COTTON CLUB CELEBRATES 40 YEARS OF MUSIC

By AUSTIN FENNER

The Cotton Club and its owner are celebrating an incredible 40 year run at Harlem swing and Big band music. And, they are planning to go for another 40 year stretch!

John Beatty, the Harlem nightlife impresario and owner of the legendary Harlem music venue has brought smiles to thousands of faces and lifted their hearts night after night at the Harlem musical oasis.

“It feels great to carry on the legacy of The Cotton Club and keep jazz music alive. It’s a honor.“ said John Beatty. “We need to keep our music alive. If I don’t do it, who is going to do it.”

If the Apollo Theater is the crown jewel of American soul, then the Cotton Club is the Hope Diamond of jazz music and swing entertainment.

Beatty is busy setting the next phase of the Cotton Club’s mystique. He is in negotiations to bring the iconic brand to the Bellagio in Las Vegas and setting the jazz supper club with sister locations in Miami and Havana, Cuba.

“I am very excited about the next phase of the Cotton Club,” said Beatty.

The original Cotton club rose to fame during the Prohibition Era (1923 to 1935), as the crowds flocked to see and hear the legendary music of Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Lena Horne, Billie Holiday and Count Basie.

Today, the latest incarnation of the Cotton Club has had an amazing 40 year run is a one story mediterranean style structure ensconced on a triangular island on 125th Street and 12th Avenue. Bright and Hollywood white, the current home of the Cotton Club sits under the arch of a steel superstructure shouldering the roadway for vehicles riding along Riverside Drive.

One of the boys in the band who has been a part of the current run of the Cotton Club tradition is saxophonist John David Simon.

“If it were not for the musicians the club would not have the significance it has currently and historically,” said Simon, who has been performing the lead alto saxophone at the Cotton Club for the last 11 years. “I love the musicians and the atmosphere and the band adds to the experience”

He added,”The music is a great tradition jazz and big band music. It’s timeless.”

Tenor saxophonist Omar Daniels echoed those sentiments.

“When people start dancing we feel the connection,” said Daniels. “It about making people feel the music and the energy.”

Locals and tourists recently came to hear crooner Kenny Smith soulfully sing “Satin Doll” and “Take the A train.” The crowd was later mesmerized by torch singer Annette St. John’s rendition of George Benson’s timeless classic “Lost in a Masquerade.”

Yet, the Cotton Club is more than a physical structure. It’s a mental destination of the heart and soul of the greatest American music the world has ever seen. The great music lives because of the dedicated musicians and singers who keeps the tunes alive.

“It went so fast. It doesn’t seem like 40 years,” said Beatty. “It seems like 10 to 15 years.”

On a recent night, this reporter witnessed a 14 piece band clad in black tuxedoes perform some of jazz music hot numbers. Duets of dancing girls in spaghetti dresses twirled their legs and flared their arms and tap dancers syncopated their feet to breezy beats.

Beatty is the maestro who brings together all the pieces.

“I opened in January 1977 as the Cotton Club. I started spreading the word,” he said. “I opened up with Cab Calloway in 1977.”

Incredibly, Beatty went international in 2005 and franchised The Cotton Club to Tokyo in 2005. It is still thriving in the land of the rising sun.

“In 2005, I opened up with Cab Calloway’s grandson, Christopher Calloway Brooks, in Tokyo,” he said proudly.

Harlem has experienced dramatic change recently with gentrification and new businesses and restaurants reinventing the Harlem landscape. Sadly, many of those native business owners have drifted away with the sands of time.

Beatty is happy to take a pregnant pause from the music and talk with the media to celebrate his astonishing 40 year run. He laments that there are only a few native Harlem business owners left to share the spotlight as this new uptown renaissance takes shape.

“I’m lonely. I want to see other Black people survive and strive,” said the savvy and shrewd businessman. “I want to see more Blacks businesses open in Harlem. There are only a few Blacks left in business.”

Beatty earned his keep as young man as a bricklayer at $3 an hour. He used his big hands to help lay the foundation to famous residential structures, such has Esplanade Gardens complex and other famous New York City buildings.

As a young man, Beatty chased the good times as a bar crawler as he soaked in the New York City nightlife. Eventually, he saved his nickels to open up his first bar called the Hamilton Lounge in Harlem.

Beatty credits his early success to some old fashion wisdom given to him by his grandmother, Josie Richardson, which was to buy property and own it.

