) noted that "Handy Man" ( YouTube: My Handy Man) was included in the Cotton Club revue Hot Chocolate. "My Handy Man," written by Andy Razaf, was registered for copyright on 1928 08 29. It was recorded twice in 1928, by Ethel Waters (on August 21) and by Victoria Spivey (on September 12) and was added to Hot Chocolate after its opening.
"SILHOUETTE
The Cotton Club ... and the premiere or [sic] Danny Healy's new extravaganza, "Springbirds"...last
Sunday night...the opening number, which is costumed as gorgeously and as extravagantly as any Ziegfeld
Revue...the feathery "bird" costumes, that provoked one mad wagger to remark that the chorines were evidently
protected by the "game" laws...Leitha Hill's hot "Kitchen Man" number, which has more innuendos that a John
S. Sumner lecture...the hot tunes and lyrics by Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields, of Blackbirds fame, who bowed
hello...Dorothy's proud poppa, who beamed as she bowed (Lew Fields)...the cane twirling of the lankier Berry
Brother...and the Marv Adagio number by Henri and Dixon...the Arabian number, which is just a little bit too
Park ave. [sic] for enjoyment in a Rotobelt emporium...albeit it is lavish...beautiful and very Folies
Bergere...the gameness of the aforementioned adagio terper, Miss Dixon, who keeled over a few minutes before
her turn went on...and went on, anyway...the packed room...and the eleven thousand celebs present, who hoped
that they'd be called on...the ten thousand nine hundred and ninety nine who were...or maybe it only seemed
that many...in the audience...Bill (Blackbirds) Robinson, who tap-danced...Danny Healy, who curtain-
speeched...Lester (Ziggy Frolics) Allen, who did pretty nearly his entire repertoire...Adelaide (Blackbirds)
Hall, who sang ... Ted (W A B C) Husing and Mrs. Ted, our favorite radio announcer, who radioed the event...
Abel Green, who caught if [sic] for Variety...Floyd (Scribe) Gibbons, who just got $140,000 each from
Fox for the screen rights to his "Red Napoleon" which is now running in Liberty ... Cy (Spring Is Here) Landry.
..Ben (Park Central Grill and Hello Daddy) Pollack, who Ambassadeurs in Paree, come August...Jay C. (Brooklyn)
Flippen... Nina ("Hold Everything") Olivette, who wears Pince Nez off stage...Ruth (Whoopee) Etting...Elene
Cooke...Borrah (Harmonica) Minnevitch...Lee (P.A.) Posner...and that isn't all...or even nearly all...and
everybody including Ed Hurley, had a grand time. You should have come over!"
'COTTON CLUB
(Harlem)
New York, March 31.
Dan Healy's new "Springbirds" revue at the Cotton Club, the Lenox Avenue colored
cab, catering to white customers at $2 and $3 tariff (latter on week-ends) is disappointing. Scaled against
the nearby Connie's Inn, the other outstanding tourist-catering nite club in Harlem–although the number
of others, rougher, tougher and less choice, is legion–the Cotton Club show doesn't begin to compare.
A haphazard venture is that the trouble is due to whites being the creators of
"Springbirds" at the Cotton Club, and native Afro-Americans (Leonard Harper, et al.) were primarily concerned
in the Connie's floor show. That would be one logical explanation, excepting that Dan Healy (stager) and
Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh (writers) previously clicked with corking floor show divertissement at the
Cotton Club. However, their responsibility for the new spring edition is not productive of as flattering
comment now as heretofore.
The obvious fact that whites patronize the black and tan and colored cabs because
they want something different, something hot and low-down, seems to escape colored nite club entrepreneurs
every so often. In this instance the staging, smartness and sartorial investiture really approach Ziegfeldian
proportions at times, but in practical working out it becomes tiresome and monotonous. No nite lifer, whether
or hot surcharged by other influences, can get hot and bothered about a beautiful but dumb entertainment. That
goes for any type of theatrical divertissement on, a stage or cafe floor.
That's what "Springblrds" is. They have a corking Arabian flash that's a tribute to
Healy's esthetic taste, but hardly conducive to arresting one's attention, especially when one is hungry for a
real Harlem cooch.
The mob that's playing the Harlem joints these days–and more and more of the
weisenheimers seem to be going native—comes from one element in their nocturnal diversion– torrldity,
both as to Jazzapation and show. On the dance end Duke Ellington socks out that mean music as ever before; but
for the rest----.
