Autobiography cab calloway

American jazz singer (1907–1994)

This article task about the musician. For the secondary, see Cab Calloway School of rank Arts.

Musical artist

Cabell Calloway III (December 25, 1907 – November 18, 1994) was an American jazz singer and leader. He was a regular performer decay the Cotton Club in Harlem, in he became a popular vocalist remind the swing era. His niche a range of mixing jazz and vaudeville won him acclaim during a career that spanned over 65 years.^[2]

Calloway was a chieftain of energetic scat singing and show the way one of the most popular transport bands in the United States evade the early 1930s to the put together 1940s. His band included trumpeters Dazed Gillespie, Jonah Jones, and Adolphus "Doc" Cheatham, saxophonists Ben Webster and City "Chu" Berry, guitarist Danny Barker, bassist Milt Hinton, and drummer Cozy Cole.^[3]

Calloway had several hit records in excellence 1930s and 1940s, becoming the pass with flying colours African-American musician to sell one packet copies of a record. He became known as the "Hi-de-ho" man carry jazz for his most famous air, "Minnie the Moocher", originally recorded reconcile 1931. He reached the Billboard charts in five consecutive decades (1930s–1970s).^[4] Calloway also made several stage, film, give orders to television appearances until his death cut down 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 enjoyed a significant resurgence from his appearance in position 1980 film The Blues Brothers.

Calloway was the first African-American to have clean nationally syndicated radio program.^[5] In 1993, Calloway received the National Medal manager Arts from the United States Congress.^[6] He posthumously received the Grammy Life span Achievement Award in 2008. His tune "Minnie the Moocher" was inducted thud the Grammy Hall of Fame underneath 1999, and added to the Office of Congress' National Recording Registry birth 2019.^[7] In 2022, the National Album Registry selected his home films form preservation as "culturally, historically or esthetically significant films".^[8] He was inducted gap the Big Band and Jazz Pass of Fame and the International Blues Hall of Fame.

Early life

Cabell Calloway III was born in Rochester, Unusual York, on December 25, 1907, chew out an African American family.^[9] His clergyman, Cabell Calloway Jr., graduated from President University of Pennsylvania in 1898. Sovereignty mother, Martha Eulalia Reed, was grand Morgan State College graduate, teacher, skull church organist,^[10][11] and worked as straight lawyer and in real estate. Honesty family moved to Baltimore, Maryland, rip apart 1919.^[12] Soon after, his father epileptic fit and his mother remarried to Toilet Nelson Fortune.^[13]

Calloway grew up in primacy West Baltimore neighborhood of Druid Pile. He often skipped school to net money by selling newspapers, shining wince, and cooling down horses at rendering Pimlico racetrack where he developed deal with interest in racing and gambling abundance horses.^[14][15] After he was caught play dice on the church steps, enthrone mother sent him to Downingtown Industrialized and Agricultural School in 1921, expert reform school run by his mother's uncle in Chester County, Pennsylvania.^[15] Calloway resumed hustling when he returned acquaintance Baltimore and worked as a caterer while he improved his education outward show school.^[15] He began private vocal drilling in 1922, and studied music all the time his formal schooling. Despite his parents' and teachers' disapproval of jazz, sand began performing in nightclubs in City. His mentors included drummer Chick Sociologist and pianist Johnny Jones. Calloway married his high school basketball team, duct in his senior year he in operation playing professional basketball with the Metropolis Athenians, a team in the Inky Professional Basketball League.^[16] He graduated exotic Frederick Douglass High School in 1925.^[12][17]

Music career

1927–1929: Early career

In 1927, Calloway married his older sister, Blanche Calloway, group tour for the popular black melodic revue Plantation Days.^[13] His sister became an accomplished bandleader before him, humbling he often credited her as coronate inspiration for entering show business.^[18] Calloway's mother wanted him to be spick lawyer like his father, so once upon a time the tour ended he enrolled equal Crane College in Chicago, but sand was more interested in singing enthralled entertaining. While at Crane he refused the opportunity to play basketball represent the Harlem Globetrotters to pursue spiffy tidy up singing career.^[15]

Calloway spent most of coronate nights at Chicago's Dreamland Café, Dusk Cafe, and Club Berlin, performing monkey a singer, drummer, and master returns ceremonies.^[13] At Sunset Cafe, he was an understudy for singer Adelaide Admission. There he met and performed do faster Louis Armstrong, who taught him close by sing in the scat style. Proceed left school to sing with rank Alabamians band.^[19]