“Landlords will let you fix up their property and take it away, so I started to buy property,” he said. “My grandmother told me, ‘Boy, go get yourself some land.’”

Beatty’s business sense runs in his DNA. He learned discipline and hard work from his grandfather, Eliot Richardson, a black man who owned 200 acres in South Carolina during the early part of the 20th century.

“He had black and white sharecroppers working the land,” Beatty said.

In 1976, Beatty opened up a bar at the current location of the Cotton Club. After sinking $100,000 into renovations, he was able to strike a deal with the landlord to buy the 125th street building. Beatty said he christened his bar The Cotton Club.

“The (original) Cotton Club was a speakeasy owned by gangsters. Gangster don’t register the name,” he said.

Beatty had to fend off some legal challenges, and he eventually was granted ownership of the name in 1990.

The original Cotton Club opened in 1922 on 142nd street and Lenox Avenue until 1936, said Beatty. It reopened later that same year on 47th street and Broadway for another three year run. The Cotton Club would lay dormant until Beatty would bring it back to life 37 years later.

The original Cotton Club was a gangster’s’ paradise. It catered to a white’s only clientele, as black musicians and staff gave it style and panache and made it a fabled New York City destination.

Heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson opens an intimate super club in1920 at 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue called Club Deluxe. Bootlegger and gangster, Owney Madden, took over the club in 1923 and renamed it The Cotton Club. Johnson and Madden came to some arrangement that allowed Johnson to be the club’s manager, while Madden pushed his bootleg booze to the “Whites Only” patrons of The Cotton Club.

In the heart of Central Harlem, The Cotton Club boasted a vile ‘no blacks allowed’ policy.

Ironically, Beatty, who is a youthful 80 year old, grew up in a segregated South Carolina under the rule of Jim Crow laws, which denied blacks certain basic rights and freedoms.

Beatty said the southern Jim Crow laws pushed him to want to take charge of his own life and business fortune.

“It made me want to own my own business,” Beatty said. He said in his hometown of Irmo, South Carolina, he proudly witnessed black shop keepers and trades people thrive under the weight of laws meant to break their spirits.

“In the South, Blacks owned their own businesses,” he said.

Beatty said he has turned down offers of $10 million from buyers who wanted to grab the Cotton Club name.

“I told them to come up with $20 million and we will talk,” he said. “ I have no desire to sell. At this stage of my life. What am I going to do with $10 million dollars…. develop a gambling habit.”

One patron Allen Dance parachuted in New York City from Richmond, Virginia with his family to celebrate his nephew, Joseph Dance’s graduation form Drexel University.

“I am doing a tour of Harlem. The band was great and we love jazz,” said Dance, 54, who shared a warm embrace with his wife, Kathleen. Dance said the highpoint of the night was watching the electrifying tap performance featuring Omar Edwards.

“I felt like I was in a time warp,” Dance said.

The Sophisticated ladies added a sexy splash to the night. They were led by Dormeshia Edwards, Claudia Rahardjanoto, Arleigh Rothenberg, Carmen Carriker, Makiko Kuri, Tempestt Perrin and Shana Weaver.

Upper Westsider, Dee Anne Hunstein was enjoying the night with some friends because she plans to celebrate the life of her late husband Don Hunstein, a photographer, who used his lense to document great jazz musicians.

“They (Cotton Club) captures you and get you inside (their world),” said Hunstein, who said the only fitting tribute to her husband’s photographic legacy of the music world is a late September night of song and dance. “It takes you away from the trouble of the world.”

Hunstein’s friend, Nadine Herman, a native New York said she couldn’t believe she waited so long to enjoy a night at the Cotton Club. “I grew up with big band music of Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey,” said Herman. “The Cotton Club is a cultural happening.”

More than big band music, the Cotton Club is a true supper club which serves of creole flavored delights. From honey wings as an appetizer, I found the Louisiana style blue snapper flavorful. It was garnished with rosemary and lightly array of peppers. The roasted chicken was succulent with a nod to a creole heritage. The sides of yams and collard greens was the perfect compliment.

Remember, the Cotton Clubs roots are from the speakeasy days of prohibition. I sampled the club’s pina colada and a typhoon drink that was a combination of light and dark rums with lime juice and passion fruit. The drinks didn’t disappoint.

Beatty rejoices nightly in the flocking crowds and the music.

He is grooming his grandson’s to keep the Cotton Club in the family business.

The Cotton Club keeps me young,” he said. “It keeps me going.”

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