Having spent the day yesterday listening to Cab Calloway's recordings from 1930 to 1955, I began to wonder: Has Calloway been shortchanged? Does hip start with his records of the early '30s? Did he originate cool? Can jazz's with-it, knowing wink be traced back to his records of the early '30s? Calloway, of course, was the baton-waving bandleader with the tuxedo suits and tails, wide-brim hats, oversized mouth, unkempt hair and songs about Minnie the Moocher and Hi-De-Ho—all celebrated perfectly in the early cartoons of Max Fleischer. Sketches, a new documentary on Calloway by filmmaker Gail Levin, nibbles on this thought. It will air for the first time on Monday, February 7 at 9 p.m. on WLIW in New York. More on the documentary in a moment.
The natural followup questions are these: Was Calloway an exponent of the jazz scene that preceded him? Or was he an original, creating a new, intoxicating free-style approach complete with hipster lingo? If the answer is the latter, did jazz musicians who followed Calloway have his wildman persona in mind as they worked to build a following? Could Louis Prima, Lionel Hampton, Dizzy Gillespie [pictured], Frankie Laine, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, James Brown and even Prince really have been possible without Calloway's expressive and extravagant approach to music and performance?
Calloway certainly was the first popular singer and bandleader to capture the imaginations of millions of blacks who had migrated from the rural South to the urban North and West. While Duke Ellington was revered by this audience in heroic terms, his status was fed by awe. Ellington in the '30s was as admired for his grace and powerful orchestral music as he was for his enormous success navigating the choppy waters of white management, radio and record companies without compromising the authenticity of his art or Harlem roots.
Calloway was slightly different. He was street. He was a singer, dancer and flamboyant showman. And his personal pandemonium, twirling steps and exaggerated manner of dress were instantly recognizable to urban blacks as a collage of neighborhood prototypes—the corner hustler, the truth-stretcher, the numbers runner, the fixer, the go-getter and the gigolo.
Interestingly, Calloway's approach to music and his singing style remained largely untouched over the years, even as jazz styles changed multiple times. While his band arrangements may have shifted from the frantic jazz style popular in the early '30s to a cooler swing in the late '30s and '40s, his comic wailing and moaning were trademark and fairly consistent throughout the hot, swing and bop eras.
But as silly as Calloway may now seem, he was an important electrical charge to jazz's pre-war development. Consider this: Calloway's impromptu conversational jiving in song may well pre-date Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller. Just listen to It Looks Like Susie from 1931. But Calloway's appeal wasn't limited to urban blacks. Calloway's sun-burst optimism was so infectious early on that he became a popular cross-over act and one of the top-earning entertainers of the Great Depression.
As Calloway told Hank O'Neal in 1986...
"In Harlem [of the '30s] we were celebrities, but we weren't [celebrities] down South, and finally I solved the problem with my own train. We'd travel in luxury and sleep on the train. It was something to have your own dining car and a sleeping car. I used to carry my Pierce Arrow [car] on the train. I'd let them pull the train into town, then unload my car and drive into town. It was cool but nothing like being in Harlem. I remember when we came back from our first tour down South, we were met like returning heroes."
Calloway also had a knack for hiring top talent. Bandmembers in 1939 alone included Dizzy Gillespie, Lamar Wright, Milt Hinton, Chu Berry and Hilton Jefferson.
On Monday, February 7, Gail Levin's [pictured] documentary Cab Calloway: Sketches will air for the first time on WLIW in New York at 9 p.m. But this documentary almost never was. As Gail told me a few days ago, the film was completely financed by the French, without a penny of American money. "It quite breaks my heart," she said. "Cab is fascinating and worthy, and the lack of enthusiasm and vision has just amazed me. So I am especially grateful to the folks at WLIW. They embraced the film and gave it a home."
Today, Cab Calloway is considered by many to be more novelty than nuance. And his on-stage antics may seem over the top when viewed through today's jaded prism. But in the history of pre-war jazz, he remains a vital expression of urban culture, upward aspiration and, most of all, humor, which no other black artist had dared to leverage yet with such cosmopolitan relish.
JazzWax tracks: There are numerous albums and box sets that feature the recordings of Cab Calloway. My own collection includes many of the French Classics discs [pictured] which cover every one of Calloway's 78-rpms in chronological order.
JazzWax pages: Hank O'Neal's extraordinary book, Ghosts of Harlem, can be found here. Alyn Shipton's new biography Hi-De-Ho: The Life of Cab Calloway was published in October and is available here.
JazzWax notes: Gail Levin's documentary, Cab Calloway: Sketches, airs on Monday, February 7 on WLIW in New York at 9 p.m. In addition, the documentary will air on Feb. 12 at 4p.m.; and on Feb. 13 at midnight and at 3:30 p.m. For more information, go here and click on the "schedule" tab and then "view schedule." No DVD is planned thus far. To reach Gail Levin, email her here: gaillevin@earthlink.net
If you share my fascination for Cab Calloway, visit the Paris-based Hi De Ho Bloghere (use the drop-down menu in the upper right hand corner to have the entire site translated into English). The blog's host, Jean-François Pitet, is also the writer of Gail Levin's Sketches documentary.
