Cabell Calloway III was born on December 25, 1907, and died on November 18, 1994. He was an American jazz singer, songwriter, and bandleader. He often performed at the Cotton Club in Harlem, where he became a well-known singer during the swing era. His unique way of combining jazz and vaudeville earned him recognition during a career that lasted more than 65 years.

Calloway was skilled at scat singing, a style that uses fast, rhythmic vocal sounds. He led one of the most popular dance bands in the United States from the early 1930s to the late 1940s. His band included famous musicians such as trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie, Jonah Jones, and Adolphus "Doc" Cheatham; saxophonists Ben Webster and Leon "Chu" Berry; guitarist Danny Barker; bassist Milt Hinton; and drummer Cozy Cole.

Calloway had many successful songs in the 1930s and 1940s. He was the first African-American musician to sell one million copies of a record. His most famous song, "Minnie the Moocher," was first recorded in 1931. Because of this song, he became known as the "Hi-de-ho" man of jazz. His music appeared on the Billboard charts in five different decades from the 1930s to the 1970s. Calloway also appeared in stage plays, films, and television shows. He acted in movies such as Stormy Weather (1943), Porgy and Bess (1953), The Cincinnati Kid (1965), and Hello Dolly! (1967). In the 1980s, his career grew again after he appeared in the film The Blues Brothers (1980).

Calloway was the first African-American person to have a nationally syndicated radio program. In 1993, he received the National Medal of Arts from the United States Congress. After his death, he was honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. His song "Minnie the Moocher" was added to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999 and to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry in 2019. In 2022, the National Film Registry selected his home films for preservation because they are considered culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. He was also inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame and the International Jazz Hall of Fame.

Early life

Cabell Calloway III was born in Rochester, New York, on December 25, 1907. His father, Cabell Calloway Jr., graduated from Lincoln University of Pennsylvania in 1898. His mother, Martha Eulalia Reed, graduated from Morgan State College. She worked as a teacher, church organist, lawyer, and in real estate. The family moved to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1919. Soon after, his father died, and his mother remarried to John Nelson Fortune.

Calloway grew up in the Druid Hill neighborhood of West Baltimore. He often skipped school to earn money by selling newspapers, shining shoes, and cooling down horses at the Pimlico racetrack. There, he developed an interest in horse racing and gambling. After being caught playing dice on the church steps, his mother sent him to Downingtown Industrial and Agricultural School in 1921. This reform school was run by his mother’s uncle in Chester County, Pennsylvania.

When he returned to Baltimore, he started hustling again and worked as a caterer while improving his education. He began private vocal lessons in 1922 and studied music throughout his formal schooling. Despite his parents’ and teachers’ disapproval of jazz, he began performing in nightclubs in Baltimore. His mentors included drummer Chick Webb and pianist Johnny Jones.

Calloway joined his high school basketball team. In his senior year, he started playing professional basketball with the Baltimore Athenians, a team in the Negro Professional Basketball League. He graduated from Frederick Douglass High School in 1925. After this, he spent a short time at law school in Chicago but left to continue performing in nightclubs.

Music career

In 1927, Cab Calloway joined his older sister, Blanche Calloway, on a tour for the popular black musical revue Plantation Days. His sister became a successful bandleader before he did, and he often said she inspired him to join show business. Calloway’s mother wanted him to become a lawyer like his father, so after the tour ended, he enrolled at Crane College in Chicago. However, he preferred singing and entertaining over studying. While at Crane, he turned down the chance to play basketball for the Harlem Globetrotters to focus on his singing career.

Calloway spent many nights performing at Black and Tan clubs, such as Chicago’s Dreamland Café, Sunset Cafe, and Club Berlin. At Sunset Cafe, he worked as an understudy for singer Adelaide Hall. There, he met and performed with Louis Armstrong, who taught him to sing in the scat style. After leaving school, he began singing with the Alabamians band.

In 1929, Calloway moved to New York with the band. They opened at the Savoy Ballroom on September 20, 1929. When the Alabamians band ended, Armstrong recommended Calloway to replace a singer in the musical revue Connie’s Hot Chocolates. Calloway became known for singing “Ain’t Misbehavin’” by Fats Waller. While performing in the revue, the Missourians band asked him to lead their group.

In 1930, the Missourians became known as Cab Calloway and His Orchestra. In 1931, the band was hired at the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York, to replace the Duke Ellington Orchestra while it was on tour. Their popularity led to a permanent position at the club. The band also performed twice a week on NBC radio broadcasts. Calloway appeared on radio programs with Walter Winchell and Bing Crosby and became the first African American to have a nationally syndicated radio show. During the Great Depression, Calloway earned $50,000 a year at age 23.

