Cab Calloway

Cabell Calloway III (December 25, 1907 – November 18, 1994) was an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, conductor and dancer. He was associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, where he was a regular performer and became a popular vocalist of the swing era. His niche of mixing jazz and vaudeville won him acclaim during a career that spanned over 65 years.

Calloway was a master of energetic scat singing and led one of the most popular dance bands in the United States from the early 1930s to the late 1940s. His band included trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie, Jonah Jones, and Adolphus "Doc" Cheatham, saxophonists Ben Webster and Leon "Chu" Berry, guitarist Danny Barker, bassist Milt Hinton, and drummer Cozy Cole.

Calloway had several hit records in the 1930s and 1940s, becoming known as the "Hi-de-ho" man of jazz for his most famous song, "Minnie the Moocher", originally recorded in 1931. He reached the '' Billboard'' charts in five consecutive decades (1930s–1970s). Calloway also made several stage, film, and television appearances until his death in 1994 at the age of 86. He had roles in ''Stormy Weather'' (1943), ''Porgy and Bess'' (1953), ''The Cincinnati Kid'' (1965), and ''Hello Dolly!'' (1967). His career saw renewed interest when he appeared in the 1980 film '' The Blues Brothers.''

Calloway was the first African-American musician to sell a million records from a single and to have a nationally syndicated radio show. In 1993, Calloway received the National Medal of Arts from the United States Congress. He posthumously received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. His song "Minnie the Moocher" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999, and added to the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry in 2019. Three years later in 2022, the National Film Registry selected his home films for preservation as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant films". He is also inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame and the International Jazz Hall of Fame.

Early life

Calloway was born in Rochester, New York, on December 25, 1907 to an African American family. His mother, Martha Eulalia Reed, was a Morgan State College graduate, teacher, and church organist. His father, Cabell Calloway Jr., graduated from Lincoln University of Pennsylvania in 1898, and worked as a lawyer and in real estate. The family moved to Baltimore, Maryland, when Calloway was 11. Soon after, his father died and his mother remarried to John Nelson Fortune.

Calloway grew up in the West Baltimore neighborhood of Druid Hill. He often skipped school to earn money by selling newspapers, shining shoes, and cooling down horses at the Pimlico racetrack where he developed an interest in racing and betting on horse races. After he was caught playing dice on the church steps, his mother sent him to Downingtown Industrial and Agricultural School in 1921, a reform school run by his mother's uncle in Chester County, Pennsylvania.

Calloway resumed hustling when he returned to Baltimore and worked as a caterer while he improved his studies in school. He began private vocal lessons in 1922, and studied music throughout his formal schooling. Despite his parents' and teachers' disapproval of jazz, he began performing in nightclubs in Baltimore. His mentors included drummer Chick Webb and pianist Johnny Jones. Calloway joined his high school basketball team, and in his senior year he started playing professional basketball with the Baltimore Athenians, a team in the Negro Professional Basketball League. He graduated from Frederick Douglass High School in 1925.

Music career

1927–1929: Early career

In 1927, Calloway joined his older sister, Blanche Calloway, on tour for the popular black musical revue '' Plantation Days''. His sister became an accomplished bandleader before him, and he often credited her as his inspiration for entering show business. Calloway's mother wanted him to be a lawyer like his father, so once the tour ended he enrolled at Crane College in Chicago, but he was more interested in singing and entertaining. While at Crane he refused the opportunity to play basketball for the Harlem Globetrotters to pursue a singing career.

Calloway spent most of his nights at Chicago's Dreamland Café, Sunset Cafe, and Club Berlin, performing as a singer, drummer, and master of ceremonies. At Sunset Cafe, he was an understudy for singer Adelaide Hall. There he met and performed with Louis Armstrong, who taught him to sing in the scat style. He left school to sing with the Alabamians band.

In 1929, Calloway relocated to New York with the band. They opened at the Savoy Ballroom on September 20, 1929. When the Alabamians broke up, Armstrong recommended Calloway as a replacement singer in the musical revue '' Connie's Hot Chocolates''. He established himself as a vocalist singing " Ain't Misbehavin'" by Fats Waller. While Calloway was performing in the revue, the Missourians asked him to front their band.

