Calloway, Cab

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Calloway, Cab

December 25, 1907
November 18, 1994

Born in Rochester, New York, jazz singer and bandleader Cabell "Cab" Calloway was raised in Baltimore, Maryland. In high school he sang with a local vocal group called the Baltimore Melody Boys. The Calloway family, including Cab's sister, singer Blanche Calloway, then moved to Chicago, where Cab attended Crane College. Calloway began his career as a singer, drummer, and master of ceremonies at nightclubs in Chicago and other midwestern cities. In the late 1920s in Chicago Calloway worked with the Missourians, a big band; in the male vocal quartet in Plantation Days; and as leader of the Alabamians. In 1929 he took the Alabamians to Harlem's Savoy Ballroom and that same year was featured in Fats Waller and Andy Razaf's Hot Chocolates revue.

In 1929 Calloway began to lead the Missourians under his own name. In 1931 they replaced Duke Ellington as the Cotton Club's house band. During the 1930s Calloway became a household name, the country's prototypical "hipster," renowned for his infectious vocal histrionics, his frenzied dashing up and down the stage in a white satin zoot suit, and leading audience sing-alongs, particularly on his biggest hit, "Minnie the Moocher" (1931). That song, with its "Hi-de-ho" chorus, was a million-copy seller and earned him the nickname "Hi-de-ho Man."

Calloway's talents were not limited to comic entertainment. During the swing era Calloway's band was one of the most popular in the country, known for such songs as "At the Clambake Carnival" (1938), "Jumpin' Jive" (1939), and "Pickin' the Cabbage" (1940), and he nurtured some of the best instrumentalists of the day, including saxophonists Ben Webster and Chuck Berry, trumpeters Jonah Jones and Dizzy Gillespie, bassist Milt Hinton, and drummer Cozy Cole. The orchestra held its own in competitions throughout the 1930s with the bands of Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Chick Webb, and Jimmy Lunceford. Calloway's orchestra left the Cotton Club in 1934 for a European tour. In addition to its success in nightclubs and on the concert stage, the Calloway orchestra also appeared in movies, including The Big Broadcast (1932), The Singing Kid (1936), St. Louis Blues (1939), and Stormy Weather (1943). Calloway disbanded the orchestra in 1948 and worked with a sextet before touring England as a soloist.

Calloway returned to his roots in musical theater in 1952 for a two-year run in the role of Sportin' Life in a touring version of George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s he continued to perform both as a solo act and as the leader of big bands. In the mid-1960s he toured with the Harlem Globetrotters comic basketball team. In 1974 he appeared in an all-black version of Hello, Dolly!, and two years later he published his autobiography, Of Minnie the Moocher and Me. Calloway appeared on Broadway in Bubbling Brown Sugar in 1975, and his cameo in The Blues Brothers (1980) brought a revival of interest in him. In 1984 he sang with his vocalist daughter, Chris, in an engagement at New York's Blue Note nightclub. In 1987 he again appeared with Chris Calloway, this time in His Royal Highness of Hi-De-Ho in New York.