Cotton Club Cotton Club The Cotton Club was a New York City nightclub located in Harlem on 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue from 1923 to 1935, then briefly in the midtown Theater District from 1936 to 1940. The club operated most notably during the United States' era of Prohibition. The club was a whites-only establishment, but featured many of the most popular black entertainers of the era, including musicians Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford, Chick Webb, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Fats Waller, Willie Bryant; vocalists Adelaide Hall, Ethel Waters, Cab Calloway, Bessie Smith, Aida Ward, Avon Long, the Dandridge Sisters, the
Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong collaborations a host of instrumentalists from the Jazz At The Philharmonic troupe. The idea of entire duet album came about from Verve's Norman Granz who had the idea to pair Fitzgerald and Armstrong. Granz also persuaded Armstrong to forsake his own trad jazz group and embrace the modern sound of Oscar Peterson and composers such as Porter and Berlin. Fitzgerald allowed Louis to choose the keys in which to sing the repertoire and together they recorded the first of three albums, "Ella and Louis". "Ella and Louis" found Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong accompanied by the Oscar Peterson Quartet. The studio