JazzWax clip: Here's Cab Calloway singing in the movie Stormy Weather (1943). He's clearly an influence on bebop's loose feel as well as the grandfather of early rock 'n' roll and great-grandfather of rap. Make sure you're sitting down when the Nicholas Brothers start their dance routine...
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Fascinating post, Marc, and I'm glad to see someone has tried to consider Cab seriously on film. (I've read Shipton's book and it covers the subject well.) But -- without taking anything away from Cab, your work, or Ms. Levin's -- Cab was a masterful synthesizer of Black and White traditions. To consider him without his indebtedness to (let's just say) Bing Crosby, the Rhythm Boys, Frankie "Half Pint" Jaxon and the whole Black vaudeville tradition, that Armstrong fellow, Bert Williams . . . would be to see him as springing full-blown from his own scat-singing head. The question I always have about Cab is a cultural one: consider the US in 1932, more than somewhat racially prejudiced. Here comes this handsome, tall, somewhat uninhibited African-American fellow in a stunning white suit, singing either 1) nonsense syllables or 2) songs about going uptown to get high on opium. WHAT did they make of him and WHAT did they think he was? That, to me, is the most fascinating cultural question.
Onwards!
I haven't read bios of Calloway, but watching and listening to him, I think he actually represents a synthesis of the jazz path with the minstrel/vaudeville entertainment path. That's to say, starting in the teens, with James Europe as the prime mover, black jazz or near-jazz musicians cultivated an image of tuxedo-ed sophistication-and copped good gigs because of it. Calloway crossed that sense of style with over-the-top, theatrical staging.
"Jowza," Marc. Great post. Amazing that you didn't mention the movie "Blues Brothers" once. But I'm happy that Han did in the third comment. To my generation that was a good tribute to Cab and that era of show business jazz.
When I lived in FL I got to be good friends with Milt Hinton. We had him and Mona over for dinner and the next year when I visited NYC he returned the favor with the added benny of giving me the key to his studio on 7th Ave. at around 59th ST, complete with the use of one of his best basses that he kept there for record dates in Manhattan. The "Judge" was a beautiful person and fantastic walking resource for the history of jazz. He did not like to talk about his years with Cab, "that silly stuff" but it would be hard to imagine his career without Cab. Milt was one of the few people who maxed out recording residuals for all the record dates he participated in. I have marked my calendar for the special on Cab. Thank you.
There is a tendency in some circles to prettify and dignify jazz, leading those to denigrate Louis Armstrong singing "King of the Zulus" in a tiger-skin leotard and Cab Calloway cake-walking "Minnie the Moocher". I've always taken Cab Calloway seriously for the reasons you describe - his music is good, his musicians talented and he's always ahead of the curve.
Where do you think Michael Jackson got his moonwalk? He was watching the Betty Boop cartoon with Calloway's Minnie the Moocher.
Lookup "Minnie the Moocher" covers by modern swing bands. It's still popular because it stands on its own even without Cab's cake-walking and swirling.
Fabulous piece and I entirely concur that Cab was a pivotal figure in the evolution of Hip.
His approach - mapping a character (or caricature) from the street (or porch stoop or village square) onto the mainstream stage - is a model that we see repeated particularly among black artists - from front porch blues players of the 20's and 30's to the street corner doo wop quartets of the 40's and 50's right through to Prince. And along the way, many jazz players emulated the same "creation of character" - Dizzy, Louis Armstrong, Duke, Monk, Mingus and Miles all spring to mind. Among these "stars" there appeared to be the belief that simply being musically talented was not enough - that there was a need to thoroughly entertain - to bring music, dance, drama all into play (depending on the artist). Perhaps they were right, perhaps for a black performer - especially in the 1930's and 1940's - to gain notice and some degree of acceptance in the broad and largely economically white marketplace, they needed to be more than just brilliant artists - they needed to be stars. And they were.
By way of a personal plug, I have felt such a personal debt to Cab in particular that I wrote a piece inspired by him, entitled "The Moonlight Jamboree" - please feel welcome to check it out at www.myspace.com./bonarsmusic
hey good work having seen the cab calloway, work on t.v was refreashing, cab did his thing in an era when doing your thing meant trouble on your table,, and to over come aii the prejudices of the time man , I got to give it to him and all the other black musicians of that time..
Many have compared Ellington of the jazz band age to the BeaTles - I take it a step further, feeling that Cab Calloway, with his showmanship and sexuality, was the Mick Jagger of his era!
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Marc Myers writes frequently on music and the arts for the Wall Street Journal. He is author of "Why Jazz Happened" (University of California Press). In 2012, JazzWax was named the Jazz Journalists Association's "Blog of the Year."
