Today we remember the late great Cabell Cab Calloway III (December 25, 1907 – November 18, 1994) a jazz singer and bandleader. He was strongly associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York City, where he was a regular performer. Calloway was a master of energetic scat singing and led one of the United States most popular big bands from the start of the 1930s through to the late 1940s. Calloways band featured performers including trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Adolphus Doc Cheatham, saxophonists Ben Webster and Leon Chu Berry, New Orleans guitar ace Danny Barker, and bassist Milt Hinton. Calloway continued to perform until his death in 1994 at the age of 86. Calloway was born in Rochester, New York, on Christmas Day in 1907. The family relocated to Baltimore, Maryland, his parents hometown, in 1918. His mother, Martha Eulalia Reed, was a Morgan State College graduate, teacher and church organist. His father, Cabell Calloway, Jr., was a graduate of Lincoln University of Pennsylvania in 1898 and worked as a lawyer and in real estate. Cab Calloway spent his adolescent years growing up in West Baltimores Sugar Hill, considered the political, cultural and business hub of black society. There he grew up comfortably in a middle-class household. Early on, his parents recognized their sons musical talent and he began private voice lessons in 1922. He continued to study music and voice throughout his formal schooling. Despite his parents and teachers disapproval of jazz, Calloway began frequenting and performing in many of Baltimores nightclubs. As a result he came into contact with many of the local jazz luminaries of the time. He counted among his early mentors drummer Chick Webb and pianist Johnny Jones. After his graduation from Frederick Douglass High School, Calloway joined his older sister, Blanche, in a touring production of the popular black musical revue, Plantation Days. (Blanche Calloway became an accomplished bandleader before her brother did, and he would often credit her as his inspiration for entering show business.) His parents had hopes of their son becoming an attorney following after his father, so Calloway enrolled in Crane College. His main interest, however, was in singing and entertaining, and he spent most of his nights at the Dreamland Ballroom, the Sunset Cafe, and the Club Berlin, performing as a drummer, singer, and MC. At the Sunset Café, Cab cut his teeth as an understudy for singer Adelaide Hall and it was here that he met and performed with Louis Armstrong who taught him to sing in the scat style. He eventually left school to sing with a band called the Alabamians. The Cotton Club was the premier jazz venue in the country, and Calloway and his orchestra (he had taken over a brilliant, but failing band called The Missourians in 1930; later on, the band changed its name to Cab Calloway and His Orchestra) were hired as a replacement for the Duke Ellington Orchestra while they were touring (he joined Duke Ellington and Mills Blue Rhythm Band as another of the jazz groups handled by Irving Mills). Calloway quickly proved so popular that his band became the co-house band with Ellingtons, and his group began touring nationwide when not playing the Cotton Club. Their popularity was greatly enhanced by the twice-weekly live national radio broadcasts on NBC at the Cotton Club. Calloway also appeared on Walter Winchells radio program and with Bing Crosby in his show at New Yorks Paramount Theatre. As a result of these appearances, Calloway, together with Ellington, broke the major broadcast network color barrier. In 1931 he recorded his most famous song, Minnie the Moocher. That song, along with St. James Infirmary Blues and The Old Man of the Mountain, were performed for the Betty Boop animated shorts Minnie the Moocher (1932), Snow White (1933), and The Old Man of the Mountain (1933), respectively. Through rotoscoping, Calloway not only gave his voice to these cartoons, but his dance steps as well. He took advantage of this and timed his concerts in some communities with the release of the films in order to make the most of the attention. As a result of the success of Minnie the Moocher, he became identified with its chorus, gaining the nickname The Hi De Ho Man. He also performed in a series of short films for Paramount in the 1930s. (Calloway and Ellington were featured on film more than any other jazz orchestras of the era.) On June 12, 1994, Calloway suffered a severe stroke. He died five months later on November 18, 1994. His body was cremated and his ashes were given to his family. Upon the death of his wife Zulme Nuffie Calloway on October 13, 2008, his ashes were interred next to her at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. A profile of Calloway, Cab Calloway: Sketches, aired on the PBS program American Masters in February 2012.
Posted on: Tue, 18 Nov 2014 06:42:56 +0000
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