Feb 19, 1897 – Feb 1, 1990
Eurlee Reeves (center) was Newark’s only female night club owner in the Swing Era.
She founded the Nest Club on Warren St which was a major Black nightclub offering full musical revues in the 1930s and 1940s. She bought the Cabin LaBlanche in 1937 and renamed it.
Big acts like Duke Ellington, Slim and Slam and Count Basie came to the club.
Part of her motivation was that the white-owned Kinney Club wouldn’t hire dark-skinned women as entertainers and she claimed to have driven the Kinney Club out of business.
Barbara Kukla traveled to Puerto Rico to interview her in the late 1980s. She died as Eurlee Reeves Young, Feb 1, 1990.
Photo from http://digital.npl.org (Newark Herald).
Bibliography
Kukla, Barbara J., “Swing City”
Tuttle, Brad, “How Newark Became Newark”
“Journalist covers jazz beat” Star Ledger Sept 12, 1991
New Jersey Herald News, Jun 18, 1938
“Young, Eurlee Reeves” Star Ledger Feb 5, 1990
NJ Death Index