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Paradise Club (Atlantic City, New Jersey)
The Paradise Club or Club Paradise was a nightclub and jazz club at 220 North Illinois Avenue in Atlantic City, New Jersey. It was one of two major black jazz clubs in Atlantic City during its heyday from the 1920s through 1950s, the other being Club Harlem. Entertaining a predominantly white clientele, it was known for its raucous floor shows featuring gyrating black dancers accompanied by high-energy jazz bands led by the likes of Count Basie, Jimmie Lunceford, and Lucky Millinder. In 1954 the Paradise Club merged with Club Harlem under joint ownership. History Opened in the 1920s, the Paradise Club was owned by Harold Paul Abrams, who also owned Harold's Club and the Basin Street Club. Abrams was also the general manager of the 500 Club. Abrams promoted the Paradise as "the oldest nightclub in America". It was the first club to offer "breakfast shows" after the nightlong entertainment. Willis notes that most of the white clientele came from the Traymore Hotel, a summer resort. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atlantic City, New Jersey
Atlantic City, sometimes referred to by its initials A.C., is a Jersey Shore seaside resort city (New Jersey), city in Atlantic County, New Jersey, Atlantic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Atlantic City comprises the second half of the Atlantic City-Hammonton, New Jersey, Hammonton metropolitan statistical area, which encompasses those cities and all of Atlantic County for statistical purposes. Both Atlantic City and Hammonton, as well as the surrounding Atlantic County, are culturally tied to Philadelphia and constitute part of the larger Philadelphia metropolitan area or Delaware Valley, the nation's Metropolitan statistical area, seventh-largest metropolitan area as of 2020. Located in South Jersey on Absecon Island and known for its taxis, casinos, nightlife, Boardwalk (entertainment district), boardwalk, and Atlantic Ocean beaches and coastline, the city is prominently known as the "Las Vegas of the East Coast" and inspired the U.S. version of the board game ''M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johnny Coles
John Coles (July 3, 1926 – December 21, 1997) was an American jazz trumpeter. Early life Coles was born in Trenton, New Jersey, on July 3, 1926. He grew up in Philadelphia and was self-taught on trumpet. Later life and career Coles spent his early career playing with R&B groups, including those of Eddie Vinson (1948–1951), Bull Moose Jackson (1952), and Earl Bostic (1955–1956). He was with James Moody from 1956 to 1958, and played with Gil Evans's orchestra between 1958 and 1964, including for the album '' Out of the Cool''. After this, he spent time with Charles Mingus in his sextet, which also included Eric Dolphy, Clifford Jordan, Jaki Byard, and Dannie Richmond. Following this he played with Herbie Hancock (1968–1969), Ray Charles (1969–1971), Duke Ellington (1971–1974), Art Blakey (1976), Dameronia, Mingus Dynasty, and the Count Basie Orchestra under the direction of Thad Jones (1985–1986). In 1985, Coles settled in the San Francisco Bay Area; he rec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Count Basie Orchestra
The Count Basie Orchestra is a 16- to 18-piece big band, one of the most prominent jazz performing groups of the swing era, founded by Count Basie in 1935 and recording regularly from 1936. Despite a brief disbandment at the beginning of the 1950s, the band survived long past the big band era itself and the death of Basie in 1984. It continues under the direction of trumpeter Scotty Barnhart. Originally including such musicians as Buck Clayton and Lester Young in the line-up, the band in the 1950s and 1960s made use of the work of the arrangers Neal Hefti and Sammy Nestico with featured musicians such as Thad Jones and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis. History Early years Count Basie arrived in Kansas City, Missouri in 1927, playing on the Theater Owners Booking Association (TOBA) circuit. After playing with Walter Page's Blue Devils, in 1929 he joined rival band leader Bennie Moten's band. Upon Moten's death in 1935, Basie left the group to start his own band, taking many of hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sonny Clay
