Cotton Club programs on ebay (2)

One would expect that, when offering a significant piece of jazz history with a steep starting bid such as USD 250,00, the seller would do some research to give basical background on it or, at least, provide the most essential data right. Well, not always!

This Cotton Club program is offered as from "circa 1929-1933" and, obviously, it is not from that timeframe, but from 1938, as the title of the revue (Cotton Club Parade, Fourth Edition) would lead you if consulting a few volumes of the vast Duke Ellington bibligraphy. Taking a simple look at John Edward Hasse's Ellington biography, Beyond Category. The Life And Genius Of Duke Ellington (Da Capo Press, 1993), on page 213, would be enough.

Although usually listed as having started on March 10, the program actually opened at midnight, March 9, and it ran probably through June 9 (according to Billboard, June 11, 1938, the show "closed last Thursday"). Two additional points: on one hand, for the first time since Blackberries of 1930, Ellington wrote the score; on the other, this would be his final appearance at the Cotton Club, which would close in June 1940.

Duke Ellington is coming to town!

In 1939, a certain concert in a certain place within a long string of one-nighters could be just another point in the map and another nightly routine for a famous big band such Duke Ellington’s. But, for a small city like Madison (capital of Wisconsin and, as of the 2000 census, with a population of 208,054), Ellington’s orchestra coming to town was such a sensation!

Here’s the local press coverage for the October 17 and October 18, 1939, concerts at the Orpheum Theatre (Madison).

- Previews of the concerts, published in the Wisconsin State Journal and the Capital Times (October 15, 1939):

- Several advertisements published in the Wisconsin State Journal and the Capital Times from October 14 to October 18:

- Brief reviews of the October 17, 1939 concert, published in the Wisconsin State Journal and the Capital Times on October 18, 1939:

Cotton Club programs on ebay

Two Cotton Club programs have surfaced on ebay, as a big game hunting trophy for extremely wealthy collectors of memorabilia.

The first one, listed as a "RARE 1929 ART DECO DUKE ELLINGTON COTTON CLUB PROGRAM" and with Buy It Now price of USD 150, has a colourful cover made by Julian Harrison. In fact, as you can easily discover by the listed songs and the presence of Ivie Anderson (spelled as Ivy Anderson), it IS NOT from 1929. It is from 1938, and it was partially reproduced on Duke Ellington: Day by Day and Film by Film by Dr. Klaus Strateman (Jazz Media, 1992). If you ever wanted to know the menu at the Cotton Club, you're lucky to have come to the right place [see the fourth picture].

The second one, also from the mid 1930's, also includes the great Ethel Waters, and it has an amazingly crazy starting bid of USD 800, maybe because it bears Duke Ellington's autograph.