Cotton Club Advertisement, circa 1937
Kategorie: Unzugeordnet
Way before the genesis of of shows like MTV this short Film was made to illustrate the new underground Music scene. Jazz and Swing music were emerging from the Cotton Club in Harlem, a club which although had a racist door policy of no Blacks (unless performing) were pioneering this groundbreaking music and Dance Culture to a strictly wealthy White audience of Cultural observers. This clip shows Cab Calloway performing Hotcha Razz-Ma-Tazz and ‘Long About Midnight at the Cotton Club after which they travel through Harlem at night to a house party where Cab continues the entertainment by performing Jitterbug. If you look closely you can see a young Lena Horne Dancing, she joined the Cotton Club at Sixteen and went on to perform in a string of Films before she was blacklisted by Hollywood for her Apparent left wing views which were Demonised by the McCarthy movement. Spreading anti communist paranoia across America it introduced the idea that certain thoughts,actions and ideas were “Un-American” ideas that some Americans still hold onto in todays seemingly Modern times.
Check the clip for a Time Machine straight back to swinging Harlem in 1935
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Wesley Morse provided program and promotional illustrations for Owney Madden’s Cotton Club throughout the 1930′s at its 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue location in Harlem. The club closed in 1936 and relocated downtown at Broadway and 48th Street, Morse came along, continuing to illustrate the club’s programs. The Cotton Club closed its doors for good in 1940.
Famed nightclub impresario Lou Walters opened The Latin Quarter in 1942 in its place, and Morse become that club’s premier image maker throughout the 40′s and 50′s.
JAZZ AND SWING
Weekende is near what inspires me to reblog some music favorites.
Elegant and rich in tradition: figure skating was one of the few winter sport disciplines that have long been very well organized before the Olympics in national associations. First World and European championships already existed in the 19th century.
Since the introduction of a Winter Olympics was controversial within the IOC, the popular discipline had become olympic before Chamonix, through competitions during the regular Olympics in the summer – as happened in London in 1908 and 1920 in Antwerp. Comments on pics:
- Dancing on Ice: On January 24, 1924 the day of the opening ceremony of the first Winter Olympic Games, this figure skater trained to music from the gramophone – sporty, but with cigarette in her mouth.
- Audience Favorite: The Norwegian Sonja Henie, here at their free skating, though being the darling of the public at the age of eleven years as the youngest participant of the Winter Games and her unconcern, she finished only on the eighth (and last) place. In the following three Winter Games, she always won a gold medal.
- Triumph in the home: the French Andrée Joly and Pierre Brunet won the bronze medal in Chamonix pair skating behind the couples from Finland and Austria. An unusually cold weather had created good ice conditions at the last moment.
- Again Joly and Brunet.