Who was the “hi-de-ho” man?

Image: Cab Calloway

Link: Minnie The Moocher

From his birth in 1907, to his first nightclub gig, to his death in 1994 and beyond, Cab Calloway took the world of jazz by storm. However, his music life started long before his first gig at the Sunset Cafe. Both his parents were invaluable to the Baltimore music scene; Cabell II was a Presbyterian music leader, and his wife, Eulalia, was a music teacher for children out of the house.

Cabell, or Cab, Calloway III was born to his father Cabell Calloway II and Martha Eulalia Reed on Christmas day, 1907, in Rochester, NY. Because of the great Baltimore fire of 1904 and its disastrous effects on the property market, Cabell II moved his family from Baltimore, Maryland, to Rochester, New York. At this time of his life, Baltimore was slowly slipping from the glorious city it used to be. It was slowly being taken over by small boxy apartments, tuberculosis, overcrowding, poor ventilation, inadequate sanitation, and protests against “black encroachment.” After the birth of the youngest Calloway brother, Elmer, in 1912, the Calloway family moved back to Baltimore with Cabell I and his wife, Elizabeth. The three generations of Calloway’s now lived in an exclusively African-American neighborhood full of stucco-fronted Georgian homes. Though this exclusivity was not uncommon, as over 20% of the total inhabitants of Baltimore had identified as African-American. Moving back to Baltimore, the Calloway’s were known as middle-class, even though, through the facade of their best clothes and large home, they were sometimes stuck struggling through their tight finances. 

In October of 1913, Cabell II died in an institution after being placed there due to a major nervous breakdown. This death caused many tensions within the Calloway family. Eulalia believed that Elizabeth was to blame for her husband’s death and moved back with her parents. This short distance to the Reeds' home provided a much more relaxed setting where the kids were allowed laughter and fun while finally playing with the neighbors. 

Without his father in his life, Cab took to making himself money and building a life for himself. He shone shoes, sold papers, distributed race cards, and walked horses around the exercise ring, anything he could do to make some extra cash. All throughout his teenage years, Cab was drawn to the racetrack; he spent so much time there that he eventually developed a deep knowledge of the race and constantly tried his luck in gambling. During this time, he was only serious about one thing in school, seeing as he skipped the rest: music. 

Cab’s role model and older sister Blanche had released vocal music, and by November of 1925, she made her first record for the Okeh label accompanied by trumpeter Louis Armstrong and pianist Richard M. Jones. This acted as a spur of inspiration to young Cab, who, now eighteen, was nurturing the musical talent he possessed.

In 1927, Cab became a father to Camay Procter, daughter of his high school girlfriend, Zelma Proctor. This birth prompted Cab to start earning real money so that he would be able to provide for his daughter, even though he and Zelma were not married. Within a month, Cab appeared on stage at Lafayette Theatre in New York as a touring company member starring his sister, Blanche, for the show Plantation Days.

After Plantation Days, Cab started working as a singer at the Sunset Cafe. He used his newfound skills in stagecraft and presentation while molding his own act full of dancing and singing. He took on a role in his band that allowed him to fit in with the group’s flow by singing and dancing directly in front and within the band. 

Cab Calloway was known for his wails and shouts that surprised the audience. Songs like “Is That Religion?”, “Some of These Days” and “Nobody’s Sweetheart” are all fantastic examples of his maximum effort dramatic style. This style wasn’t exactly new, Calvin P. Dixon did something similar in 1925, and so did Reverend J. C. Burnett with the “Downfall of Nebuchadnezzar.” Calloway would also try to involve the audience, an idea previously shown to him in his experiences with Nappy Howard. 

The Cotton Club was known for hiring the best in African American entertainment in order to appease the nearby white population. The club wouldn’t allow people of color or even mixed parties inside. While Cab performed and headlined at this club, he abandoned what was known of vocal music and instead took on the role of an instrument. He threw in scat syllables and had several conversational lines with the other musicians. He used his time at the Cotton Club to form a stage persona that regularly cut through class and racial boundaries. 

After inheriting the band the Missourians, Calloway slowly began to replace the original members. Calloway wanted to blend the midwestern blues the group already had with a more distinctive swing while also attempting to improve the musicality and solo strength of the group. As people stopped meeting his expectations, he replaced them; for example, tuba player Jimmy Smith was replaced with double bassist Al Morgan. Eventually, well-known musicians found their way into Calloway’s orchestra, such as Dizzy Gillespie. Even though the older members slowly became insecure about their own musical abilities, Calloway still found ways to draw them all together. By the end of 1931, Calloway had replaced one-third of the group; however, this wasn’t necessarily bad as each replacement grew the ensemble in skill and soloing abilities.  This seemed to work as the ensemble made upwards of five-thousand dollars weekly (equivalent to over one hundred thousand dollars in 2023). With this money, Calloway surpassed his earnings at the Sunset Club and lucratively fueled his passion for expensive clothes and horse-race gambling. 

