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 Mocambo nightclub in Hollywood, after Marilyn Monroe lobbied the owner for the booking. The booking was instrumental in Fitzgerald's career. Bonnie Greer dramatized the incident as the musical drama, "Marilyn and Ella", in 2008. It had previously been widely reported that Fitzgerald was the first black performer to play the Mocambo, following Monroe's intervention, but this is not true. African-American singers Herb Jeffries, Eartha Kitt, and Joyce Bryant all played the Mocambo in 1952 and 1953, according to stories published at the time in "Jet" magazine and "Billboard". "Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book", released in 1956, was