Harlem's Lenox Lounge opened in 1939 at 125th Street and Lenox Avenue (more recently designated as Malcolm X Blvd.). The allegations against Josephson were fueled by a popular and ruthless New York gossip columnist, Walter Winchell, whose unsubstantiated claims and negative coverage of Josephson badly damaged business at Café Society. The committee was a precursor to the Joseph McCarthy "red scare" hearings of the 1950s, convened to investigate any citizen suspected of having Communist ties. Those undertakings led to his brother being called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1947. Café Society was run by Barney Josephson who had an affinity for left-wing causes and privately hosted related events in support of those efforts. Singers were the specialty of the club with Hazel Scott, Big Joe Turner, Lena Horne and Sarah Vaughan all performing on its small stage. Billie Holiday, though she played the Cotton Club as well, made her reputation at Café Society where she sang from the club's first day in business. The club was strictly about the music there was no dancing or audience socializing during performances. A microcosm of an ideal culture, Café Society was the first jazz club to pursue integrated audiences, going as far as providing preferential seating to patrons of color while openly welcoming celebrities and members of the privileged class. Located in the Sheridan Square section of Greenwich Village, this "neighborhood" was a small triangle plot at the intersection of Washington Place, West 4th Street, and Barrow Street. In polar opposition to the exclusive and glitzy Cotton Club was Café Society. It was Ellington's stature and influence that eventually convinced club management to relaxbut not eliminateits racial admission restrictions. Among the performers were Cab Calloway, Fletcher Henderson, Billie Holiday, Jimmie Lunceford, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Fats Waller and Duke Ellington. Writer Langston Hughes described the setting as "a Jim Crow club for gangsters and moneyed whites." Despite the oppressive working conditions, the club provided beneficial exposure for the musicians (often through affiliated radio broadcasts) as well as a relatively high pay rate. Despite featuring the most popular black artists of the era, The Cotton Club served a "white-only" clientele, was decorated in blatantly racist themes, and performers and patrons were strictly segregated. The club operated from 1923 to 1935 at the Harlem location, moving to midtown Manhattan in 1936 and then closing in 1940. Johnson remained the manager but the club essentially became a front for selling liquor during prohibition. Run by boxer Jack Johnson, the club was taken over by a paroled mobster, Owney Madden, in 1923 and the name changed to The Cotton Club. It began life in 1920 as the Club Deluxe, a Harlem supper club at 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue. New York If any venue symbolized the Jazz Age, it was The Cotton Club. Their success (more than one million records sold) piqued the interest of music fans and created new opportunities for performers and the establishments that would support audience demand. Still, it was a reluctant gamble for the record labels with Columbia signing, and almost immediately dropping ODJB, and then the Victor label picking them up. It was with the arrival of New Orleans' Original Dixieland Jass Bandan all-white groupthat heads began to turn. The music itself was viewed as a novelty and black performers as caricatures. As jazz bands made their way to New York they tended to be lobbed into a mix of vaudeville acts, comedians and other nomadic entertainers passing through with hopes of striking gold. By the late 1920s, the next phase of the jazz scene had shifted from Chicago to New York though, initially, there was no red carpet rolled out. Jazz didn't abandon Chicago but its further development only began to take on a distinct personality in the 1960s.
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