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Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous jazz orchestra from 1923 through the rest of his life.
Cabell Calloway III was an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, conductor and dancer. He was associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, where he was a regular performer and became a popular vocalist of the swing era. His niche of mixing jazz and vaudeville won him acclaim during a career that spanned over 65 years.
The Cotton Club was a New York City nightclub from 1923 to 1940. It was located on 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue (1923–1936), then briefly in the midtown Theater District (1936–1940). The club operated during the United States' era of Prohibition and Jim Crow era racial segregation. Black people initially could not patronize the Cotton Club, but the venue 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 Will Vodery Choir, The Mills Brothers, Nina Mae McKinney, Billie Holiday, Midge Williams, Lena Horne, and dancers such as Katherine Dunham, Bill Robinson, The Nicholas Brothers, Charles 'Honi' Coles, Leonard Reed, Stepin Fetchit, the Berry Brothers, The Four Step Brothers, Jeni Le Gon and Earl Snakehips Tucker.
Ivie Anderson was an American jazz singer. Anderson was a member of the Duke Ellington Orchestra for more than a decade.
Ted L. Koehler was an American lyricist. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1972.
John Treville Latouche (La Touche) (November 13, 1914, Baltimore, Maryland – August 7, 1956, Calais, Vermont) was a lyricist and bookwriter in American musical theater.
"I Got Rhythm" is a piece composed by George Gershwin with lyrics by Ira Gershwin and published in 1930, which became a jazz standard. Its chord progression, known as the "rhythm changes", is the foundation for many other popular jazz tunes such as Charlie Parker's and Dizzy Gillespie's bebop standard "Anthropology ".
Adelaide Louise Hall was an American-born UK-based jazz singer and entertainer. Her long career spanned more than 70 years from 1921 until her death and she was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Hall entered the Guinness Book of World Records in 2003 as the world's most enduring recording artist, having released material over eight consecutive decades. She performed with major artists such as Art Tatum, Ethel Waters, Josephine Baker, Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, Fela Sowande, Rudy Vallee, and Jools Holland, and recorded as a jazz singer with Duke Ellington and with Fats Waller.
Will Vodery was an American composer, conductor, orchestrator, and arranger, and one of the few black Americans of his time to make a name for himself as a composer on Broadway, working largely for Florenz Ziegfeld. He had offices at the Gaiety Theatre office building in Times Square.
Blackbirds of 1928 was a hit Broadway musical revue that starred Adelaide Hall, Bill Bojangles Robinson, Tim Moore and Aida Ward, with music by Jimmy McHugh and lyrics by Dorothy Fields. It contained the hit songs "Diga Diga Do", the duo's first hit, "I Can't Give You Anything But Love", "Bandanna Babies" and "I Must Have That Man" all sung by Hall.
"I Got It Bad (and That Ain't Good)" is a pop and jazz standard with music by Duke Ellington and lyrics by Paul Francis Webster published in 1941. It was introduced in the musical revue Jump for Joy by Ivie Anderson, who also provided the vocals for Duke Ellington and His Orchestra on the single Victor 27531. Recordings to reach the Billboard charts in 1941/42 were by Duke Ellington (#13) and by Benny Goodman (vocal by Peggy Lee) (#25).
"Rocks in My Bed" is a 1941 song written by Duke Ellington.
Sid Kuller was an American comedy writer, producer and lyricist/composer, who concentrated on special musical material, gags and sketches for leading comics. He collaborated with Ray Golden and Hal Fimberg on the screenplay of the Marx Brothers' vehicle The Big Store, for which he also supplied the lyrics to the musical climax, "The Tenement Symphony". Earlier in their careers, Kuller and Golden wrote comedy songs and special material for the Ritz Brothers. Although he wrote prodigiously and with facility throughout his life, Kuller admitted, "The creation of comedy is a painful experience".
Hal Borne was an American popular song composer, orchestra leader, music arranger and musical director, who studied music at the University of Illinois. He often collaborated with lyricists Sid Kuller and Ray Golden, including songs for the Marx Brothers and Tony Martin.
Swing jazz emerged as a dominant form in American music, in which some virtuoso soloists became as famous as the band leaders. Key figures in developing the "big" jazz band included bandleaders and arrangers Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hines, Glenn Miller, and Artie Shaw. Duke Ellington and his band members composed numerous swing era hits that have become standards: "It Don't Mean a Thing " (1932), "Sophisticated Lady" (1933) and "Caravan" (1936), among others. Other influential bandleaders of this period were Benny Goodman and Count Basie.
Marie Bryant was an American dancer, singer and choreographer, described as "one of the most vivacious black dancers in the United States".
The Cotton Club Boys were African American chorus line entertainers who, from 1934, performed class act dance routines in musical revues produced by the Cotton Club until 1940, when the club closed, then as part of Cab Calloway's revue on tour through 1942.
Shades of Harlem: A Cotton Club Musical is an off-Broadway musical theater revue of songs from the Harlem Renaissance. The show debuted in August 1983 at the Village Gate and has gone on to play around the world. The show features jazz music and dancing that would have been popular at the Cotton Club during the Harlem Renaissance. Original performances included dancers from the era, including Ludie Jones and Juanita Boisseau. The show received mixed reviews.
References
- ↑ Dietz, Dan (2015). The Complete Book of 1940s Broadway Musicals. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 108–109. ISBN 9781442245280.
- ↑ Peterson, Bernard L. (1993). A Century of Musicals in Black and White: An Encyclopedia of Musical Stage Works By, About, Or Involving African Americans. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 203. ISBN 978-0-313-26657-7.
- ↑ "Jump For Joy: Duke Ellington’s Celebratory Musical", David Johnson, February 6, 2008, Indiana Public Media, consulted on 26 March 2017. http://indianapublicmedia.org/nightlights/jump-for-joy-duke-ellingtons-celebratory-musical/
- The Duke Ellington Reader, Mark Tucker, Oxford University Press, 1995, preview available on Google Books.
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