From Harlem to Gaithersburg, piano entertains through the decades

A piano whose melodies are said to have accompanied famous musicians in New York’s acclaimed Cotton Club in the 1930s will again be making a statement — this time, in a Montgomery Village home.

James Hunt said the piano, which he picked up Jan. 7 from Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Gaithersburg, will be his inspiration as he remodels his basement in 1930s and 1940s decor. He paid $100 for the piece.

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Sherman Harris of Potomac, the piano’s previous owner, donated the piece to Habitat, although he was sad to see it go, Harris said. Habitat picked the piano up Dec. 12.

“I made them promise that they would find someone who really was interested in the piano,” he said. “I didn’t want it to go someplace that it becomes just a piece of furniture.”

Harris doesn’t have original papers for the piano, and he said he doesn’t know what brand it is, but he believes the story of its past.

The weathered, Pepto Bismol pink-and-baby-blue piano had sat in Harris’s family room for more than 35 years until his adult children told him last month it had to go as they redecorated his home.

Harris said he is old now, and no one in his family wanted to inherit the piece.

Harris remembers when he first saw the piano in the basement of the home of his friend, Kermit Thornton, in the 1950s.

Teens at the time, they both went to Dunbar High School in the District.

Thornton’s aunt, Lillian Smith, had picked the piano up from New York, and she guaranteed it was a piano from the Cotton Club. She was a well-connected real estate agent, and Thornton said he never doubted her claim.

A whites-only establishment with mostly black performers, the Cotton Club opened in the Harlem neighborhood in the 1920s.

At the time, black musicians such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington had moved from the Deep South to cities such as New York and Boston, making a name for themselves among white musicians and jazz enthusiasts, said Alvin Trask, a jazz trumpet player who teaches jazz studies and other courses as an associate professor of music at Montgomery College.

Ellington is known to have performed at the Cotton Club.

Piano-playing started to develop with jazz through new styles such as ragtime rhythm and boogie-woogie, which emerged in places such as Harlem, Trask said.

The clubs were of the first establishments where blacks and whites were together, merging their cultures into one, he said.

“Most of the time, black art — black anything — was not really accepted as a cultural entity in America,” he said. “The music, I think, was a lot different because it crossed over . . . It was the beginning of what the industry calls crossover — where you have these two people who have the same interests coming together.”

Thornton’s basement was redecorated to mirror the Cotton Club and became a hangout for their circle of friends, where they would play cards, talk and listen to music, Harris said.

Harris never learned to play himself, but some of his friends did. The piano was the focal point of their gatherings.

After Thornton died, Harris inherited the piano. A world traveler and sociable guy, Harris used the piano to entertain his guests throughout the years, such as famous jazz musician Nancy Wilson.

Hunt said when he saw it, he had to have it. He enjoys Ellington’s music and often hunts for antiques to keep in his ’70s-style home, although he never has purchased anything quite as large or outlandish, he said.

“Neither of us play the piano, or any other instrument for that matter,” Hunt said of himself and his wife, Ai-Fen Lin. “The real draw for us is the story.”

Now, it will inspire conversation and entertainment in his home, just as it had for the past 80 years.

“It is one of those things that lights up a room,” he said.