1930–1955: Success

In 1930, the Missourians became known as Cab Calloway and His Orchestra. At the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York, the band was hired in 1931 to substitute for the Duke Ellington Orchestra while Ellington's band was on tour. Their popularity led to a permanent position. The band also performed twice a week for radio broadcasts on NBC. Calloway appeared on radio programs with Walter Winchell and Bing Crosby and was the first African American to have a nationally syndicated radio show. During the depths of the Great Depression, Calloway was earning $50,000 a year at 23 years old.In 1931, Calloway recorded his most famous song, "Minnie the Moocher." It was the first single record by an African American to sell a million copies. Calloway performed the song and two others, " St. James Infirmary Blues" and "The Old Man of the Mountain," in the Betty Boop cartoons ''Minnie the Moocher'' (1932), '' Snow-White'' (1933), and '' The Old Man of the Mountain'' (1933). Calloway performed voice-over for these cartoons, and through rotoscoping, his dance steps were the basis of the characters' movements.

As a result of the success of "Minnie the Moocher", Calloway became identified with its chorus, gaining the nickname "The Hi De Ho Man". He performed in the 1930s in a series of short films for Paramount. Calloway's and Ellington's groups were featured on film more than any other jazz orchestras of the era. In these films, Calloway can be seen performing a gliding backstep dance move, which some observers have described as the precursor to Michael Jackson's moonwalk. Calloway said 50 years later, "it was called The Buzz back then." The 1933 film '' International House'' featured Calloway performing his classic song, "Reefer Man", a tune about a man who smokes marijuana. Fredi Washington was cast as Calloway's love interest in ''Cab Calloway's Hi-De-Ho'' (1934). Lena Horne made her film debut as a dancer in ''Cab Calloway's Jitterbug Party'' (1935).

Calloway made his first Hollywood feature film appearance opposite Al Jolson in ''The Singing Kid'' (1936). He sang several duets with Jolson, and the film included Calloway's band and 22 Cotton Club dancers from New York. According to film critic Arthur Knight, the creators of the film intended to "erase and celebrate boundaries and differences, including most emphatically the color line...when Calloway begins singing in his characteristic style – in which the words are tools for exploring rhythm and stretching melody – it becomes clear that American culture is changing around Jolson and with (and through) Calloway".Knight, Arthur. ''Disintegrating the Musical: Black Performance and American Musical Film'', Duke University Press (2002), pp. 72–76.

Calloway's band recorded for Brunswick and the ARC dime-store labels (Banner, Cameo, Conqueror, Perfect, Melotone, Banner, Oriole) from 1930 to 1932, when he signed with RCA Victor for a year. He returned to Brunswick in late 1934 through 1936, then moved to Variety, run by his manager, Irving Mills. He remained with Mills when the label collapsed during the Depression. Their sessions were continued by Vocalion through 1939 and OKeh through 1942. After an AFM recording ban due to the 1942–44 musicians' strike, Calloway continued to record.

In 1938, Calloway released ''Cab Calloway's Cat-ologue: A " Hepster's" Dictionary'', the first dictionary published by an African American. It became the official jive language reference book of the New York Public Library. A revised version of the book was released with ''Professor Cab Calloway's Swingformation Bureau'' in 1939. He released the last edition, ''The New Cab Calloway's Hepsters Dictionary: Language of Jive,'' in 1944. On a BBC Radio documentary about the dictionary in 2014, Poet Lemn Sissay stated, "Cab Calloway was taking ownership of language for a people who, just a few generations before, had their own languages taken away."

Calloway's band in the 1930s and 1940s included many notable musicians, such as Ben Webster, Illinois Jacquet, Milt Hinton, Danny Barker, Doc Cheatham, Ed Swayze, Cozy Cole, Eddie Barefield, and Dizzy Gillespie. Calloway later recalled, "What I expected from my musicians was what I was selling: the right notes with precision, because I would build a whole song around a scat or dance step." Calloway and his band formed baseball and basketball teams. They played each other while on the road, play against local semi-pro teams, and play charity games. His renown as a talented musician was such that, in the opening scene of the 1940 musical film ''Strike Up the Band'', starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, Rooney's character is admonished by his music teacher, "You are not Cab Calloway," after playing an improvised drum riff in the middle of a band lesson.

In 1941, Calloway fired Gillespie from his orchestra after an onstage fracas erupted when Calloway was hit with spitballs. He wrongly accused Gillespie, who stabbed Calloway in the leg with a small knife.

