notes.husk.org/likes images.

Cotton Club pinup girls in the 1936 venue program. A snippet from the official Cotton Club program filled with Harlem-Deko chorines, dancers, singers, and pinups girls featured in the Cotton Club review downtown location.

Photography by Austrian emigre James J Kriegsmann, lauded for his portraits and publicity shots of celebrities from the 1930s through the 1960s.

Kriegsmann photographed many Jazz & Swing icons, Motown notables, 50s Doo-wop groups, and stars, including Frank Sinatra, Louie Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, The Andrew Sisters, Bill Bojangles Robinson, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, Fats Domino, Sister Rosetta Tharp, Buddy Holly, Bo Diddly, Eartha Kitt, Aretha Franklin, Ike and Tina, Paul Anka, Smokey Robinson, and “Little” Stevie Wonder. Kriegsmann became the official in-house photographer for Harlem’s Cotton Club. In its time, his studio was the largest headshot photography studio in the world.

⚡

⚡

⚡