Despite the general hi-hattiness of the production, one of the rawest double
entendre lyrics was given out by Lith [sic] Hill, the blues warbler, whose "My Kitchen Man," with her plays on
terms like "sausage," "boloney," "my sugar bowl," plus the familiar "Jelly roll," hasn't even the saving grace
of leaving something to the imagination. The youthful Berry Brothers, from the Coast, whom Sam Weiss first
introduced at his Club Alabam a year ago, were the big hit of the show. The kids can strut and step with all
the native insouciance of talented Afro-Americans.
Henry of Henry and Mildred Dixon was a comedy riot with his heated dance, employing
a prop life-size manikin for partner. As effective as his low-down hoofing was that wicked trumpet playing
obligato from the Ellington orchestra, which heightened the effect to riotous returns. Maud Russell, out of
"Keep Shufflin'," was a prominent number leader; the Five Blazers, sponsored by Danny Small, a former Cotton
Club favorite, did concerted stepping to mild returns; Henry and Mildred Dixon, adagioists, had their innings
in the Arabesque ballet, the former as a whirling dervish; Josephine Hall prima'd; Mason and Beckett, Loewing
around New York, are added specialists. The gals number 12 and are light-hued, but again suffer in comparison
to the Connie's houris. Cast numbers 30 in all, exclusive of the crack Ellingtonites. For the opening both
halves were run together. Perhaps dissociated, with the punches spotted for better effect, the sequences will
shape up more punchfully than at the premiere.
Abel'
Kitchen Man was registered for copyright on 1929 03 19, words and music by Andy
Razaf and Alex. Bellenda, and first recorded 1929 05 08 by Bessie Smith [
YouTube: My Kitchen Man].
Rian James, reviewing this same opening night, noted that Lew Fields was present, and it may well be
that this was the night when he objected to a dirty song in the show with lyrics not written by his daughter
Dorothy (see the unnamed revue above dated Dec. 4 1927.
COTTON CLUB, Lenox Ave.,142d St–A Dan Healy "All-Colored Extravaganza that should not be missed. Duke Ellington's band.
The original Cotton Club revues were produced by Lew Leslie, with the songs by Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields, but Dorothy Fields wasn't really funky enough to write the kind of songs that would carry a Negro revue of that type. The real down-to-earth Cotton Club shows, with the double-entendre nasty songs and the hurly-burly and bump-and-grind mixed with high-class swinging jazz, were produced by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler beginning in 1930. Clarence Robinson did the choreography. When I came into the club to replace Duke's band in the late spring of 1930, the club had just gone through a transition from the McHugh-Fields era to the Arlen-Koehler era. The revue that spring was called Brown Sugar – Sweet but Unrefined. Those shows by Arlen and Koehler were a combination of vaudeville, burlesque, and great music and dancing. It's no accident that the name Cotton Club has come to be synonymous with the greatest Negro entertainment of the twenties and thirties. A lot of people worked hard as hell to pull those shows together. Ted Koehler was a maniac that way. He wrote the lyrics for Arlen's music, of course, but he was also a hell of a carpenter. He would be around the club all the time, day and night, when they were putting a show together. He wasn't just interested in how the songs were going to be staged, he was out there helping to construct the darned sets. Here is one of the most talented young lyricists in America at that time, walking around the Cotton Club with a hammer and nails and screwdriver. That was the Cotton Club spirit. Work, work, work. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Get it down fine. Tops and professional in every sense of the word. The club was alive with music and dancing at night, but it was also alive all day long. If the chorus line wasn't rehearsing, then the band was. If the band wasn't rehearsing, then one of the acts was. We knew we were performing before some of the most critical audiences in the world. We knew we had a standard of performance to match every night. We knew we couldn't miss a lick. And we rarely did.
A word about the chorus. They were not only the prettiest girls in the country, but each was a fine dancer. There were sixteen chorus girls and eight show girls. The chorus girls were billed as "Copper Colored Gals" and the show gals as "Tall, Tan and Terrific."
NEW YORK, Mar.19-(ANP)-A new show opens at the Cotton Club on Monday, March 23, with a number of well-lnown stage folk in the cast.
In 1931, the Cotton Club Show was known as Rhythmania, with Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler replacing Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields as composer and lyricist and Cab Calloway's band replacing the Duke's.
