[Dixielandjazz] Feeny the non-Novelty Act (Cab Calloway)

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

To say that Cab Calloway's band was more novelty act than orchestra -- as did a Mr Feeny quoted in a recent post -- is idiotic, ignorant! 
Deaf!!! 

I remember the clip in which when asked whether he envied Ellington any musicians Calloway thought before citing Lawrence Brown,  and he may have used the word "exquisite" -- if it wasn't exactly that word that word expresses what he was plainly saying. His bands were of the best, and even when not allowed to show that much the distinguished players and their companions were never merely competent even when merely supporting a vocal display. Hence the depth of regret that the band didn't get to record more qua band.


A very long time ago perhaps Bert Bradfield, certainly someone in France, inspired the local CBS company to include in their jazz series a wonderful selection of I think sixteen sides by the late 1930s Calloway band, and I mean band. There was a little vocalising on one or two numbers, but he had some of the most accomplished jazzmen of the day in the most accomplished band he could assemble and sustain, and during the period in which Dizzy Gillespie was there with Milt Hinton, Cozy Cole, Danny Barker, Chu Berry, Hilton Jefferson and so on, there was as never before a proper LP's worth of performances to demonstrate the magnificence of the orchestra. 

We did get the earlier maestro Eddie Barefield's Moonglow as the band's ballad specialty on the RCA Victor recording of the earlier 1930s band (the recording was on sale at performances by the big band Calloway toured Europe with when he was eighty -- and showing little sign of creaking, as a video I have of a continental date shows, though he did not of course spin crazily as in his youth). 
I am sure he liked to hear the band when he wasn't singing in front of them too, and the short which can be found on YouTube and begins with stomping bass and train howls and I think Barefield on baritone stirred me when long ago clips from it appeared on a cheap Polydor box set of 3 LPs appeared with airshots and other odds and ends at a price even a schoolboy of my slender means could afford.
Presumably this was a dance number not officially recorded -- and founded like so many other great performances on the New Orleans bass-playing of Al Morgan 


where next, Fats Waller not really a pianist? And there was a hack trumpeter called Eddie Calvert, whose theme tune was lifted direct from a Latin American band, and who was quoted for ridicule in Jazz Monthly once for telling an interviewer that Louis was though a great "entertainer//" really not to be cited as.....   (I still have the magazine somewhere). Yes, that Louis!  

Certainly considerably more jazz came from Calloway's band than from his voice-box. The evidence on the recordings from around 1939 is sufficiently supplemented by that of some earlier recordings, where it would be great to have more. Though on some of his recordings not issued at the time he did rather indulge in a lot of sending up of cantorial performances.  


Hi-de-ho 


Robert R. Calder