Unraveling the Legacy of The Cotton Club: Harlem's Legendary Nightclub

The Cotton Club was a famous New York City nightclub that was open from 1920 to 1940.

It was a ‘whites only’ segregated speakeasy during the Prohibition and Jim Crow era where blacks performed for a white audience.

Harlem became predominantly black in the 1920s, after a large number of African-Americans moved there during the Great Migration.

In 1923 a British gangster and bootlegger called Owney “The Killer” Madden got out of Sing Sing prison and bought heavyweight champion boxer Jack Johnson’s supper club, the Club Deluxe on the corner of 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem and renamed it The Cotton Club.

Madden opened the club to sell alcohol during prohibition.   He also wanted to make money from the white customers who wanted to experience Black entertainment.

The Cotton Club was a whites only club, except for the staff and entertainers.

Visitors from around the world would take the A train to Harlem, to get to New York’s jazziest nightclub, while vendors sold marijuana on the street.

Madden used The Cotton Club as an outlet to sell his ‘Number One’  beer to the prohibition crowd.   Although the club was briefly closed several times in the 1920s for selling alcohol, the owners political connections allowed them to always reopen quickly.

Madden hired the most impressive black performing artists in New York City for his shows and signed Broadway’s top white songwriters to compose the scores for his dazzling revues.

He positioned The Cotton Club to present first class authentic Black entertainment to a wealthy whites only audience, that catered to Manhattan’s young caviar and martini crowd, out looking for a buzz of elicit pleasure wrapped in safe and suitably elegant surroundings.

The club’s design evoked a Southern plantation themed atmosphere.

Waiter’s dressed in red tuxedo’s looked convincingly like butlers, deftly popping champagne corks and serving exotic dishes like venison steaks and Chinese chop suey.

Dance routines were wild, fast and furious and dancers were held to strict standards.   They had to be at least 5 ft 6 inches tall,  light skinned and under 21 years old.

The Cotton Club was a springboard to fame for many African American artists.

The Duke Ellington Orchestra opened as the house band at the Cotton Club in 1927.   The handsome young band leader perfectly turned out in top hat and tails was about to make a name for himself at the hottest classiest club in Harlem.

Live radio broadcasts from the club fanned the flames of Ellington’s star power.

Adelaide Hall, one of the most famous voices in American Jazz often sang with the band.  A few years later, Cab Calloway “Mr Hi- D- Ho” of “Minnie the Moocher” fame took over when Ellington left for Hollywood.

Fat’s Waller, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Nat King Cole, Ethel Waters, Lena Horne was a showgirl,  Billie Holiday, The Nicholas Brothers, Ella Fitzgerald Bessie Smith all performed.

Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and Sammy Davis Jr tap danced.   Top Broadway and Tin Pan Alley songwriters including Irving Berlin,  Fields and McHugh,  Arlen and Kohler, who wrote the song “Get Happy”, they all wrote a string of hits for The Cotton Club.

The club was known for its elegance and sophistication and became a popular gathering spot for celebrities, including Jimmy Durante and George Gershwin.

Finally in the mid-30s the club allowed blacks in the audience.

The Cotton Club closed permanently in 1940 under pressure from higher rents, changing taste and a threatening federal investigation into tax evasion by Manhattan nightclub owners.

There was also the famous Cotton Club Paramount Picture feature in 2015.