Remembering Cab Calloway on his Birthday.. R.I.P.

Remembering Cab Calloway on his Birthday.. R.I.P. ஆܔ

Cabell Calloway III (Dec 25, 1907 – Nov 18, 1994) was an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, conductor and dancer. Calloway was the first African-American musician to sell a million records from a single and to have a nationally syndicated radio show. He posthumously received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. His song "Minnie the Moocher" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. He is also inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame and the International Jazz Hall of Fame.

He was associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, where he was a regular performer and became a popular vocalist of the swing era. Calloway was a master of energetic scat singing and led one of the most popular dance bands in the United States from the early 1930s to the late 1940s. His band included 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 also made several stage, film, and television appearances until his death in 1994 at the age of 86.

 

Photo story: 

Cab Calloway and Children with the Winner of the Calloway Quizzicale, Rhode Island, c. 1938. Photo © Milt Hinton Photographic Collection. Milton J. Hinton was both a photographer and jazz bassist. He was a member of the Cab Calloway Orchestra from 1936 to 1950 and starred alongside him in his "Quizzicale Show" from 1941-1942. In this black and white photograph, Hinton captures Calloway surrounded by a group of primarily white children who, with big grins, appear giddy at this celebrity’s presence. One Black child, center, proudly graps Calloway’s trombone, a source of artistic power.