Arlen and Koehler hit their Cotton Club stride in ... Rhyth-Mania, the spring [sic] production
of 1931. Besides some fine songs of lasting popularity, they produced one at the time that furnished the
title for all future Cotton Club revues – a song not intended for the show at all.
One afternoon in the winter of 1930, they decided to take a break from writing the
songs for Rhyth-Mania. Arlen ...suggested they take a stroll downtown to the
Mills office ... they set out on
their journey across town, Koehler complaining about the cold...
To warm his collaborator, Arlen accelerated their pace, ad-libbing a tune in march tempo. Koehler fell
in and kept up; true he was warmer, as were his comments... As they neared the office,
Koehler began fitting words to the tune. When they arrived, as Koehler later recalled, "I Love a Parade"
was virtually a completed song.
Dan Healy insisted that the march be interpolated into Rhyth-Mania, which he staged,
after the vocal, for dancers dressed as drum majorettes twirling batons ...it was one of the major song hits
of the year. And all subsequent Cotton Club shows were titled Parades.
...the new "Rhythmania" show erupts at the Cotton Club tomorrow nite...(Sundee to you!)
APOLOGIA
We went up to the opening of "Rhythmania," that new show up at the Cotton Club, and we probably owe you
a report. Well, we'll just have to go along owing it to you. If this doesn't satisfy you, and you're
going to be a stickler, we beg to report the following: The show is called "Rhythmania." Danny Healy
produced it. In one number ... the chorus sits down on seat canes. Cab Calloway, who leads the orchestra,
also does a simply marv number called, "Kicking the Gong Around," which left the audience screaming for more.
There were two hundred and forty-odd celebrities present, and fully two thousand and forty-odd members of the
needle industries, all of whom weighed over two hundred and seventy pounds apiece, and ran to plump
companions. We fought for nearly an hour for the privilege of emulating a sardine, and sitting alternately
on the laps of (1) Walter Winchell, (2) Morton Downey, (3) Harry Richman, while waiters passed gingerale back
and forth across our collar-band. We have never, heretofore, gone voluntarily to a place, so uncomfortably,
unbellievably jammed in our life, nor, will we ever again. Any further reports on the new show will have to
come by telegraph, or the hell with it. Do you mind?.
The 20th and 21st Cotton Club Parades are often confused or combined, since both official programs read
simply "Cotton Club Parade." Many of the same entertainers were in both productions but the songs and
scenarios are different.
Cab Calloway starts at the club on September 18th, about a month before the new show officially
opens, when it’s presumably in previews or rehearsals before the premiere. Cab's guests on his first
night included Bill Robinson, Noble Sissle and Duke Ellington...
The 'entire' Cotton Club revue plays at Loew's Paradise in the Bronx for the week of September 23rd.
Many acts from both the 20th and 21st Editions appeared, and the cast also included Cora LaRedd, who
didn’t appear in either of the Cotton Club Parades in 1932.
The opening night was October 23rd with guests in the audience including Paul Muni, Abe Lyman, Jack
Benny, Duke Ellington, and "Aunt Jemima", impersonated at the time by Lillian Richard.
The stars were Aida Ward,... Elma Turner,... Lethia Hill,... Carolynne Snowden,...Nicholas
Brothers,... Nick Stewart,...Roy Atkins, the Four Blazers, ...Henri Wessels & Anise Boyer, and Alma
Smith...Other acts included ...Swan & Lee; ...Brown & McGraw;... Phil Scott, ... Pete, Peaches &
Duke,...'Little Bits', Jimmy Baskett, ... Jimmy Baskett, Bobby Sawyer and Norman Astwood; and Lew
Dolgoff...
...songs were composed by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler...
In March 1933, Ellington and his band returned to the Cotton Club to replace Cab Calloway, who was preparing for a Southern tour in the final performances of the 21st Cotton Club Parade...
...the Ellington Band remained in residence to perform in the 22nd Cotton Club Parade opening 16 April 1933.
Arlen and Koehler worked on five shows for the Cotton Club, from Brown Sugar in 1930 to the Parade of 1934, with time off for other projects, including a film project that required skipping the winter edition of the 1933 Parade.
