Video hit Cab Calloway

Cab Calloway - Mr. Hi-de-ho

Cabell Calloway was born on Dec. 25, 1907, in Rochester. His father was a lawyer, his mother a teacher. The family soon moved to Baltimore, where he was reared. His older sister, Blanche, who was a singer, got him his first show-business job singing in "Plantation Days," a touring show in which she was featured.

When the tour ended in Chicago, Mr. Calloway kept a promise he had made to his sister that he would enter law school. But at the same time he was playing basketball well enough to get an offer from the Globetrotters. And he was moonlighting as a nightclub singer at the Sunset Cafe, where Louis Armstrong was playing in Carroll Dickerson's orchestra.

Mr. Calloway and Armstrong became friendly during the six months they were together at the club. Armstrong was already scat-singing and he planted the seeds for Calloway's later success.

Mr. Calloway's energetic versatility began to show at the Sunset. He became the master of ceremonies and was soon leading the Alabamians, the band that succeeded the Dickerson orchestra.

In the 1950s Calloway moved his family from Long Island, New York in order to raise the three youngest of his five daughters in Greenburgh, New York.

In his later career Calloway appeared in a number of films and stage productions that used both his acting and singing talents. In 1952 he played the prominent role of "Sportin' Life" in a production of the Gershwin opera, Porgy and Bess, with William Warfield and Leontyne Price as the title characters. Another notable role was "Yeller" in The Cincinnati Kid (1965), with Steve McQueen, Ann-Margret, and Edward G. Robinson.

Calloway appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show on March 19, 1967 with Chris Calloway. In 1967, Calloway co-starred opposite Pearl Bailey as Horace Vandergelder in an all-black cast change of Hello, Dolly! on Broadway during its original run. It revived the flagging business for the show and RCA released a new cast recording, rare for the time. In 1973–1974, Calloway was featured in an unsuccessful Broadway revival of The Pajama Game alongside Hal Linden and Barbara McNair.

1976 saw the release of his autobiography, Of Minnie the Moocher and Me (Crowell). It included his complete Hepsters Dictionary as an appendix.

Calloway attracted renewed interest in 1980 when he appeared as a supporting character in the film The Blues Brothers, performing "Minnie the Moocher", and again when he sang "The Jumpin' Jive" with the Two-Headed Monster on Sesame Street.[12] This also was the year the cult movie Forbidden Zone was released, which included rearrangements of, and homages to, Calloway songs written by Calloway fan Danny Elfman, performed by Elfman and his band, The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo.

Calloway helped establish the Cab Calloway Museum at Coppin State College (Baltimore, Maryland) in the 1980s, and Bill Cosby helped establish a scholarship in Calloway's name at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan.

In 1986, Calloway appeared at World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)'s WrestleMania 2 as a guest judge for a boxing match between Rowdy Roddy Piper and Mr. T that took place at the Nassau Coliseum. Also in 1986, he headlined to great success a gala ball for 4,000 celebrating the grand opening of one of the top hotels in the U.S. at the time, the Dallas-based Rosewood Hotel Co.'s Hotel Crescent Court in Dallas, Texas.

In 1990, he was the focus of Janet Jackson's 1930s-themed music video "Alright", and he made a cameo appearance at the end playing himself. In the United Kingdom, he also appeared in several commercials for the Hula Hoops snack, both as himself and as a voice for a cartoon (in one of these commercials he sang his hit "Minnie The Moocher"). He also made an appearance at the Apollo Theatre.

In 1994, a creative and performing arts school, the Cab Calloway School of the Arts, was dedicated in his name in Wilmington, Delaware.

On June 12, 1994, Calloway suffered a stroke. He died five months later on November 18, 1994. His body was cremated and his ashes were given to his family. Upon the death of his wife Zulme "Nuffie" Calloway on October 13, 2008, his ashes were interred next to her at Ferncliffe Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

A profile of Calloway Cab Calloway: Sketches aired on the PBS program American Masters in February 2012.