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
Lush Life (jazz song) composition (along with "Take the 'A' Train"). The song was written in the key of D-flat major. The melody is over relatively complex chord changes, compared to many jazz standards, with chromatic movement and modulations, which evoke a dreamlike state and the dissolute spirit characteristic of the so-called lush life. Nat King Cole performed "Lush Life" in 1949, while trumpeter Harry James recorded it four times. In the 1950s it was performed by jazz vocalists Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McRae, and Sarah Vaughan. John Coltrane recorded it twice. One was a 14-minute version in 1958 as the title track of an