William Rogers Campbell "Sonny" Clay (May 15, 1899, Chapel Hill, Texas – April 13, 1973, Los Angeles, California) was an American jazz pianist, drummer, and bandleader, who had an unusual impact on the development of Australian jazz. Biography Clay's family moved to Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix when he was eight years old; he played drums and xylophone early in life. From 1915 he studied piano, playing with Charlie Green (musician), Charlie Green and Jelly Roll Morton in Mexico around 1920. He drummed for Reb Spikes in California in 1921, and had his first recording experience backing Camille Allen in 1922. Later that year he played with Kid Ory at the Hiawatha Dancing Academy in Los Angeles. In 1923 he formed his own band, the Eccentric Harmony Six; this ensemble recorded on Vocalion Records as the California Poppies in 1923 and the Stompin' Six in 1925. He also performed under the band names Plantation Orchestra and Hartford Ballroom Orchestra. His band scored a regular gig br ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frankie Manning
Frank Manning (May 26, 1914 – April 27, 2009) was an American dancer, instructor, and choreographer. Manning is considered one of the founders of Lindy Hop, an energetic form of the jazz dance style known as swing. Biography Manning was born in 1914 in Jacksonville, Florida. After his parents separated when he was three years old, he moved to Harlem with his mother, who was a dancer. Manning began dancing as a child. Manning's mother sent him to spend summers with his father, aunt, and grandmother on their farm in Aiken, South Carolina. On Saturdays, farmhands and locals would come to the farm to play music on the front porch with harmonicas and a washtub bass. Manning's grandmother encouraged Frankie to dance with the others. In October 1927, Manning attended the Renaissance Ballroom & Casino. Watching from the balcony, he saw his mother dancing formal ballroom styles such as the foxtrot and waltz, having only seen her dance before in a much looser and casual style at n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tadd Dameron
Tadley Ewing Peake Dameron (February 21, 1917 – March 8, 1965) was an American jazz composer, arranger, and pianist. Biography Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Dameron was the most influential arranger of the bebop era, but also wrote charts for swing and hard bop players. The bands he arranged for included those of Count Basie, Artie Shaw, Jimmie Lunceford, Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Eckstine, and Sarah Vaughan. In 1940–41, Dameron was the piano player and arranger for the Kansas City band Harlan Leonard and his Rockets. He and lyricist Carl Sigman wrote " If You Could See Me Now" for Sarah Vaughan and it became one of her first signature songs. According to the composer, his greatest influences were George Gershwin and Duke Ellington. In the late 1940s, Dameron wrote arrangements for the big band of Dizzy Gillespie, who gave the première of his large-scale orchestral piece ''Soulphony in Three Hearts'' at Carnegie Hall in 1948. Also in 1948, Dameron led his own group in New Y ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Coles
Charles "Honi" Coles (April 2, 1911 – November 12, 1992) was an American actor and tap dancer, who was inducted posthumously into the American Tap Dance Hall of Fame in 2003. He had a distinctive personal style that required technical precision, high-speed tapping, and a close-to-the-floor style where "the legs and feet did the work". Coles was also half of the professional tap dancing duo Coles and Atkins, whose specialty was performing with elegant style through various tap steps such as "swing dance", "over the top", "bebop", "buck and wing", and "slow drag". He appeared in the films '' The Cotton Club'' and ''Dirty Dancing'', as well as the documentary '' Great Feats of Feet''.Hill, Valis Constance. "Charles "Honi" Coles iography" In Tap Dance in America: A Twentieth-Century Chronology of Tap Performance on Stage, Film, and Media, Library of Congress, accessed May 4, 2022, https://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.music.tdabio.43/default.html Coles was also a tap-dancing comp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cholly Atkins