(The programme for the 22nd edition said that was their sixth show, so Jablonski seems to be in error.)| Opened | October 1, 1933 |
| Ended | February 1934 |
| Producers | Dan Healy, Leonard Harper |
| Orchestra/Top billed | Cab Calloway; Claude Hopkins substitutes briefly, then Jimmie Lunceford 1934 01 05 |
| Second billed | Aida Ward, Nicholas Brothers |
| Third billed or late additions | Jim Boxwell, Wen Talbert Choir, Avon Long, Dusty Fletcher & Gallie Gaston, Sally Gooding, Amy Spencer (fan dancer), Three Dukes, Three Salesmen, Three Black Dots, |
| Showgirls, chorus girls and boys | Bea Ellis, Ruby Allen, Ethel Moses, Evelyn Shepard, Margaret Chereaux, Estrellita Brooks, Lena Horne, Una Mae Carlisle, Peg Griffith, Catherine Nash |
| Main composers | Jimmy Van Heusen & Jerry Arlen; Jack Stanley & George Little |
| Songs performed | Doin' the Uptown Lowdown, Dinner at Eight, Get Yourself a New Broom, Harlem Hospitality, Got a Need For You, Keep Tempo, On a Steamer Coming Over, There's a |
| Sheet music | Can This be the End of Love, Harlem Hospitality, Little Town Gal, Harlem Fan Tan, Lady with the Fan, There's a House in Harlem for Sale, Got a Need for You, Keep Tempo |
| Opened | March 11, 1934 |
| Ended | Fall 1934 |
| Producers | Dan Healy / Ted Koehler |
| Orchestra/Top billed | Jimmie Lunceford opens, (Fletcher Henderson scheduled 0616 but was canceled), then Mills Blue Rhythm Band w/ Lucky Millinder |
| Second billed | Adelaide Hall |
| Third billed or late additions | Pops & Louie, Meeres & Meeres, Juano Hernandez & Choir, Lethia Hill, Avon Long, Lena Horne, Bessie Dudley, Roy Atkins, Dynamite Hooker, Willie Jackson & George |
| Showgirls, chorus girls and boys | Gladys Walton, Dolly McCormack, Ethel Moses, Anise Boyer, Theresa Mason, Arlene Marshall, Catherine Nash, Amy Spencer, Marie Robinson, Ethel Shepherd, Estrellita |
| Main composers | Arlen & Koehler |
| Songs performed | Ill Wind, As Long as I Live, Here Goes, Primitive Prima Donna, Breakfast Ball, Keep Tempo, Spring Breaks Through, Chillun Get Up, Twice a Year, You Sure Don't Know |
| Sheet music | Ill Wind, As Long as I Live, Here Goes, Primitive Prima Donna, Breakfast Ball |
| Opened | November 25 1934 |
| Ended | March 1935 |
| Producers | Dan Healy |
| Orchestra/Top billed | Mills Blue Rhythm Band w/ Lucky Millinder; Cab Calloway replaces MBRB 1935 0106 to 0304 |
| Second billed | Nicholas Brothers, Bill Bailey, Ada Brown (Cab Calloway & Bill Robinson originally planned) |
| Third billed or late additions | Lena Horne, John Henry Choir (Juano Hernandez), Meeres & Meeres, Lethia Hill, Cora LaRedd, Swan & Lee, Ophelia & Pimento, Jessie Scott, Dynamite Hooker, 3 Brown |
| Showgirls, chorus girls and boys | Ethel Moses, Catherine Evans, Blanche Jones |
| Main composers | Ben Oakland & Mitchell Parish & Irving Mills |
| Songs performed | Dixie After Dark, I'm a Hundred Percent for You, Jingle of the Jungle, Like a Bolt From the Blue, Sidewalks of Cuba, Ridin' High, As Long as I Live, Don't Let Your Love Go |
| Sheet music | I'm a Hundred Percent for You, Sidewalks of Cuba, Like a Bolt from the Blue, Jingle of the Jungle, Dixie After Dark |
| Book and Lyrics | Ted Koehler |
| Music | Rube Bloom |
| Orchestrations | Bill Vodery, Claude Hopkins, Alex Hill |
| Dances | Elida Webb, Leonard Harper |
| Costumes | Orange Costumes, Inc. |
| Music publisher | Mills Music, Inc. |
| Shoes | Ben & Sally |
| Press relations | Lee Posner |
| Featuring | Nicholas Brothers; Nina Mae McKinney; Miller and Mantan; Butterbeans and Susie; Cora La Redd; Babe Wallace; Babe Matthews; Juano Hernandez; Cook and Brown; Lena Horne; Constance Smith; 3 Rhythm Queens; Jessie Cryar and Rhythm Rascals. |
| Claude Hopkins and Orchestra with Orlando Robeson | |
