“My uncle used to come up here and party,” the man said to me as we headed to the Cotton Club in New York. He and I were among a group of people who had come to the city to see a show on Broadway and were having lunch in Harlem.
The Cotton Club was located in the next block just beyond the restaurant. I had seen the sign on a trip here before, but my brain just didn’t connect this Cotton Club with the famed Harlem nightspot of the 1920s and 1930s. I assumed it was just some club that had snagged the name.
We weren’t in the “heart” of Harlem where the club had originated. We were at 125th Street near 12th Avenue and Riverside Drive. It just didn’t register.
Until Bobby said, yes, it was the same club. So I took him to explore. The entrance was a small door that opened into a dark space, with a big man sitting at a table that nearly blocked the entrance. His eyes were fixed on a computer, and he didn’t seem too welcoming. But when I asked if we could come in and look around, he was obliging.
The room was tight, with rows of red-clothed tables from back to front, ending in a small stage with keyboards, drums and speakers. We got there just before noon on a Saturday, and waiters were setting up the place for lunch. To the right were a slightly raised area and a small balcony with more tables. Near the door, a spiral staircase led downstairs and upstairs, and the floor bore silver and black Cotton Club logos.
Bobby and I walked around, but I still couldn’t get over the cramped size. It didn’t seem like the place I had read about and seen in the movie “The Cotton Club.” It certainly felt ancient, like an old singer that had become a relic of its former self, still hanging on, still proud, and still here. Though this was the Cotton Club in name only, the club and its history still awed me.
On the walls were old framed black and white photos of African American musicians and singers whose performances drew flocks of people back then to the club: Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Cab Calloway.
As Bobby and I stared into the photos, he repeated that his uncle would come up from Philadelphia to party at the Cotton Club. But I still didn’t get it until I had left the club and returned with two other friends. One wondered if the wood floor was the original one where people danced. Then I realized that there wasn’t enough room in this tiny space for dancing girls, loads of tables and hordes of people.
This was not the “original” Cotton Club. If it were, Bobby’s uncle would never have been allowed to walk through the front door. The original did not allow black people to come in to enjoy the shows. They could perform and they could dance, but they could not sit down at a table and order food. So, his uncle could only have arrived sometime later when the rules had been tossed.
The Cotton Club, I learned by Googling, moved to this location in 1978 (the man behind the computer confirmed it), its second since it first opened in 1920. The original was located at 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue farther east. This club was west side, near the river that separates the city from New Jersey.
The original club was Harlem’s most popular nightspot in the 1920s and 1930s, offering booze, food and top entertainment (Count Basie, Bessie Smith, Cab Calloway, Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Nicholas Brothers, Ivie Anderson, Ethel Waters and the Nicholas Brothers). Boxer Jack Johnson opened it as the Club Deluxe, and its name was changed to the Cotton Club (its theme was plantation life with a jungle motif) after Owney Maddox took it over two years later. Its white patrons were offered dancers, singers and comedians, along with black waiters to serve them.
White patrons could also dance to the house band, which included Duke Ellington and his orchestra from 1927 to 1931. They built their reputation there partly through nationwide radio broadcasts of their performances. The Duke was followed by Cab Calloway and his band. Race riots in Harlem on 125th Street in 1935 forced the club to close at that location (whites were afraid to return) a year later, and it reopened at 48th Street and Broadway where it remained until 1940.
The club’s chorus line was just as celebrated, but not just anyone could get into it. The African American women had to be light skinned, 5 feet 6 inches tall and not over 20 years old. Lena Horne was one of them, joining the chorus in 1933 at the age of 16.
Today, the club still offers a Sophisticated Ladies chorus line (minus the stringent requirements, I’m sure), an Allstars swing and jazz band, tap dancing, a gospel show and more. And you can still dance on wood on the first and second floors.
