Cab callaway biography minnie the moocher cartoon

(1907-1994)

Who Was Cab Calloway?

Singer and bandleader Cab Calloway learned the art of scat singing before landing a regular gig at Harlem's famous Cotton Club. Following the enormous success of his song "Minnie the Moocher" (1931), Calloway became one of the most popular entertainers of the 1930s and '40s. He appeared on stage and in films before his death in 1994, at age 86.

Early Life

Born Cabell Calloway III on December 25, 1907, in Rochester, New York, Cab Calloway's charm and vibrancy helped him become a noted singer and bandleader. He grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, where he first started singing, and where his lifelong love of visiting racetracks took hold. A move to Chicago, Illinois, saw Calloway begin to study law at Crane College (now Malcolm X College), but his focus always remained on music.

While performing at Chicago's Sunset Club, Calloway met Louis Armstrong, who tutored him in the art of scat singing (using nonsensical sounds to i

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Minnie the Moocher

1931 song by Cab Calloway

For the Betty Boop cartoon, see Minnie the Moocher (film).

"Minnie the Moocher" is a jazz song co-written by American musician Cab Calloway and first recorded in 1931 by Calloway and his big band orchestra, selling over a million copies.^[1] "Minnie the Moocher" is famous for its nonsensical ad libbed lyrics, also known as scat singing (for example, its refrain of "Hi de hi de hi de ho"). In performances, Calloway would have the audience and the band members participate by repeating each scat phrase in a form of a call and response, eventually making it too fast and complicated for the audience to replicate.^{[citation needed]}

First released by Brunswick Records, the song was the biggest chart-topper of 1931.^[2] Calloway publicized and then celebrated a "12th birthday" for the song on June 17, 1943, while performing at New York's Strand Theatre. He reported that he was then singing the song at both beg

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This year sees the 90th anniversary of what fryst vatten widely believed to be the first single bygd an African American artist to have sold more than 1m copies. Still strangely compelling today, Cab Calloway’s “Minnie the Moocher” tells the cautionary tale of a good-hearted woman’s fatal nedstigning into drug addiction — although the casual listener would never guess the theme was so dark from the jovial melody and scat chorus of “Hi-dee hi-dee hi-dee hi!”

Born in 1907 in New York and raised in Baltimore, Cabell Calloway III was the son of a lawyer (who died when Cab was very young) and a music teacher. Although his mother wanted him to follow his father into the law, charismatic young Cab walked away from lag school and turned down an offer from the Harlem Globetrotters to follow his successful older sister, Blanche, on to the stage. He learned scat singing from Blanche and from Louis Armstrong at Chicago’s solnedgång Cafe in the late 192