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
Swing music with pop vocalists such as Bobby Darin, Dean Martin, Judy Garland, and Nat King Cole, as well as jazz-oriented vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald and Keely Smith. Many of these singers were also involved in the "less swinging" vocal pop music of this period. Swingin' pop remained popular into the mid-1960s, becoming one current of the "easy listening" genre including Johnny Mathis, Andy Williams, Burt Bacharach, Dionne Warwick, Ray Conniff, and Henry Mancini. Big band jazz made a comeback as well. The Stan Kenton and Woody Herman bands maintained their popularity during lean years of the late 1940s and beyond, making