In 1931, Calloway recorded his most famous song, “Minnie the Moocher.” It was the first single record by an African American to sell a million copies. He performed the song and two others, “St. James Infirmary Blues” and “The Old Man of the Mountain,” in the Betty Boop cartoons Minnie the Moocher (1932), Snow-White (1933), and The Old Man of the Mountain (1933). Calloway provided the voices for these cartoons, and his dance moves were used as the basis for the characters’ movements through a technique called rotoscoping.

Because of the success of “Minnie the Moocher,” Calloway became known for its chorus and earned the nickname “The Hi De Ho Man.” In the 1930s, he performed in a series of short films for Paramount. His and Duke Ellington’s groups were featured in more films than any other jazz orchestras of the time. In these films, Calloway performed a gliding backstep dance move, which some people later compared to Michael Jackson’s moonwalk. Calloway called the move “The Buzz” in the 1930s. The 1933 film International House included Calloway performing his song “Reefer Man,” which was about a man who smoked marijuana. In Cab Calloway’s Hi-De-Ho (1934), Fredi Washington played Calloway’s love interest. In Cab Calloway’s Jitterbug Party (1935), Lena Horne made her film debut as a dancer.

Calloway made his first Hollywood feature film appearance in The Singing Kid (1936), where he sang duets with Al Jolson. The film included Calloway’s band and 22 Cotton Club dancers from New York. Film critic Arthur Knight said the creators of the film aimed to “erase and celebrate boundaries and differences, including the color line.” When Calloway sang in his unique style, it showed how American culture was changing.

In 1938, Calloway published Cab Calloway’s Cat-ologue: A “Hepster’s” Dictionary, the first dictionary written by an African American. It became the official jive language reference book of the New York Public Library. A revised version was released in 1939, and a final edition, The New Cab Calloway’s Hepsters Dictionary: Language of Jive, was published in 1944. In a 2014 BBC Radio documentary, poet Lemn Sissay said, “Cab Calloway was taking ownership of language for a people who, just a few generations before, had their own languages taken away.”

Calloway’s band in the 1930s and 1940s included many famous musicians, such as Ben Webster, Illinois Jacquet, Milt Hinton, Danny Barker, Doc Cheatham, Ed Swayze, Cozy Cole, Eddie Barefield, and Dizzy Gillespie. Calloway once said, “What I expected from my musicians was what I was selling: the right notes with precision, because I would build a whole song around a scat or dance step.” He and his band formed baseball and basketball teams. They played games against each other while on the road, local semi-pro teams, and for charity.

In 1941, Calloway fired Gillespie from his orchestra after an onstage argument when Calloway was hit with spitballs. He wrongly accused Gillespie, who stabbed Calloway in the leg with a small knife.

From 1941 to 1942, Calloway hosted a weekly radio quiz show called The Cab Calloway Quizzicale. Calling himself “Doctor” Calloway, it was a parody of The College of Musical Knowledge, a radio contest created by bandleader Kay Kyser. During World War II, Calloway entertained U.S. troops before they left for overseas. His orchestra also recorded songs with social messages, such as “Doing the Reactionary,” “The Führer’s Got the Jitters,” “The Great Lie,” “We’ll Gather Lilacs,” and “My Lament for V Day.”

In 1943, Calloway appeared in the film Stormy Weather, one of the first mainstream Hollywood films with a black cast. The film included other top performers of the time, such as Bill

Personal life

In January 1927, Calloway had a daughter named Camay with Zelma Proctor, another student. Camay was one of the first African-Americans to teach in a school that only allowed white students in Virginia. Calloway married his first wife, Wenonah "Betty" Conacher, in July 1928. They adopted a daughter named Constance and divorced in 1949. Calloway married Zulme "Nuffie" MacNeal on October 7, 1949. They lived in Long Beach, on the South Shore of Long Island, New York, near Lido Beach. In the 1950s, Calloway moved his family to Westchester County, New York, where he and Nuffie raised their daughters: Chris Calloway (1945–2008), Cecilia "Lael" Eulalia Calloway, and Cabella Calloway (1952–2023).

Calloway was an Episcopalian.

In December 1945, Calloway and his friend Felix H. Payne Jr. were beaten by a police officer, William E. Todd, and arrested in Kansas City, Missouri, after trying to visit bandleader Lionel Hampton at the whites-only Pla-Mor Ballroom. They were taken to the hospital for injuries and charged with intoxication and resisting arrest. When Hampton learned about the incident, he refused to continue the concert. Todd claimed he was told by the manager, who did not recognize Calloway, that they were trying to enter. He said they refused to leave and struck him. Calloway and Payne denied Todd’s claims and said they were sober. The charges were dismissed. In February 1946, six civil rights organizations, including the NAACP, demanded that Todd be fired. However, Todd had already resigned after receiving a pay cut.

In 1952, Calloway was arrested in Leesburg, Virginia, while traveling to a race track in Charles Town, West Virginia. He was charged with speeding and attempted bribery of a policeman.