Fascinating post, Marc, and I'm glad to see someone has tried to consider Cab seriously on film. (I've read Shipton's book and it covers the subject well.) But -- without taking anything away from Cab, your work, or Ms. Levin's -- Cab was a masterful synthesizer of Black and White traditions. To consider him without his indebtedness to (let's just say) Bing Crosby, the Rhythm Boys, Frankie "Half Pint" Jaxon and the whole Black vaudeville tradition, that Armstrong fellow, Bert Williams . . . would be to see him as springing full-blown from his own scat-singing head. The question I always have about Cab is a cultural one: consider the US in 1932, more than somewhat racially prejudiced. Here comes this handsome, tall, somewhat uninhibited African-American fellow in a stunning white suit, singing either 1) nonsense syllables or 2) songs about going uptown to get high on opium. WHAT did they make of him and WHAT did they think he was? That, to me, is the most fascinating cultural question.
Onwards!
Posted by: Michael Steinman | February 04, 2011 at 11:39 AM
I haven't read bios of Calloway, but watching and listening to him, I think he actually represents a synthesis of the jazz path with the minstrel/vaudeville entertainment path. That's to say, starting in the teens, with James Europe as the prime mover, black jazz or near-jazz musicians cultivated an image of tuxedo-ed sophistication-and copped good gigs because of it. Calloway crossed that sense of style with over-the-top, theatrical staging.
Posted by: Steve Provizer | February 04, 2011 at 06:31 PM
Great piece on Calloway, Marc. I have those Fleischer cartoons on my ipod. All of Cab's recordings with Chu Berry are on the Mosaic boxset also.
Posted by: Desertblues | February 04, 2011 at 09:25 PM
Let's not forget Cab Calloway's first class performance in the 1980 movie "Blues Brothers".
Han Schulte
Netherlands
Posted by: Han Schulte | February 05, 2011 at 06:25 AM
"Jowza," Marc. Great post. Amazing that you didn't mention the movie "Blues Brothers" once. But I'm happy that Han did in the third comment. To my generation that was a good tribute to Cab and that era of show business jazz.
When I lived in FL I got to be good friends with Milt Hinton. We had him and Mona over for dinner and the next year when I visited NYC he returned the favor with the added benny of giving me the key to his studio on 7th Ave. at around 59th ST, complete with the use of one of his best basses that he kept there for record dates in Manhattan. The "Judge" was a beautiful person and fantastic walking resource for the history of jazz. He did not like to talk about his years with Cab, "that silly stuff" but it would be hard to imagine his career without Cab. Milt was one of the few people who maxed out recording residuals for all the record dates he participated in. I have marked my calendar for the special on Cab. Thank you.
Posted by: Win Hinkle | February 05, 2011 at 06:51 AM
There is a tendency in some circles to prettify and dignify jazz, leading those to denigrate Louis Armstrong singing "King of the Zulus" in a tiger-skin leotard and Cab Calloway cake-walking "Minnie the Moocher". I've always taken Cab Calloway seriously for the reasons you describe - his music is good, his musicians talented and he's always ahead of the curve.
Where do you think Michael Jackson got his moonwalk? He was watching the Betty Boop cartoon with Calloway's Minnie the Moocher.
Lookup "Minnie the Moocher" covers by modern swing bands. It's still popular because it stands on its own even without Cab's cake-walking and swirling.
Posted by: Kent England | February 05, 2011 at 11:33 AM
Austin's Jitterbug Vipers do Cab's "Man From Harlem":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJUqLIosC28
Skip to 2:12
(recorded December 2010)
Posted by: David | February 05, 2011 at 02:03 PM
Fabulous piece and I entirely concur that Cab was a pivotal figure in the evolution of Hip.
His approach - mapping a character (or caricature) from the street (or porch stoop or village square) onto the mainstream stage - is a model that we see repeated particularly among black artists - from front porch blues players of the 20's and 30's to the street corner doo wop quartets of the 40's and 50's right through to Prince. And along the way, many jazz players emulated the same "creation of character" - Dizzy, Louis Armstrong, Duke, Monk, Mingus and Miles all spring to mind. Among these "stars" there appeared to be the belief that simply being musically talented was not enough - that there was a need to thoroughly entertain - to bring music, dance, drama all into play (depending on the artist). Perhaps they were right, perhaps for a black performer - especially in the 1930's and 1940's - to gain notice and some degree of acceptance in the broad and largely economically white marketplace, they needed to be more than just brilliant artists - they needed to be stars. And they were.
By way of a personal plug, I have felt such a personal debt to Cab in particular that I wrote a piece inspired by him, entitled "The Moonlight Jamboree" - please feel welcome to check it out at www.myspace.com./bonarsmusic
Posted by: bonar harris | February 05, 2011 at 03:22 PM
Very nice, thanks.
Posted by: sewa mobil | February 06, 2011 at 07:18 AM
hey good work having seen the cab calloway, work on t.v was refreashing, cab did his thing in an era when doing your thing meant trouble on your table,, and to over come aii the prejudices of the time man , I got to give it to him and all the other black musicians of that time..
Posted by: Teo ortiz | February 08, 2011 at 05:48 PM
Many have compared Ellington of the jazz band age to the BeaTles - I take it a step further, feeling that Cab Calloway, with his showmanship and sexuality, was the Mick Jagger of his era!
Posted by: labradog | February 11, 2011 at 11:04 AM
No mentioning of Calloway's films is complete without SENSATIONS OF 1945.
Fabulous!
Posted by: John P. Cooper | August 23, 2011 at 06:39 PM