" Ill Wind "--Great Harold Arlen torch song from the 1934 Cotton Club Revue.
Harold Arlen and lyricist Ted Koehler wrote quite few numbers for various Cotton Club shows. Perhaps the most famous was Stormy Weather although there were also a number of nearly salacious numbers for the sophisticated and thrill-seeking night clubbers.
Society types gladly travelled to Harlem to partake of an exciting and often dangerous environment where blacks could enterain but were not welcome as patrons. Famous entertainers like Ethel Waters, Lene Horne and the Nicholas Brothers and bandleaders like Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway also starred.
In the 197'0's, Paramount Pictures recreated that turbulent Prohibition era with a movie called The Cotton Club. It portrayed the gangster control of both nightclubs and black entertainers as well as the sophisticated production numbers in all Cotton Club shows.
In the film, Lonette McKee plumbs the emotional torment in the song while other film footage portrays the violence so common of those times. It was, however, a most exciting era captured in the film,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaShvVW1w5U
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