| Dancing girls | Hy Curtis, Lena Horne, Dolly McCormack, Iona Sneed, Lucille Wilson, Anna Jones, Joyce Beasley, Mae Williamson, Anna Bell Wilson, Nan Joyce, Tony Ellis, Arlene Poyas, Myrtle Quinland, Marie Robinson |
| Dancing boys | Chink Lee, Freddie Heron, Ernest Frazier, Eddie Morton, Al Alstock, Louis Brown, Jules Adger |
| Entire production conceived and supervised by Ted Koehler | |
| Dates | Sept.1936 to Jan.1937 | Jan. to March 1937 |
| Book, Lyrics and Music by | Benny Davis and J. Fred Coots | same |
| Production and dances | Clarence Robinson | same |
| Featuring | Bill Robinson; Cab Calloway;
Avis Andrews; Berry Bros.; Henri Wessels; Katherine Perry; Whyte's Maniacs; Tramp Band; Anne Lewis; Dynamite Hooker; Bahama Dancers; Wen Talberts Choir; Broadway Jones; Kaloah; 50 Sepian Stars; 50 Copper Colored Gals | Same except Bill Bailey "substituting for Bill Robinson who has been called to Hollywood to make a picture with Shirley Temple" and Wessels is moved further down the list. |
| Orchestras | Cab Calloway and Cotton Club Orchestra; Arthur Davy and His Orchestra | same |
| Entire room conceived and decorated by | Julian Harrison | same |
| Costumes executed by | Veronica | same |
| Designed by | Billy Weaver | same |
| Orchestrations | Will Vodery | same |
| Musical scores published by | Mills Music Inc. | same |
| Shoes by | Ben & Sally | same |
| Press relations | Harry Sobol | same |
NEVER A
LOCATION
OR COVER CHARGE
***
MINIMUM AFTER 10
DINNER
$1.50
6 TO 10 P.M.
SAT.-SUN.-HOLIDAYS $2.
For each production at the new Broadway location, the Cotton Club printed the large format, four page programs including the dinner and drinks menu, but also created new 16-page souvenir programs that sold for 25 cents, with photos, stories and cast bios.
Opening on 15 [sic] March 1937, the new revue, the Cotton Club Express, the fastest show of the series...
DON'T MISS THE 2:30 A.M. SHOW ... AT WHICH TIME WE PRESENT A ONE HOUR MINSTREL SHOW WITH THE ENTIRE COTTON CLUB CAST.
We had sixteen chorus girls and eight showgirls. The showgirls were all 5'10", 5'11". None of the chorus girls were above 5'5". I wanted the ponies. I wanted the two, that separation; I wanted the tall girls and the short girls. When we did a good picture number, the girls walking, I wanted those girls to be seen. [...] The showgirls did no dancing. They walked and turned and spun, just picture: walk here and pose, and walk somewhere else. But they didn‘t do any dancing.
From 1937 on, the Cotton Club Girls now performed exactly like blonde chorines, in partner dances and picture dances.
Ellington has also been engaged to compose the entire musical score for the lavish sepian revue. It marks the first time during his 13-year [sic] association with the Cotton Club that the maestro-composer has written the entire score for any production. The music will include the first love ballads and comedy numbers created by Ellington...
See additional details in TDWAW1 at 1938 03 09.Bill Robinson appeared in the Variety Show for only two weeks before Stepin Fetchit joined the cast.
Bill Robinson appeared in the Variety Show for only two weeks before Stepin Fetchit joined the cast.
Fetchit's absence allowed Louis Armstrong to take over as the sole headliner...
... The resident bands were led by Andy Preer 1923-7, Duke Ellington 1927-30, 1937, and 1938, his jungle music doing much to establish the nature of Cotton Club entertainment, Cab Calloway 1930-4 and 1936-7, Jimmie Lunceford 1934-6; ...
Comments:
Gammond's dates for Preer and Ellington are wrong.
Gammond's dates for the other bands have not been checked.
When the club first opened, in 1923 [sic], they used a succession of local bands, including the New Orleans Creole band of Armand J. Piron ... in 1924 they they started looking for a regular house band that could play good lively music for shows.
