[Dixielandjazz] Cab Calloway biography reviewed

[Robert Ringwald]

Book Review: 'Hi-De-Ho: The Life of Cab Calloway' by Alyn Shipton
by William F. Gavin
Washington Times, February 25, 2011

My guess is that not many Americans under 40 have heard of the once famous singer/dancer/band
leader Cab Calloway (1907-1994). Some may remember him from the 1980 movie "The Blues
Brothers" in which Calloway, who was then in his 70s, appeared. But why isn't he
more generally remembered, along with his illustrious contemporaries such as Louis
Armstrong and Duke Ellington? After all, Calloway was a musical star not just for
a few years, but for decades.
According to author Alyn Shipton, his original recording of "Minnie the Moocher"
-- the song with which he was universally identified -- was "the first million-selling
disc by an African-American artist. By 1978 the record had sold close to two and
a half million copies." His "gross income in 1944 was $48,000... equivalent to around
$690,000 in 2009." Over the years, his band employed such jazz luminaries as Ben
Webster, Milt Hinton, Leon "Chu" Berry, Cozy Cole, Doc Cheatham, Jonah Jones, Dizzy
Gillespie and Illinois Jacquet. White and black audiences alike were enthralled by
his energy, his versatility and his total command of the stage. In 1993, President
Clinton awarded him the National Medal of the Arts.
It is the great merit of Mr. Shipton's richly documented, well-written, and musically
informed "Hi-De-Ho" that he makes a convincing case for Calloway as an unjustly neglected
entertainer. Mr. Shipton argues that at the very least Calloway's band should be
included in the jazz pantheon, if not on a level with Ellington's, then at least
as an organization to be taken seriously. He cites scholar Gunther Schuller's "The
Swing Era," which includes a "masterly reappraisal of the [Calloway] band." Schuller
praised the band's "exciting elemental jazz" and its "clean, balanced and disciplined"
sound.
The problem with Mr. Shipton's argument is that we can still hear Armstrong's and
Ellington's recordings and immediately be in the presence of the essence of their
art. But not even the best recordings could capture Calloway's rough magic, which
was always dependent on audience reaction and participation. He didn't in the strictest
sense lead his band as much as he used it as part of his act. Mr. Shipton describes
Calloway in action:
"His vocal gymnastics are matched by exaggerated gestures.... He moves spectacularly....
His movements drew on the entire lexicon of vernacular African American dance" from
"frenetic movement to slow-drag walking... as he throws back his head, and projects
his voice, displaying his distinctive perfect teeth, his singing is marked by a complete
lack of inhibition and freedom that matches the finest jazz instrumentalists of his
age.... [He was]... all singing, all dancing... jumping and jiving [and] scat singing.
He assumed the role of 'preacher' and the band became his congregation, interacting
with his musicians and the audience, a style familiar to anyone who had witnessed
the revivalist fervor of an African-American gospel meeting." Try that, Lady Gaga.
Calloway was a good-looking, jive-talking, blues-shouting, scat-singing, loose-limbed
entertainment phenomenon, dressed in his "snow white dress suit with extra long tails,"
(or, during the 1940s, an outsized zoot suit) waving an oversized baton. He was in
constant motion, drawing the paying customers in with charismatic charm until they,
like his band, became part of his "call-and-response" act, shouting out "hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-ho,"
in response to his "hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-hi" as he sang the story of Minnie the Moocher,
a "red-hot hoochie-coocher" who "kicked the gong around."
The lyrics to that song and to so many of his other songs made not-so-veiled references
to drug use and reveled in double-entendre. This should not be surprising because
ever since he was a boy, Calloway was attracted to the demimonde of "hustlers, gamblers
and pool sharks." Music and women were his pleasures, but betting on the horses was,
to him, a serious business.
Cabell Calloway was born on Christmas in 1907 in Rochester, N.Y., although his family
roots were in Baltimore, where he grew up. His sister, Blanche, was a star of the
black entertainment circuit when he was still a boy, and her "wild dancing and uninhibited
singing" was a prototype of his own act. From the Sunset Cafe in Chicago to the Cotton
Club in Harlem, he was a star almost from the beginning of his career.
In May of 1930, he became leader of the Missourians, a band with a Kansas City blues-based
style. This group formed the basis of his band, with constant changes in personnel
to keep things fresh, for years to come. In 1926, Irving Mills, who managed Duke
Ellington's career for many years, became Calloway's manager. As is the case with
Ellington, Calloway benefited from Mills' shrewdness in handling publicity, but who
is to say whether Mills' habit of claiming credit for songs he did not write outweighed
his managerial value to Calloway?
After World War II, his big band, like most of the others, lost its audience for
various reasons, ranging from the advent of television to the increasingly high cost
of touring. He endured a period of public neglect unlike anything he had known in
his adult life and became deeply depressed.
But his career was resurrected when he accepted the role of Sportin' Life in a 1952
theatrical revival of "Porgy and Bess." From then on, although he hit some dead spots
now and then, he was back in the public eye, playing in an all-black cast of "Hello
Dolly," and other Broadway shows. He died on Nov. 18, 1994. Mr. Shipton's excellent
book should convince many readers and, I hope, some critics, that it might be time
to experience Calloway's recordings and movies again, and try to discover, in part
at least, what the hi-de-ho-ing was all about.


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band
530/ 642-9551 Office
916/ 806-9551 Cell
Amateur (Ham) Radio K6YBV

My wife was hinting about what she wanted for our upcoming anniversary.
She said, "I want something shiny that goes from 0 to 150 in about 3 seconds."
I bought her a bathroom scale.