Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 20, 1994 TAG: 9411220045
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
Calloway, who suffered a severe stroke June 12 at his home in White Plains, died Friday night in a Delaware nursing home with his family at his side, said his wife, Nuffie.
As a bandleader, singer, author, dancer and songwriter, Calloway performed for more than 60 years, from Chicago jazz joints to the Cotton Club, on Broadway and in Hollywood movies. His influence in the music world was huge.
Calloway was the man who hired an unknown Dizzy Gillespie and promoted the careers of Pearl Bailey and Lena Horne. He later became known to a younger generation through the 1980 hit film ``The Blues Brothers.''
Even in old age, he was a marvel to watch - a veritable dervish who dashed from one end of the stage to the other, his limbs and his mop of unruly hair flying in all directions as he flashed an enormous smile.
His trademark song was ``Minnie the Moocher,'' and audiences would respond in kind when he sang the chorus of ``hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-ho.'' He said his scat refrains were the product of a faulty memory - he couldn't recall the words.
``I love being called a living legend. Sure, I love that,'' Calloway said in a 1985 interview.
Calloway cast himself as the ultimate hep cat. At his performances, he sold ``Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary'' and ``Prof. Cab Calloway's Swingformation Bureau,'' how-to books for the unhep.
Cabell Calloway III was born in Rochester, N.Y., in 1907 and raised in Baltimore. He studied law at Crane College in Chicago and was offered a contract to play basketball for the Harlem Globetrotters in 1928, but became a song-and-dance man instead, inspired by his musician-sister Blanche.
At Chicago's Sunset Cafe, he played opposite Louis Armstrong. ``I was thrilled just to be there; he was an inspiration to me,'' Calloway said.
The first band he took to New York bombed in 1928. The next year, he took over the Missourians, which came to be known as Cab Calloway's band for the next 19 years.
Calloway had played the saxophone, but his talents were not stellar; when he offered a job to legendary saxophonist Chu Berry, Berry accepted on the condition that Calloway never play again.
In 1931, the Calloway band took over for Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club, the Harlem nightspot where black artists played to an overwhelmingly white audience.
That same year, he recorded ``Minnie the Moocher,'' the story of a ``low-down hoochy coocher. She was the roughest, toughest frail, but Minnie had a heart as big as a whale.'' The song, accompanied by Calloway's theatrics and scat singing, brought the house down.
Calloway's career took off. He appeared in a series of movies - including ``The Big Broadcast,'' ``International House'' and ``Stormy Weather'' - and took his all-black band on the road, integrating halls long before the civil rights movement.
``I did things that my people didn't do at the time. Played in clubs, theaters - first blacks to play in them. Made history. Music has no barriers of any kind,'' Calloway said.
Calloway's band broke up in 1948 with the end of the big-band era. His career was rescued by a 1952 revival of George Gershwin's ``Porgy and Bess.''
The role of Sportin' Life - a charming narcotics peddler - had been written with him in mind. They toured Europe, then took it to Broadway, where Calloway later performed in an all-black ``Hello Dolly.'' He also appeared in ``Eubie'' and ``Bubblin' Brown Sugar.''
by CNB