One of Calloway’s top hits was the song “Minne the Moocher.” This song was recorded in the New York studio for Brunswick when Jack Mills, his publisher, decided he should have his own individual style. His first recording became the first million-selling disc by an artist of African American descent, and by 1978, the overall sales had reached closer to two and a half million. The song didn’t only make use of the Minnie persona; it also added the iconic Calloway “Hi-de-ho” call-and-response catchphrase. Many of Cab Calloway’s songs were illustrated and performed by the teenage flapper Betty Boop, with which many are familiar. Animated Betty Boop shorts that used Calloway songs like the hit “Minnie the Moocher” created a considerable crossover with white audiences. Actual footage of Calloway dancing was used to make the ghosts’ animations on the screen. The animators would trace, frame by frame, the dances Calloway performed after projecting the recordings on an easel. Because of Calloway’s already larger-than-life personality, the transition to animation was a lot easier than anticipated.

His sister Blanche, who was always competitive in nature, wouldn’t let her brother speed past her successes. She transitioned from cabaret singer to bandleader in order to attempt to compete with her successful brother Cab. She created the group “Blanche Calloway and Her Joy Boys” and headlined at the Pearl Theater in Philadelphia. However, the only competition she could make was her pent-up sexuality being a female singer and bandleader in front of an all-male group, even though they regularly filled massive venues. A significant difference between the different Calloway groups: Blanche’s members resented their difficult work, while Cab’s enjoyed it. Even though Cab Calloway’s Orchestra members could maybe sneak in a total of fifteen minutes of sleep, they still loved working and performing for ten hours a day.

There were many people attempting to profit off of Calloway’s success: Harriett “Jean” Calloway, singer and self-proclaimed cousin or niece of Cab Calloway, Elmer Calloway, younger brother of Cab Calloway and short-lived nightclub phenomenon; and of course, there was Blanche, who didn’t need her brothers help to start out her career, but seemed to need it later on as she went on to market herself as “Cab Calloway’s sister.” Calloway didn’t have much to fear from his competitors and instead continued to work on improving his band. 

Cab had this unbreakable bond with his men. He knew how to persuade them, how to entertain them, and how to charm them. The group was a different kind of family, using nicknames for their fellow musicians and their own special brand of slang that only they could understand. His band was his family, even more than Zelma, Camay, or his wife, Wenonah "Betty" Conacher. 

Cab Calloway had a lot of visual appeal as well as musical appeal. He gathered roled in several movies such as the 1943 film “Stormy Weather”. His last every performance is also his best-known: the 1980 film, “The Blues Brothers.” Not only does he gather roles, but he also manages to lead several other musicians groups: theWoody Herman Orchestra, the Count Basie Orchestra, and several others. He also is featured by the legend herself, Janet Jackson, in her music video “Alright.” Calloway was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Clinton, and was posthumously inducted into the International Jazz Hall of Fame.

Calloway made quite the impression on the music world before his death in November of 1994, but his memory was not left to die. His grandson C. Calloway Brooks, son of Camay Callaway, took over. Brooks had been shadowing his grandfather since 1977 and had released his own L.P. in 1978 with the title “Ikenne Rainbow.” After the death of his grandfather Brooks launched the Cab Calloway Orchestra in the year of 1998. It wasn’t just his music that was influential however, some say that his dance moves were the precursor to Micheal Jackson’s iconic moonwalk (Cab Calloway: Sketches).  Cabell III Calloway will be remembered for year to come because of  his acting, dancing, and most of all his hi-de-hi-de-ho-ing.

“Cab Calloway: Sketches.” PBS, 10 Aug. 2022, www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/cab-calloway-sketches-about-the-documentary/1958

"Cab Calloway." St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture Online, Gale, 2013. Gale In Context: College, link.gale.com/apps/doc/K2419200180/CSIC?u=wylrc_uwyoming&sid=summon&xid=82a310d0

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Cab Calloway". Encyclopedia Britannica, 5 May. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cab-Calloway. 

Shipton, Alyn. Hi-De-ho : The Life of Cab Calloway, Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uwy/detail.action?docID=584581.

The Cab Calloway Orchestra, cabcalloway.cc/.