The Cotton Club, Al Capone’s Cicero Jazz Hot Spot As It Looks Today

Uploaded by ChiTownView on Oct 30, 2011
Al Capone owned along w/brother Frank a number of speaks and bars in Cicero during the 1920’s. None were as famous as the Cotton Club located at 5542 W. Cermak. The club was a real hot spot, a favorite with Chicago mayor Bill Harrison even though booze was being sold there.  They were one of the few places where whites could come and see the top black performers of the day. Artists like Milton Mezzrow, Judge Hinton, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellingon, King Oliver, Louis Armstrong and even Milton Berle got his start here.

This clip is part of the series “The Outfit Now & Then” produced by MindsiMedia and presented on ChiTownView’s YouTube station. We show a mixture of crime scenes and homes associated with different Chicago mobsters and tell a little history with each clip.  On our blog we have started posting a history of this organization that for many years had an incredible amount of influence and power over the second largest city in the country. While this may have been true for most of the big cities the level of influence in Chicago and many nearby suburbs was much stronger. In the HBO series Boardwalk Empire they have a storyline that is based the Chicago outfit and that’s where we start our series.

Follow this link to our blog then link up to different videos from there.

The Outfit, A Look At Big Jim, Scarface, Momo & the Rest Of the Chicago Mob Part 1

In researching our information we have come across some great sources. MyAlCaponeMuseum is a one for Chicago underworld history they provide a wealth of information and have a lot of photos posted.
http://www.myalcaponemuseum.com/index.htm  Another great resource is The Outlaw Journals:
http://www.babyfacenelsonjournal.com/index.html

MindsiMedia is an Internet broadcaster with a series of YouTube channels under development that cover a broad range of topics; history, music, art, politics and much more. Visit our web portal http://www.mindsimedia.info/

Fig Leaf Rag Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons
“Attribution 3.0″ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/”