From 1941 to 1942, Calloway hosted a weekly radio quiz show called ''The Cab Calloway Quizzicale''. Calling himself "Doctor" Calloway, it was a parody of ''The College of Musical Knowledge'', a radio contest created by bandleader Kay Kyser. During the years of World War II, Calloway entertained troops in United States before they departed overseas. The Calloway Orchestra also recorded songs full of social commentary including "Doing the Reactionary," "The Führer's Got the Jitters," "The Great Lie," "We'll Gather Lilacs," and "My Lament for V Day."

In 1943, Calloway appeared in the film '' Stormy Weather'', one of the first mainstream Hollywood films with a black cast. The film featured other top performers of the time, including Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne, the Nicholas Brothers, and Fats Waller. Calloway would host Horne's character Selina Rogers as she performed the film's title song as part of a big all-star revue for World War II soldiers.

Calloway wrote a humorous pseudo-gossip column called "Coastin' with Cab" for ''Song Hits'' magazine. It was a collection of celebrity snippets, such as the following in the May 1946 issue: " Benny Goodman was dining at Ciro's steak house in New York when a very homely girl entered. 'If her face is her fortune,' Benny quipped, 'she'd be tax-free.'" In the late 1940s, however, Calloway's bad financial decisions and his gambling caused his band to break up.

In 1953, he played the prominent role of Sportin' Life in a production of ''Porgy and Bess'' with William Warfield and Leontyne Price as the title characters.

1956–1960: Cotton Club Revue

Calloway and his daughter Lael recorded "Little Child", an adaption of " Little Boy and the Old Man". Released on ABC-Paramount, the single charted on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 in 1956.

In 1956, Clarence Robinson, who produced revues at the original Cotton Club and the Apollo Theater, and choreographed the movie ''Stormy Weather'', cast Calloway as the main attraction for his project in Miami. The Cotton Club of Miami featured a troupe of 48 people, including singer Sallie Blair, George Kirby, Abbey Lincoln, and the dance troupe of Norma Miller. The success of the shows led to the Cotton Club Revue of 1957 which had stops at the Royal Nevada Hotel in Las Vegas, the Theatre Under The Sky in Central Park, Town Casino in Buffalo.

For the second season, Lee Sherman was the choreographer of The Cotton Club Revue of 1958, which starred Calloway. The revue featured tap dancing prodigies Maurice Hines and Gregory Hines.

In March 1958, Calloway released his album ''Cotton Club Revue of 1958'' on Gone Records. It was produced by George Goldner, conducted and arranged by Eddie Barefield. That year, Calloway appeared in the film ''St. Louis Blues'', the life story of W.C. Handy, featuring Nat King Cole and Eartha Kitt.

The Cotton Club Revue of 1959 traveled to South America for engagements in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. They also stopped in Uruguay and Argentina before returning to North America which included a run on Broadway. Directed by Mervyn Nelson and choreographed by Joel Nobel, this edition featured Ketty Lester, The Three Chocolateers. The revue toured Europe in 1959 and 1960, bringing their act to Madrid, Paris, and London.

1961–1993: Later years

Calloway remained a household name due to TV appearances and occasional concerts in the US and Europe. In 1961 and 1962, he toured with the Harlem Globetrotters, providing halftime entertainment during games.

Calloway was cast as "Yeller" in the film ''The Cincinnati Kid'' (1965) with Steve McQueen, Ann-Margret, and Edward G. Robinson. Calloway appeared on ''The Ed Sullivan Show'' on March 19, 1967, with his daughter Chris Calloway. In 1967, he co-starred with Pearl Bailey as Horace Vandergelder in an all-black cast of '' Hello, Dolly!'' on Broadway during its original run. Chris Calloway also joined the cast as Minnie Fay. The new cast revived the flagging business for the show and RCA Victor released a new cast recording, rare for the time. In 1973–74, Calloway was featured in an unsuccessful Broadway revival of ''The Pajama Game'' with Hal Linden and Barbara McNair.

His autobiography, ''Of Minnie the Moocher and Me'' was published in 1976. It included his complete ''Hepster's Dictionary'' as an appendix. In 1978, Calloway released a disco version of "Minnie the Moocher" on RCA which reached the ''Billboard'' R&B chart. Calloway was introduced to a new generation when he appeared in the 1980 film ''The Blues Brothers'' performing "Minnie the Moocher".

In 1985, Calloway and his Orchestra appeared at The Ritz London Hotel where he was filmed for a 60-minute BBC
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