The Jewish Ukrainian Immigrant who Clothed Elvis, Johnny Cash and Hendrix

The list of inspirational Jewish immigrants is a long one. But the improbable story of the Jew who crafted a $10,000 gold lamé jumpsuit for Elvis Presley may be wildest thing you’ll read today.

Nuta Kotlyarenko was born to Jewish parents in the Russian Empire’s Ukrainian city of Kyiv on December 15, 1902. His mother raised and sold geese, and his father was a cobbler and shoemaker. Nuta’s mother also managed a movie theater concession stand and young Nuta would help her sell cigarettes and candy. But he was more interested in what he saw on the movie screen between sales - American cowboys in thrilling Western adventures.

Unfortunately, the political and social climate of the times were not kind to the Ukrainian Jews. Brutal antisemitic massacres and pogroms were common.

As violence against the Jewish population increased, Nuta’s parents made a desperate decision in 1913 to ensure their children’s safety. They placed young Nuta and his brother Julius on a steamer ship to America. By 1921, over 1,000 pogroms had claimed over 100,000 Jewish lives in their former home.

Nuta Kotlyarenko Comes to New York

Nuta was just 11 years old when his ship landed in the United States. An immigration officer at New York’s Ellis Island misheard or mangled his name, so he ended up with a new one, “Nudie Cohn”. He meandered around his new country from coast to coast, and picked up odd jobs wherever he could – shoeshine boy, a valet for vaudeville star Eddie Cantor , a negative cutter, and as a boxer. Boxing was a bad choice, he met some unsavory characters which led to a jail term in Leavenworth, Kentucky on drug charges.

While in Mankato, Minnesota he met his future wife Helen Barbara Kruger while he was staying in the boardinghouse her father owned. She’d become known as Bobbie Nudie. Married in 1933, they went into business together in New York and opened a costume shop specializing in undergarments. Their primary clients were showgirls and their designs included hand-embroidered undergarments, silver and gold lamé, rhinestones and gems. Their shop was named Nudie’s for the Ladies.

The Nudie Suit

In 1940, Nudie, Helen, and daughter Barbara moved to the San Fernando Valley in California and set up a tailor shop in Hollywood. Using a ping pong table for a cutting table, he returned to his childhood heroes, and began to create the Western style clothing he remembered from those cowboy movies.

Tex Williams was a Western Swing singer that charted 35 songs between 1946 and 1978. At the start of his career, he was so anxious to make a name for himself that he struck a deal with Nudie. Tex auctioned off a horse to raise cash for Nudie to buy a $150 sewing machine. Nudie made Tex a flashy suit with rhinestones and chain stitch embroidery and sold it to him at a rock-bottom price. Boosted by Tex’s regular plugs on his radio show, the Nudie Suit grabbed so much attention that Williams became a living and breathing human advertisement for Nudie’s workmanship and eye for color and design.

In a very short time, Nudie abandoned his home garage workshop and opened “Nudie’s of Hollywood” on the corner of Victory and Vineland in North Hollywood. He employed a staff of 15 garment workers. When Cohn’s business outgrew that location, they moved into a larger space, renaming the business as “Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors”.

The floodgates were now open, and Nudie Suits became the rage among the Country and Western scene. The Country Music Hall of Fame describes a Nudie Suit this way – “a universal name for the outrageously embellished stage costumes that became status symbols in country music circles in the 1950s and beyond.”

Hank Williams bought a white suit highlighted by musical notes of black on the legs and sleeves. Porter Wagoner ended up buying over 50 Nudie Suits priced between $11,000 and $18,000 apiece.

Gram Parson’s Nudie Suit appealed to the young generation of growing country rock fans with images of poppy flowers and marijuana leaves. That shirt graced a Flying Burrito Brothers 1969 album cover. Even Elvis Presley was a customer. He loved his $10,000 gold lamé Nudie Suit so much, he wore it on his Greatest Hits album cover. Johnny Cash loved his “Man in Black” Nudie shirt.

Elton John rocking his Nudie suit

Nudie’s customers included John Lennon, John Wayne, Gene Autry, George Jones, Cher, Glen Campbell, Buck Owens, the Monkees, Tammy Wynette, Steve McQueen, Emmylou Harris, David Lee Roth, Sly Stone, Jimi Hendrix, and Ronald Reagan.

The appeal of Nudie’s work also entered the rock and movie world when Jerry Garcia, Keith Richards, ZZ Top and Elton John began wearing them in the 1970’s, and Robert Redford sported one in his 1979 movie “The Electric Horseman”.

On the cover of Rolling Stone magazine

In a 1969 interview with Rolling Stone, Nudie said: “The costume is the first impression, and it should be flashy. My costumes used to be called corny. Now they call us mod.”

Nudie Cohn’s Legacy

Smithsonian Magazine ended their 2023 profile of Nudie with these words: “Despite his success, he usually wore mismatched boots, to remind himself of his humble origins in Eastern Europe when his family couldn’t even afford a matching pair of shoes for him.”

The 11-year-old Ukrainian refugee who went on to fame as Nudie Cohn passed away on May 9, 1984, at the age of 81. His eulogy was delivered by longtime friend and customer Dale Evans, whose husband Roy Rogers was buried in his Nudie Suit.

Nudie never played a lick on the banjo or pedal steel guitar, but his importance to country music history, style, and Americana is unquestioned. His sparkling influence can be seen all over Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame, Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Graceland estate in Memphis.

SOURCES

• Country Music, An Illustrated History, Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns 2019
• Nudie Cohn: The Ukrainian Refugee Who Created the Image of Country Music - Saving Country Music
• History of Nudie Cohn and his Nudie Suits - The Carriage and Western Art Museum (carriagemuseum.org)
• The History of Nudie Suits | Smithsonian (smithsonianmag.com)
• Stars Who Rocked The Nudie Suit | Billboard
• Nudie Cohn: The Original Rhinestone Cowboy | Co untry Music Hall of Fame
• Nudie: The World's Flashiest Country and Western Stylist (rollingstone.com) 6 28 69
• New York Times - Style; The Cowboy Couturier - By Peter McQuaid - March 19, 2000