Charles "Cholly" Atkins (born Charles Sylvan Atkinson; September 13, 1913 – April 19, 2003) was an American dancer and vaudeville performer, who later became noted as the house choreographer for the various artists on the label Motown. Biography Born in Pratt City, Alabama, Cholly began dancing in the late 1930s before his military service in 1942 during World War II. Upon leaving the U.S. Army, he first found fame as one-half of Atkins & Honi Coles, Coles, a top vaudeville dance act with partner Charles Coles, Charles "Honi" Coles, debuting at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York City, New York. Atkins and Coles toured extensively nationally and internationally, performing in showcases with major jazz and swing bands, including those led by Louis Armstrong, Charlie Barnet, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, and Lionel Hampton. The pair also performed from 1949 to 1952 on Broadway theater, Broadway in the stage 4 production, ''Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (musical), Gentlemen Prefer Blo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peg Leg Bates
Clayton "Peg Leg" Bates (October 11, 1907 – December 6, 1998) was an African-American entertainer from Fountain Inn, South Carolina, United States. Life and career Early life Peg Leg Bates was born Clayton Bates on October 10, 1907, in Fountain Inn, South Carolina, the son of Rufus and Emma W Stewart Bates. His mother was a sharecropper. By the age of five, Bates was dancing on the streets of Fountain Inn for pennies and nickels; he lost a leg at the age of 12 in a cotton gin accident. His uncle, Wit, made his crude first "peg leg" after returning home from World War I and finding his nephew disabled. Bates subsequently taught himself to tap dance with a wooden peg leg. By the time he was 15, Bates was again adept enough at dancing to enter amateur talent shows, working his way up to employment through the Theater Owners Booking Association, which booked entertainers for African-American theaters in the US. Career At 20, Bates was dancing on Broadway. In the early 194 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atlantic City Weekly
''Atlantic City Weekly'' (previously ''Whoot!'') was a free weekly newspaper in Atlantic City, New Jersey that ran from 1974 until 2023. It covered articles on news, entertainment, casinos and gambling, dining, real estate, sports, movies, and nightlife. It also featured photographs capturing scenes from Atlantic City. History The newspaper was founded in 1974 under the name ''Whoot!'' by Lewis B. Steiner and his parents, Herb and Marcia Steiner, while Lewis was a junior at Stockton College in Pomona, New Jersey. Herb served as the feature editor until his death in 1989, after which Marcia assumed the role of editor and food reviewer until her death in 1998. Lewis' wife, Christine Steiner, whom he married in 1981, served as the office manager. The newspaper covered the Atlantic City nightlife prior to the popularized casino scene of the present. As the city underwent a period of economic growth, Lewis Steiner (henceforth referred to as "Steiner") began recording videos of loca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Newspapers
A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports, art, and science. They often include materials such as opinion columns, weather forecasts, reviews of local services, Obituary, obituaries, birth notices, crosswords, editorial cartoons, comic strips, and advice columns. Most newspapers are businesses, and they pay their expenses with a mixture of Subscription business model, subscription revenue, Newsagent's shop, newsstand sales, and advertising revenue. The journalism organizations that publish newspapers are themselves often Metonymy, metonymically called newspapers. Newspapers have traditionally been published Printing, in print (usually on cheap, low-grade paper called newsprint). However, today most newspapers are also Electronic publishing, published on webs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stump And Stumpy
Stump and Stumpy were a tap dance/comedy/acting duo popular from the mid-1930s to the 1950s, consisting of James "Stump" Cross, and either Eddie Hartman or Harold J. Cromer as "Stumpy". Their act was mostly jazz tap, and comedy expressed through song and movement. History James "Jimmy" Cross and Edward "Eddie" Hartman traveled around the United States, managed by Nat Nazarro, on what was often called the "Black Vaudeville" circuit. On the circuit, Cross met Norma Catherine Greve, with whom he had a daughter, June Cross (born in 1954). Cross was cast in the United States Army's ''This Is the Army'' (1943) film, with William Wycoff as his "partner". Stump and Stumpy's first big success was appearing in the movie ''Boarding House Blues'' (1948), after which Hartman had become unreliable as a performer and was replaced with Cromer. Appearances *Apollo Theater, Harlem, New York City, Cab Calloway headlining (May 17–23, 1940) *Flatbush Theatre, Brooklyn, New York, Duke Ellington hea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
