Cotton Club: A Complete Night Out on the Westside

From a small bar to a casino

Moe Taub is associated with establishing the club in 1944, although sources differ between January and later that year. By 1947 a classified directory listed the Cotton Club as a casino at 500 Jackson Street. Its advertised offering included craps, poker, twenty-one, racehorse keno, dining, dancing and a cocktail lounge.

That combination matters. Patrons could spend an evening in one place rather than visiting a bare gambling room. The club competed within a busy neighborhood corridor and served customers whose access elsewhere in Las Vegas was limited by racial discrimination.

Owners, managers and working lives

Jodie Cannon acquired the club in July 1947 and sold it to Uvalde Caperton within months, apparently continuing as manager. Oral histories also identify James Calvert as an important owner. Later directory evidence separates managerial and bookkeeping roles, so the business should not be reduced to a tidy succession of sole proprietors.

Sarann Knight Preddy's oral histories connect her early Las Vegas employment with the Cotton Club. D. D. Cotton likewise recalled working there as a performer before later breaking employment barriers at major resorts. Their stories place women, skilled gaming work and entertainment careers inside the property's history.

Fire and a rebuilt club

An explosion and fire destroyed the original club in May 1948. The replacement structure is associated with 1948, although the city's survey also uses a 1946 construction date elsewhere. The distinction between an original building and a rebuilt phase remains important.

The club returned as a popular social destination. Caperton-era advertising promoted dancing and gaming and called it the West Side's favorite spot. Advertising is not an independent measure of popularity, but it clearly establishes how the business wanted customers to use it.

The Treniers and the dance floor

A 1949 advertisement documents a matinee dance featuring the Treniers and Mercury recording artists. Johnny Crawford's Orchestra is separately associated with floor shows and big-band entertainment. These are specific musical connections rather than a borrowed list of every star who visited the Westside.

The performance history suggests a serious regional nightlife stop without requiring an invented Strip-sized showroom. Customers could eat, drink, dance and gamble while touring acts met a local audience. The same room connected everyday neighborhood recreation to a wider Black entertainment circuit.

Cotton Bowl and later lounges

The Cotton Club's gaming-nightclub phase is generally placed through 1957. A 1960 purchase and addition preceded the Cotton Bowl, documented by 1961. Its sign advertised a bar, packaged liquor and slots alongside bowling. The address therefore did not simply stop gambling when it became a recreation venue.

By the mid-1960s it had become the Playhouse Lounge, followed by Love's Lounge beginning in 1970. These later identities belong to the site's history but should not be described as unchanged Cotton Club operations.

The property's survival through new uses mirrors the Westside's changing market. The story is not only about a vanished casino. It is about a building repeatedly adapted for social life, and about the workers and patrons whose memories preserve details that business directories leave out.