French Creoles webpage:In 1923, Piron took his band to New York City as part of his ambition to make the group nationally known. He succeeded in making a hit there, landing a residency at the Roseland Ballroom, and making recordings for three different companies ... In early 1924, some of Piron's band members were finding the cold northern winter and unfamiliar food and culture objectionable. Piron put the matter to a vote and ... the majority of the band voted to return home.
The Pittsburgh Courier 1923-11-17 p.11 announced Piron's band was on its way to New York City to record for Columbia. Its 1924-02-16 edition said it was in New York. The right margin of the column is truncated so the article is not fully readable. The Times Picayune, 1924-05-24 carried an ad for a dance that night at "Athenium Large Hall" with two orchestras, one being Piron's Tranchina Orchestra, so its return to New Orleans would seem to predate the opening of Cotton Club.... The Piron band (also a colored organization) returns to New Orleans, as they couldn't get their price for a vaudeville route.
Roseland has booked Fletcher Henderson and his orchestra, from the Club Alabam, operating last week ... Henderson was asked to put in an extra saxophone player ... without extra compensation by the Club Alabam management, so he bowed out.
... Cab's part in ... Rhythmania ended January 8, 1932 and was replaced by Mills Blue Rhythm Band with Baron Lee for the next ten weeks, except when Duke Ellington played for 10 days in February.
Whalen, pp. 30-31 says from June to late September, 1932, "Baron Lee and his Blue Rhythm Boys," a.k.a. "Mills Blue Rhythm band", subbed for Calloway when his band was on tour.There was only one logical place for us to broadcast from, and that was the new Loew State Building on Times Square. We moved the whole outfit over from Brooklyn ... The mechanical end of this new station was tucked into one end of our office, and antenna was raised on the roof, and we were in business ... We partitioned off a little one-room studio and hung it with flannel drapes. We sealed the windows and left only one door open. That was our studio, and it was just large enough to hold a small orchestra and an announcer, nothing more. Entertainers, when they begin coming round, stood in the halls while waiting for a chance to go on ... With all the windows and doors sealed, it was pretty difficult to work in there for very long. Actually, we soon knew from experience that fifteen minutes was about the maximum, so we began cutting the programs into fifteen-minute segments. That was the start of the standard radio time in use today.
For the $50 weekly fee, the cafe manager usually sends over th [sic] band one night and various singers from the floor show the same day and on some other date. While only two days a week are permissible, representatives from any one place may appear before the microphone two and three times on one of those days if so desired ... The station now has five or six such clients weekly, making an annual income of $15,000, which probably is more than sufficient to operate the station. In addition, it is a publicity adjunct for the Loew-Metro theatrical and picture interests.
WHN's station was located above Loew's State Theatre at 1540 Broadway. WHN was the first station to institute remote broadcasts from night clubs. The first [WHN remote] broadcast took place from New York's Hotel Alamac on June 9, 1924.
... the earliest [Cotton Club] radio broadcast reference I have found so far was on Wednesday, December 3, 1924 on WFBH (from NY Herald Tribune 11/30/24, 2nd page, midway 1st column). That would be just a few days after the November 29 opening of "The Brown Skin Vamps."
In 1927, Harlem had another piece of luck ... the exploding growth of network radio. A small station broadcast
a nightly session of Ellington’s music from the Cotton Club. The reaction was such that the Columbia
Broadcasting System approached Herman Stark, the club manager, and offered to broadcast the sessions on a
wider basis. It would do the club some good, Columbia suggested.
“There’s no money in it for me,” Stark
said haughtily. “It will do you some good, not me. However, it'll probably do Duke some good, too, so go
ahead and we'll see what happens.”
What happened was that tourists from all over the country came flocking uptown. These tourists had had
their earphone radios, or even their big Atwater Kents and Stromberg Carlsons turned on steadily since radio
first became a national pastime. No music like the Harlem music had ever come out of their radio speakers.
Overnight all the other big Harlem clubs added radio broadcasts. Harlem had now made the bigtime. It was a
national institution.
We went back into the Cotton Club ... in early 1931 ... We were on the radio from the Cotton Club three nights a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with the new Columbia Broadcasting System, National Broadcasting and Mutual Broadcasting. Each of them had us for thirty minutes one night a week ... Our announcer ... was Ted Husing, a celebrity in his own right, and one of the first announcers on live radio. Jimmie Wellington sometimes sat in when Husing wasn't available.
