Jazz great Cab Calloway, center, jokes with New York City Mayor David Dinkins, left, and Grammy organizer Jonathan Tisch, while riding a specially designated subway train from Harlem to Radio City Music Hall as part of the Grammy Week festivities in New York, Feb. 18, 1992. New York's subway system was immortalized in the Duke Ellington classic "Take the 'A' Train." (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
On Dec. 25, 1907, legendary jazz musician and bandleader Cabell “Cab” Calloway was born in Rochester, New York. Raised in Baltimore, Calloway left law school in the 1920s to sing with the Alabamians, launching a career that led him to Chicago’s thriving jazz scene and eventually to Harlem’s famed Cotton Club.
Orchestra leader Cab Calloway looks pleased with the play-back of his first 1947 recording session with his newly-organized band, in the control room at Columbia Studios, in New York, March 12, 1947. (AP Photo/Bob Wands)
During the 1930s big band era, Calloway’s charismatic stage presence and distinctive scat singing style electrified audiences. He recorded iconic hits such as “Minnie the Moocher,” “Kickin’ the Gong Around,” “Moon Glow,” and “The Jumpin’ Jive.”
Cab Calloway swings into a lively version of his trademark song “Minnie the Moocher” during “Cab Calloway’s Cotton Club Revisited” musical review in Chicago, Ill., Friday, Nov. 2, 1985. The show is making a six-week, 15-city tour that closes in Louisville, Ky., on Sunday. (AP Photo/Charles Knoblock)
Calloway continued to perform well into the late twentieth century, captivating new audiences and inspiring generations before his passing on November 18, 1994, at the age of 88.
Clay Cane is an award-winning journalist, writer, radio host, and political commentator. A graduate of Rutgers University with a degree in African-American Studies, his work on race, culture, and politics have appeared in national publications, including the Washington Post, CNN, and The Grio. Clay is a regular political commentator on MSNBC.
