During US Prohibition, nightclubs went underground as illegal speakeasy bars. With the repeal of Prohibition in February 1933, nightclubs were revived, such as New York's Stork Club, 21 Club, El Morocco and the Copacabana. These nightclubs featured big bands (there were no DJ's).

In Occupied France, jazz and music, and the jitterbug dance were banned by the Nazis as decadent American influences, so members of the French underground met at hidden underground basement dance clubs called discotheques where they danced to American swing music, which a DJ played on a single turntable when a jukebox was not available. These "discotheques" were also patronized by anti-Vichy youth called zealous. There were also underground discotheques in Nazi Germany patronized by anti-Nazi youth called the swing kids.

In Harlem, the Cotton Club and Connie's Inn were popular venues for white audiences. Before 1953 and even some years thereafter, most bars and nightclubs used a JukeBox ** PLEASE DESCRIBE THIS IMAGE ** or mostly live bands. In Paris, at a club named "Whisky à Gogo", founded in 1947, Régine in 1953 laid down a dance-floor, suspended coloured lights and replaced the JukeBox with two turntables which she operated herself so there would be no breaks between the music. The Whisky à Gogo set into place the standard elements of the modern post World War II discothèque-style nightclub. In the early 1960s, Mark Birley opened a members-only discothèque nightclub, Annabel's, in Berkeley Square, London. In 1962, the Peppermint Lounge in New York City became popular and is the place where go-go dancing originated. However, the first rock and roll generation preferred rough and tumble bars and taverns to nightclubs, and the nightclub did not attain mainstream popularity until the 1970s disco era.

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