Duke Ellington Begins His Cotton Club Residency

In the autumn of 1927, an unexpected turn of events altered the trajectory of American dance music. Bandleader King Oliver passed up a recurring engagement as the resident orchestra at Harlem's Cotton Club. Ellington's manager, the publisher Irving Mills, arranged for the job to go to Duke Ellington and his band, the Washingtonians, which had grown from a quintet into a ten-piece orchestra during several years at the Club Kentucky on Broadway. The band took on the club's demanding stage shows and began the landmark residency on December 4, 1927.

The venue maintained a strict racial divide, catering almost exclusively to a wealthy white clientele while presenting African American talent in elaborate stage shows. The revues were fast-paced spectacles of dance numbers, vaudeville acts, comedic sketches, and bootleg beverages. Ellington's group provided the live musical framework for these revues, performing songs by composer Jimmy McHugh and lyricist Dorothy Fields while steadily introducing his own original pieces. The demanding stage requirements pushed the bandleader to refine his approach to orchestral texture, dynamic coloration, and instrumental phrasing.