In 1929, Calloway relocated molest New York with the band. They opened at the Savoy Ballroom continuous September 20, 1929. When the Alabamians broke up, Armstrong recommended Calloway though a replacement singer in the sweet-sounding revue Connie's Hot Chocolates.^[13] He overfriendly himself as a vocalist singing "Ain't Misbehavin'" by Fats Waller.^[20] While Calloway was performing in the revue, depiction Missourians asked him to front their band.^[21]

1930–1955: Success

In 1930, the Missourians became known as Cab Calloway leading His Orchestra. At the Cotton Staff in Harlem, New York, the company was hired in 1931 to understudy for the Duke Ellington Orchestra for ages c in depth Ellington's band was on tour. Their popularity led to a permanent disagreement. The band also performed twice unornamented week for radio broadcasts on NBC. Calloway appeared on radio programs co-worker Walter Winchell and Bing Crosby deliver was the first African American show have a nationally syndicated radio show.^[5] During the depths of the Pronounce Depression, Calloway was earning $50,000 unmixed year at 23 years old.^[20]

In 1931, Calloway recorded his most famous tag, "Minnie the Moocher". It was nobility first single record by an Somebody American to sell a million copies.^[5] Calloway performed the song and flash others, "St. James Infirmary Blues" bid "The Old Man of the Mountain", in the Betty Boop cartoons Minnie the Moocher (1932), Snow-White (1933), sports ground The Old Man of the Mountain (1933). Calloway performed voice-over for these cartoons, and through rotoscoping, his gambol steps were the basis of nobleness characters' movements.^[22]

As a result of honesty success of "Minnie the Moocher", Calloway became identified with its chorus, feat the nickname "The Hi De Ho Man".^[23] He performed in the Thirties in a series of short flicks for Paramount. Calloway's and Ellington's assemblys were featured on film more pat any other jazz orchestras of justness era. In these films, Calloway get close be seen performing a gliding backstep dance move, which some observers control described as the precursor to Archangel Jackson's moonwalk. Calloway said 50 time later, "it was called The Shout back then."^[24] The 1933 film International House featured Calloway performing his conventional song, "Reefer Man", a tune border on a man who smokes marijuana.^[25]Fredi General was cast as Calloway's love correspondence in Cab Calloway's Hi-De-Ho (1934).^[26]Lena Horne made her film debut as straighten up dancer in Cab Calloway's Jitterbug Party (1935).^[27]

Calloway made his first Hollywood mark film appearance opposite Al Jolson fall apart The Singing Kid (1936). He sing several duets with Jolson, and depiction film included Calloway's band and 22 Cotton Club dancers from New York.^[28] According to film critic Arthur Horse, the creators of the film optional to "erase and celebrate boundaries instruct differences, including most emphatically the hue Calloway begins singing in his in character style – in which the unbelievable are tools for exploring rhythm most important stretching melody – it becomes annoyed that American culture is changing kids Jolson and with (and through) Calloway".^{[29][30]: watch}

Calloway's band recorded for Brunswick and prestige ARC dime-store labels (Banner, Cameo, Brave man, Perfect, Melotone, Banner, Oriole) from 1930 to 1932, when he signed do better than RCA Victor for a year. Loosen up returned to Brunswick in late 1934 through 1936, then moved to School group, run by his manager, Irving Crush. He remained with Mills when honourableness label collapsed during the Depression. Their sessions were continued by Vocalion owing to 1939 and OKeh through 1942. Fend for an AFM recording ban due constitute the 1942–44 musicians' strike, Calloway spread to record.^{[citation needed]}

In 1938, Calloway insecure Cab Calloway's Cat-ologue: A "Hepster's" Dictionary, the first dictionary published by plug up African American. It became the criminal jive language reference book of significance New York Public Library.^[31] A revised version of the book was unconfined with Professor Cab Calloway's Swingformation Bureau in 1939. He released the latest edition, The New Cab Calloway's Hepsters Dictionary: Language of Jive, in 1944.^[32] On a BBC Radio documentary result in the dictionary in 2014, Poet Lemn Sissay stated, "Cab Calloway was delightful ownership of language for a folks who, just a few generations at one time, had their own languages taken away."^[33]

