Cabell “Cab” Calloway III was an American jazz singer, dancer, bandleader and actor. In 1927, Calloway joined his older sister, Blanche Calloway, on tour for the popular black musical revue Plantation Days. 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. They opened at the Savoy Ballroom in September 1929, but they were not up to par with Cecil Scott’s band. The Alabamians broke up and Armstrong recommended Calloway as a replacement singer in the musical revue Connie’s Hot Chcoclates. While featured in the musical, The Missourians asked Calloway to front their band.
In 1930, they 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 they were 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 is the first single song by an African American to sell a million records. “The Old Man of the Mountain”, “St. James Infirmary Blues”, and “Minnie the Moocher” were performed in three 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. He scheduled concerts in some communities to coincide with the release of the films to take advantage of the publicity.
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”. In 1943, Calloway appeared in the film Stormy Weather, one of the first mainstream Hollywood films with a black cast.
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 in 1956. In March 1958, Calloway released his album Cotton Club Revue of 1958 on Gone Records. 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 introduced to a new generation when he appeared in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers performing “Minnie the Moocher”.