Death

On June 12, 1994, Calloway had a stroke at his home in Westchester County, New York. He died five months later from pneumonia on November 18, 1994, at the age of 86, at a nursing home in Hockessin, Delaware. A memorial service was held to honor him at Cathedral of St. John the Divine. He was survived by his wife, who died in 2008, five daughters, and seven grandsons. Calloway was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

Legacy

Music critics have described his influence on later entertainers, including James Brown, Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, and modern hip-hop artists. John Landis, who directed Calloway in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers, said, "Cab Calloway is hip-hop." Journalist Timothy White wrote in Billboard (August 14, 1993): "No living pioneer in American popular music or its jazz and rock 'n' roll branches is so often copied yet so rarely recognized as Cabell 'Cab' Calloway. He may have done more things first and better than any other band leader of his time."

In 1998, the Cab Calloway Orchestra, led by Calloway’s grandson Chris "CB" Calloway Brooks, was formed. In 2009, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy released an album of Calloway’s music titled How Big Can You Get?: The Music of Cab Calloway. In 2012, an episode of PBS’s American Masters titled "Cab Calloway: Sketches" honored his legacy.

In 2019, plans were announced to demolish Calloway’s childhood home at 2216 Druid Hill Avenue in Baltimore, replacing it with a park named Cab Calloway Legends Park. Family members and the National Trust for Historic Preservation asked to preserve the house as an important part of African-American cultural history. Although the block is listed as "historically significant" on the National Register of Historic Places, city officials said the Calloway house and nearby buildings had "extensive structural damage." The Commission on Historical and Architectural Preservation noted that other damaged properties have been restored with city financial support. Maryland Governor Larry Hogan encouraged saving the house as a historic museum, like the Louis Armstrong House in New York. Design plans for Cab Calloway Square may include using part of the house’s facade as an entrance archway. Despite objections, the house was demolished on September 5, 2020.

In 1985, Town Supervisor Anthony F. Veteran declared a "Cab Calloway Day" in Greenburgh, New York. In 1990, Calloway received the Beacons in Jazz Award from The New School in New York City. New York City Mayor David Dinkins proclaimed the day "Cab Calloway Day." In 1992, the Cab Calloway School of the Arts was founded in Wilmington, Delaware. In 1994, Calloway’s daughter Camay Calloway Murphy created the Cab Calloway Museum at Coppin State College in Baltimore, Maryland.

The New York Racing Association (NYRA) honors Calloway, a native of Rochester, New York, with a horse race for New York-bred three-year-olds as part of their New York Stallion Series. First held in 2003, the race, named The Calloway, has changed distances and surfaces over time. It is now held at Saratoga Racecourse in Saratoga Springs, New York. The 13th running of The Calloway Stakes took place on July 24, 2019, and was won by Rinaldi.

In 2020, Calloway was inducted into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.

Calloway received the following honors:
• 1967: Best Performance, Outer Critics Circle Awards (Hello, Dolly)
• 1987: Inducted into Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame
• 1990: Beacons in Jazz Award, The New School
• 1993: National Medal of Arts
• 1993: Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts, University of Rochester
• 1993: Cab Calloway School of the Arts dedicated in his name in Wilmington, Delaware
• 1995: Inducted into International Jazz Hall of Fame
• 1999: Grammy Hall of Fame Award for "Minnie the Moocher"
• 2008: Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award
• 2019: "Minnie the Moocher" added to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry

Discography

In 1943, Cab Calloway released Cab Calloway And His Orchestra on Brunswick Records.
In 1956, Cab Calloway released Cab Calloway on Epic Records.
In 1958, Cab Calloway released Cotton Club Revue 1958 on Gone Records.
In 1959, Cab Calloway released Hi De Hi De Ho on RCA Victor.
In 1962, Cab Calloway released Blues Make Me Happy on Coral Records.
In 1968, Cab Calloway released Cab Calloway '68 on Pickwick International Records.
In 1968, Cab Calloway released Cab Calloway Sings The Blues on Vocalion Records.
In 1974, Cab Calloway released Hi De Ho Man on Columbia Records.
In 1981, Cab Calloway released Minnie the Moocher on RCA International Records.
In 1983, Cab Calloway released Mr. Hi. De. Ho. 1930–1931 on MCA Records.
In 1990, Cab Calloway released Cab Calloway: Best Of The Big Bands on Columbia Records.
In 1992, Cab Calloway released Cab Calloway & Co. on RCA Records.
In 1992, Cab Calloway released The King Of Hi-De-Ho 1934–1947 on Giants of Jazz Records.
In 1998, Cab Calloway released Jumpin' Jive on Camden Records.
In 2001, Cab Calloway released Cab Calloway and His Orchestra Volume 1: The Early Years 1930–1934 on JSP Records.
In 2003, Cab Calloway released Cab Calloway & His Orchestra Volume 2: 1935–1940 on JSP Records.