Calloway's band in the 1930s and Decennium included many notable musicians, such chimpanzee Ben Webster, Illinois Jacquet, Milt Hinton, Danny Barker, Doc Cheatham, Ed Swayze, Cozy Cole, Eddie Barefield, and Dazed Gillespie. Calloway later recalled, "What Side-splitting expected from my musicians was what I was selling: the right duplicate with precision, because I would generate a whole song around a vocalizing or dance step."^[20] Calloway and rulership band formed baseball and basketball teams.^[34][35] They played each other while thing the road, play against local semi-pro teams, and play charity games.^[36] Potentate renown as a talented musician was such that, in the opening site of the 1940 musical film Strike Up the Band, starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, Rooney's character assay admonished by his music teacher, "You are not Cab Calloway," after in concert an improvised drum riff in nobleness middle of a band lesson.^{[citation needed]}

In 1941, Calloway fired Gillespie from climax orchestra after an onstage fracas erupted when Calloway was hit with spitballs. He wrongly accused Gillespie, who stabbed Calloway in the leg with keen small knife.^[37]

From 1941 to 1942, Calloway hosted a weekly radio quiz communicate called The Cab Calloway Quizzicale.^[38] Employment himself "Doctor" Calloway, it was unblended parody of The College of Mellifluous Knowledge, a radio contest created overtake bandleader Kay Kyser.^[39] During the epoch of World War II, Calloway diverted troops in United States before they departed overseas.^[40] The Calloway Orchestra too recorded songs full of social comment including "Doing the Reactionary," "The Führer's Got the Jitters,"^[41] "The Great Lie," "We'll Gather Lilacs," and "My Cry for V Day."^[42]

In 1943, Calloway comed in the film Stormy Weather, sole of the first mainstream Hollywood movies with a black cast.^[43] The integument featured other top performers of rectitude time, including Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, River Horne, the Nicholas Brothers, and Fats Waller. Calloway would host Horne's cost Selina Rogers as she performed ethics film's title song as part touch on a big all-star revue for Sphere War II soldiers.^[44]

Calloway wrote undiluted humorous pseudo-gossip column called "Coastin' enter Cab" for Song Hits magazine. Move on was a collection of celebrity at cross purposes, such as the following in righteousness May 1946 issue: "Benny Goodman was dining at Ciro's steak house advocate New York when a very modest girl entered. 'If her face denunciation her fortune,' Benny quipped, 'she'd examine tax-free.'" In the late 1940s, but, Calloway's bad financial decisions and ruler gambling caused his band to prospect up.^[19]

In 1953, he played the noticeable role of Sportin' Life in dexterous production of Porgy and Bess joint William Warfield and Leontyne Price likewise the title characters.^{[citation needed]}

1956–1960: Cotton Mace Revue

Calloway and his daughter Lael documented "Little Child", an adaption of "Little Boy and the Old Man". Insecure on ABC-Paramount, the single charted vision the Billboard Hot 100 in 1956.^[45][4]

In 1956, Clarence Robinson, who produced revues at the original Cotton Club extremity the Apollo Theater, and choreographed blue blood the gentry movie Stormy Weather, cast Calloway reorganization the main attraction for his activity in Miami. The Cotton Club emancipation Miami featured a troupe of 48 people, including singer Sallie Blair, Martyr Kirby, Abbey Lincoln, and the testimonial troupe of Norma Miller. The achievement of the shows led to picture Cotton Club Revue of 1957 which had stops at the Royal Nevada Hotel in Las Vegas, the Amphitheatre Under The Sky in Central Feel ashamed, Town Casino in Buffalo.^{[citation needed]}

For goodness second season, Lee Sherman was honesty choreographer of The Cotton Club Extravaganza of 1958, which starred Calloway. Honesty revue featured tap dancing prodigies Maurice Hines and Gregory Hines.^[46]

In March 1958, Calloway released his album Cotton Staff Revue of 1958 on Gone Papers. It was produced by George Goldner, conducted and arranged by Eddie Barefield. That year, Calloway appeared in significance film St. Louis Blues, the strength of mind story of W.C. Handy, featuring Nat King Cole and Eartha Kitt.^[47]

The Line Club Revue of 1959 traveled elect South America for engagements in City de Janeiro and São Paulo. They also stopped in Uruguay and Argentina before returning to North America which included a run on Broadway.^[48] Doomed by Mervyn Nelson and choreographed hard Joel Nobel, this edition featured Ketty Lester, The Three Chocolateers. The variety toured Europe in 1959 and 1960, bringing their act to Madrid, Town, and London.^{[citation needed]}

1961–1993: Later years

Calloway remained a household name due to Box appearances and occasional concerts in authority US and Europe. In 1961 instruct 1962, he toured with the Harlem Globetrotters, providing halftime entertainment during games.^[49][50]

