[Dixielandjazz] Cab Calloway biography reviewed

[Robert Ringwald]

Cab Calloway biography reviewed

The Man Who Taught America to Scat
"Hi-De-Ho: The Life of Cab Calloway." By Alyn Shipton. Oxford, 283 pages, $29.95.
by Will Friedwald
Wall Street Journal, November 6, 2010

Throughout the Depression and into the war years, Cab Calloway was easily the most
celebrated African American entertainer. He shot to international fame in 1931, with
his recording of "Minnie the Moocher," a cautionary tale about a good-time gal obsessed
with cocaine and cash. The song set off a craze for hi-de-ho-ing -- a style of scat
in which Calloway chanted back and forth with both his band and the audience. Calloway
didn't just conduct with his theatrically oversized baton; he conducted with his
voice and his entire body. Yet he wasn't a mere showman: His ability to pick soloists
and ensemble players made him one of the era's great bandleaders.
Born in Rochester, N.Y., Calloway began his career in Chicago but first gained attention
in 1929, singing in the revue "Hot Chocolates" in Harlem. That earned the 21-year-old
a chance to lead a couple "territorial" bands that had recently settled in New York.
Gradually he refashioned a group previously known as "The Missourians" into the act
called "Cab Calloway and His Orchestra," which he would lead at the Cotton Club for
a decade. Featuring star players such as tenor saxophonist Chu Berry and trumpeter
Jonah Jones, this band both pre-dated and outlasted the swing era, competing successfully
with the bands of Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman.
Other than Calloway's own memoir, "Of Minnie the Moocher and Me," Alyn Shipton's
is the first full-length book devoted to the man. The British broadcaster has written
extensively about figures in the singer's orbit -- including trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie
and Doc Cheatham, guitarist Danny Barker, and songwriter Jimmy McHugh -- and here
deftly brings out the band's inner musical dynamics. He notes how each change of
lead trumpeter gave the brass section a different feel. He points out that the band's
sound became much more modern after drummer Cozy Cole arrived in 1939. He even favorably
compares Calloway's bass player, Milt Hinton, with Duke Ellington's more celebrated
Jimmy Blanton. "If his pizzicato phrasing lacks Blanton's urgency," writes Mr. Shipton
(a bassist himself), "it has an unhurried charm all its own."
Overall, Mr. Shipton is more of a musicologist than a storyteller, and he could have
done more to document Calloway's pervasive influence on American popular culture.
The author discusses the many films Calloway appeared in, including "Stormy Weather,"
but also might have pointed out the countless references made to the artist and his
music in cartoons and comedies of the time. "You know, you can get a phonograph record
of 'Minnie the Moocher' for 75 cents," Groucho Marx quips in "A Night at the Opera."
"And for a buck and a quarter, you can get Minnie."


--Bob Ringwald
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