Lasker:I believe Cab Calloway was mistaken in stating the CC bcsts alternated in the same week between CBS, NBC and Mutual. Approximate dates: CBS (1929-30), NBC (1930-34), CBS (1935-36), Mutual (1937), CBS (1938).
[..] fashionably garbed men and women elbow each other for preferred standing room at the head of the [dance] floor, where they can watch Cab's gyrations at close range and marvel at the amazing shouts and wails which he emits. When microphones are placed in position for a broadcast, and a circle of chairs are arranged around them on the floor to prevent dancing couples from colliding with them, these seats are quickly occupied by patrons from ringside tables. These admirers appreciate the privilege of 'sitting in' and always respect the radio announcer's injunction to maintain silence while Cab is on the air.
Pathé Audio Review No.1short documentary about Harlem.
Pathé Audio Review Vol.3, No.1, Van Beuren-Pathé, 1 reel. Copyrighted December 28 [sic], 1930. Reviews: MPH [Motion Picture Herald], Janary 24, 1931; FD [The Film Daily], January 25, 1931. Pennsylvania canal on its last trip; Harlem residents (among them Duke Ellington and His Cotton Club Orchestra) at work and play.
Audio Review--No. 1
New Series
(Pathe)
Interesting
The review opens with a series of scenes depicting an example of the old canals which were used as
freight carriers in the days before the automobile and train. Done in a green tone and photographed by
Gardiner Wells, the subject is exceptionally beautiful from the scenic viewpoint. One of the old
horse-drawn barges on a Pennsylvania canal tells the story. The review closes with a group of pictures
of New York's negro center, Harlem, showing representative figures on the streets of the great "black"
way, all set to the music of Duke Ellington's orchestra as a background. Interiors of the club and
its program end the subject. Fairly interesting. ------------ Running time, 10 minutes.
Harlem AKA Harlem, New York 1930-1939,except for length, seems to be the film described in Bradley and The Film Daily. The film's title screen says
Pathe Audio Review HARLEM A cinema excursion into the great black metropolis of New York. Opening with Harlem street scenes, it provides glimpses inside a barber shop with a manicurist, then a marching band in a parade. The Cotton Club segment begins 4:15. Chorus girls dance while a man sings and the orchestra plays on a stage behind them. Duke stands while conducting, Sonny Greer is at stage right and Wellman Braud's string bass is on stage left. The chorus does several routines, changing costumes, and in the later sections, male dancers are used. The film shows brief closeups of Freddie Jenkins, Cootie Williams, Sonny Greer, Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges. While Freddie and Cootie have music stands with paper, they don't appear to be reading music. In a couple of brief glimpses through gaps in the chorus, 2 or 3 sidemen appear to be clapping or playing percussion accessories. After the chorus exits, the band is seen on stage with a railing separating it from the dance floor. While this clip is silent, one screen says
Music by the famous DUKE ELLINGTON AND HIS COTTON CLUB ORCHESTRA Sound recording by ALBERT SCHUSTER
Pathe Audio Review was a regular series of short films produced in the United States. The Harlem/Cotton Club segment was released as part of Pathe Audio Review Vol.3 No.1. Film Daily's review states the short was nine minutes in duration. Thus, the 10:18 clip ... is likely similar or identical to the finished short, although it lacks the soundtrack, alas. This film was released both in sound-on-film and sound-on-disc.
Harlem AKA Harlem, New York - Correct Speed Version 1930-1939. The footage does not include the river scene, but otherwise is the same as on the 10:18 film, but takes only 6 minutes and 53 seconds to play. If the river scene were included and also sped up, the result might have been the 9-minute film.
Duke Ellington 1933. Its title card says
A minute with Duke Ellington and his band. The first 18 seconds of this clip is unidentified music played at a frantic pace as title cards are displayed, the music continues through the remaining 26 seconds as footage from the 10:18 film is shown.
One Minute with Duke Ellington.
The conductor's [Ellsworth Reynolds'] communication with my jazz musicians just wasn't good semantics. So, after a couple of nights, I knew the show, and I just turned the piano around and started conducting-- with my head, my shoulders, my eyebrows, my hands... '
Let's hope a copy of this 16-inch disc surfaces some day!
Page designed by
David Palmquist
Delta, BC, Canada
-Optimized.png)
-Optimized.png)