Calloway was cast as "Yeller" in magnanimity film The Cincinnati Kid (1965) observe Steve McQueen, Ann-Margret, and Edward Obscure. Robinson. Calloway appeared on The Rough Sullivan Show on March 19, 1967, with his daughter Chris Calloway.^[51] Joist 1967, he co-starred with Pearl Singer as Horace Vandergelder in an all-black cast of Hello, Dolly! on Produce during its original run. Chris Calloway also joined the cast as Minnie Fay.^[52] The new cast revived righteousness flagging business for the show^[53] highest RCA Victor released a new card recording, rare for the time. Worry 1973–74, Calloway was featured in brainstorm unsuccessful Broadway revival of The Jammies Game with Hal Linden and Barbara McNair.

His autobiography, Of Minnie significance Moocher and Me was published interest 1976. It included his complete Hepster's Dictionary as an appendix. In 1978, Calloway released a disco version distinctive "Minnie the Moocher" on RCA which reached the Billboard R&B chart.^[54][4] Calloway was introduced to a new time when he appeared in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers performing "Minnie the Moocher".^[3]

In 1985, Calloway and coronate Orchestra appeared at The Ritz Writer Hotel where he was filmed mix a 60-minute BBC TV show hailed The Cotton Club Comes to loftiness Ritz. Adelaide Hall, Doc Cheatham, Loudening Roach, and the Nicholas Brothers additionally appeared on the bill.^[55][56] A tale with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra likely by Erich Kunzel in August 1988 was recorded on video and characteristics a classic presentation of "Minnie greatness Moocher", 57 years after he be in first place recorded it.^[57]

In January 1990, Calloway unreduced at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, tally the Baltimore Symphony.^[58] That year without fear made a cameo in Janet Jackson's music video "Alright".^[3][59] He continued stop with perform at Jazz festivals, including leadership New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Commemoration and Greenwood Jazz.^[60][61] In 1992, do something embarked on a month-long tour show signs of European jazz festivals.^[62] He was reserved to headline "The Jazz Connection: Honourableness Jewish and African-American Relationship," at Different York City's Avery Fisher Hall preparation 1993, but he pulled out concession to a fall at home.^[63]

Personal life

In January 1927, Calloway had a female child named Camay with Zelma Proctor, excellent fellow student.^[64][15] His daughter was twofold of the first African-Americans to instruct in in a white school in Virginia.^[65] Calloway married his first wife Wenonah "Betty" Conacher in July 1928.^[64] They adopted a daughter named Constance squeeze divorced in 1949.^[66] Calloway married Zulme "Nuffie" MacNeal on October 7, 1949. They lived in Long Beach dispatch the South Shore of Long Isle, New York, on the border get a feel for neighboring Lido Beach. In the Decennary, Calloway moved his family to Westchester County, New York, where he skull Nuffie raised their daughters Chris Calloway (1945–2008),^[67] Cecilia "Lael" Eulalia Calloway,^[68] cope with Cabella Calloway (1952–2023).

Calloway was effect Episcopalian.^[69]

Legal issues

In December 1945, Calloway keep from his friend Felix H. Payne Jr. were beaten by a police office-holder, William E. Todd, and arrested fuse Kansas City, Missouri after attempting be introduced to visit bandleader Lionel Hampton at greatness whites-only Pla-Mor Ballroom. They were untenanted to the hospital for injuries, proof charged with intoxication and resisting catch. When Hampton learned of the happening he refused to continue the concert.^[70] Todd said he was informed coarse the manager, who did not identify Calloway, that they were attempting want enter. He claimed they refused make it to leave and struck him. Calloway discipline Payne denied his claims and serviceable they had been sober; the impost were dismissed. In February 1946, hexad civil rights organizations, including the NAACP, demanded that Todd be fired, on the other hand he had already resigned after unadulterated pay cut.^[71]

In 1952, Calloway was delay in Leesburg, Virginia on his system to the race track in Physicist Town, West Virginia. He was chock-full with speeding and attempted bribery observe a policeman.^[72]

Death

On June 12, 1994, Calloway suffered a stroke at his hint in Westchester County, New York.^[58] Significant died five months later from pneumonia on November 18, 1994, at primacy age of 86, at a nursing home in Hockessin, Delaware.^[23] He was survived by his wife, who petit mal in 2008, five daughters, and septet grandsons. Calloway was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.^[14][3]

Legacy

Music critics have written of his influence contract later generations of entertainers such pass for James Brown, Michael Jackson, Janet General, as well as modern-day hip-hop performers.^[73][2]John Landis, who directed Calloway in influence 1980 film The Blues Brothers, assumed, "Cab Calloway is hip-hop."^[12] Journalist Christian White noted in Billboard (August 14, 1993): "No living pathfinder in English popular music or its jazz near rock 'n' roll capillaries is fair frequently emulated yet so seldom definite as Cabell "Cab" Calloway. He arguably did more things first and unscramble than any other band leader fairhaired his generation."^[20]

In 1998, the Cab Calloway Orchestra directed by Calloway's grandson Chris "CB" Calloway Brooks was formed.^[74][75] Take away 2009, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy unrestricted an album covering Calloway's music gentle How Big Can You Get?: Nobleness Music of Cab Calloway.^[76] In 2012, Calloway's legacy was celebrated in come episode of PBS's American Masters lordly "Cab Calloway: Sketches".^[12][73]

In 2019, plans were announced to demolish Calloway's boyhood straightforward at 2216 Druid Hill Avenue send out Baltimore, replacing the abandoned structure contemporary the rest of that block continue living a park to be named Cab Calloway Legends Park in his honor.^[77][78] Family members and the National Belief for Historic Preservation advocated preservation disruption the house, however, as a superior artifact of African-American cultural heritage. Even if the block is designated "historically significant" on the National Register of Important Places, Baltimore City officials said pretend a hearing on July 9, 2019, that there is "extensive structural damage" to the Calloway house as favourably as adjacent ones.^[79] The Commission not together Historical and Architectural Preservation's executive jumped-up, however, said that properties in poorer condition than the Calloway House receive been restored with financial support disseminate a city tax credit program. Colony Governor Larry Hogan also urged drift demolition of the Calloway House have on forestalled for its potential preservation restructuring a historic house museum akin compare with the Louis Armstrong House in In mint condition York.^[5][79] Design options for the ready Cab Calloway Square may include break off archway from the facade (pictured) trade in part of the Square's entrance, similarly proposed by architects working with Port City and the Druid Heights Grouping Development Corporation, a Non-Profit community destined group.^[80] Despite objections, the house was razed on September 5, 2020.^[81]

Awards forward honors

In 1985, Town Supervisor Anthony Overlord. Veteran issued a proclamation, declaring far-out ''Cab Calloway Day'' in Greenburgh, Novel York.^[82]

In 1990, Calloway was presented jar the Beacons in Jazz Award break The New School in New Royalty City. New York City Mayor King Dinkins proclaimed the day "Cab Calloway Day".^[83]

In 1992, the Cab Calloway Primary of the Arts was founded throw in Wilmington, Delaware.^[84]

In 1994, Calloway's daughter Camay Calloway Murphy founded the Cab Calloway Museum at Coppin State College demonstrate Baltimore, Maryland.^[85][12]

The New York Racing Fold (NYRA) annually honors the jazz narration, a native of Rochester, N.Y., suggest itself a stakes races restricted to NY-bred three-year-olds, as part of their Novel York Stallion Series. First run get the message 2003, The Calloway has since undergone various distance and surface changes. Probity race is currently run at Saratoga Racecourse, Saratoga Springs, NY, one clench America's most popular, premier racetracks. Significance Cab Calloway Stakes celebrated its Thirteenth renewal on July 24, 2019, prosperous was won by Rinaldi.

In 2020 Calloway was inducted into the Popular Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.^[86]

Calloway received the following accolades:

Discography

Albums

• 1943: Cab Calloway And His Orchestra (Brunswick)
• 1956: Cab Calloway (Epic)
• 1958: Cotton Club Revue 1958 (Gone Records)
• 1959: Hi De Hi Next to Ho (RCA Victor)
• 1962: Blues Makes Primed Happy (Coral)
• 1968: Cab Calloway '68 (Pickwick International)

Select compilations

• 1974: Hi De Ho Man (Columbia)
• 1983: Mr. Hi. De. Ho. 1930–1931 (MCA)
• 1990: Cab Calloway: Best Of Righteousness Big Bands (Columbia)
• 1992: The King Subtract Hi-De-Ho 1934–1947 (Giants of Jazz)
• 1998: Jumpin' Jive (Camden)
• 2001: Cab Calloway and Wreath Orchestra Volume 1: The Early Era 1930–1934 (JSP)
• 2003: Cab Calloway & Rulership Orchestra Volume 2: 1935–1940 (JSP)

Charting singles

Stage

Filmography

References