Alyn Shipton’s Cab Calloway, reviewed

Hi-De-Ho: The Life of Cab Calloway
By Alyn Shipton
Oxford University Press, New York, 2010; 304 pp.; $29.95 hardcover

Review by arnold jay smith

What do we know about Cab Calloway? Zoot-suited. White tails. Hepcat scat-singing entertainer. Conducted with a long baton. And that hair. Called bebop “Chinese music.” What with all his famous sidemen, Cab’s stage persona and cavorting, his was considered a borderline jazz band, at least to his record-buying public. Legendary altercation with Dizzy Gillespie over a spitball — he did not throw it — resulting in some minor bloodletting (Dizzy pulled a knife on Cab).

According to British historian Alyn Shipton in this thorough biography, all of the above is not enough. Actually, Shipton goes beyond thorough; he sometimes plods his way through the life and recording sessions of one vastly popular entertainer. Calloway was a household name and face, and I’ve often wondered why he didn’t play more jazz considering the band’s great soloists.  Now I know — it was all about Cab.

But the facts remain: Calloway had among the heppist (sic) sidemen of the Swing generation: among them Gillespie, Jonah Jones (the spitball culprit) and Doc Cheatham, trumpets; Eddie Barefield, Ben Webster and Chu Berry, reeds; Danny Barker, guitar; Milt Hinton, bass; Cozy Cole (later Panama Francis), drums, with arrangements by Walter “Foots” Thomas.

Shipton’s discussions of Calloway’s family life are enlightening. Cab was extremely supportive of his sometimes erratic offspring, taking time off from his own duties to be with them. At one point his vocalist daughter Chris — not to be confused with his guitarist grandson of the same name — left an important role in the Broadway show Hello Dolly! to elope with her fiancé, South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela. Cab, who was the co-star of the all-Negro Dolly cast, left to cajole her to return.

[pullquote]Shipton goes beyond thorough; he sometimes plods his way through the life of one vastly popular entertainer.[/pullquote]

It is well known that Cab gave short shrift to his sidemen. Solo space was rare and if you stepped out of line you were history. However, he did realize early on that Gillespie was a solo voice to be reckoned with. (Calloway’s lead trumpet Mario Bauzá said that he had called in sick and sent Gillespie in as a sub, inferring that Cab never would have hired him.)

The sidemen following Dizzy’s lead in changing the harmonies and reworking melody lines did not make for congenial relationships with their leader. Then came the cutting incident. To his credit, Cab did not have Diz arrested. Shipton points out that if it weren’t for Hinton’s physical interference, the knife wound might have been more than a buttocks bleeder. Bottom line: Dizzy was out of the band. They reconciled later.

Calloway was a womanizer of major proportions. Any wonder then that he married four times? But he never stopped lending support to his children and later grandchildren on every level, be it financial or musical. He was making big bucks even for the 1940s. Panama once told me that the band’s pay was more than adequate for his sidemen. I heard from others that Cab understood that the rent goes on even when you’re not home.

Some sidemen repaid their leader. Cab demanded that his hits be played the same way every show. His major musicians could not sit still for that. Cab gave more room to stretch forming a seven-piece-within-the-band affair called the “Cab Jivers.” Still many left, including Webster and Berry, but those who remained such as string-slapping Hinton, Cole and high-noting Jones were loyal to the charts. Berry was of particular importance. Shipton details Cab’s strong desire for Berry, who finally signs on with the proviso that Cab not play the alto sax so long as he was on the band. A sideward comment was made that most never even knew he played the instrument.

There were other hits in a very successful career before and after “Minnie The Moocher,” the Hi-De-Ho bit and her successors. But audiences white and black just wanted to hear Minnie and to shout back in response. Thus he was branded “the king of hi-de-ho.” He sounded so like a davening cantor that Jewish audiences requested Yiddish songs, some of which he had recorded, others not.

[pullquote]Cab sounded so like a davening cantor that Jewish audiences requested Yiddish songs.[/pullquote]

Shipton points out that Cab liked singing ethnic things, the blues, for example.  When he recorded “Utt-Da-Zay,” Cab hit on a formula to garner a new audience, the Jews in the Catskill Mountain resorts. As Shipton points out, Cab’s — and Duke’s — manager Irving Mills’ parents came from Odessa, so Yiddish might have been the language heard in the Mills household. Also, think Damon Runyon’s Broadway characterizations as in Guys and Dolls. Formulaic was Cab’s middle name. It worked again later when he recorded a charted single with a reluctant daughter, “The Little Girl,” where he explained about life. Pure pathos.

Even though he did not star as Sportin’ Life in the original Porgy and Bess, his version of the songs from that show were heavily requested. When Sammy Davis, Jr. could not get a release from his record company to do the soundtrack of the movie, Cab was the only one who could fit the bill. (By the way, the voice of Porgy, Sidney Poitier, was dubbed as well by Robert McFerrin, the father of Bobby.)

When David Merrick asked him to do Horace Vandergelder to Pearl Bailey’s Dolly Levi Gallagher in that all black Hello Dolly! Cab’s Broadway show dreams were realized. (Bailey, who was improvising the script on stage and confounding the others, walked off the show while it was still a hit. Something about doing the same thing night after night does not sit well with improvisers. Hmm.)

Included in Hi-De-Ho are the Cotton Club-era subbing when Duke Ellington toured, as well as triumphant national and international tours with racism as a backdrop. As with Ellington, the bands slept in Pullman cars, and except for the rare incident avoided major trouble, at least according to Shipton.

As his star was fading, there were the Sesame Street and Blues Brothers cameos, even a disco version of Minnie. New audiences again, only this time it was inadvertent. Shipton describes how the Sesame Street producers saw potential in his attire and scatting vocalizations as he did “commercials” for numbers and letters. Cab jumped in enthusiastically. In The Blues Brothers he plays a janitor who, through movie magic, suddenly turns to Hi-De-Ho’ing while the Brothers are evading the police. As Shipton describes these moments, you’re there.

This is the first real biography of an important cultural icon. As such it works. However, sometimes Shipton overdoes it. He vacillates between personals and sessions. While both are integral parts of a musician’s life, Cab evidently didn’t feel soloists were important enough until later in his already burgeoning career.

The book is well footnoted and referenced, so the detailed analyses of sessions and personnel changes in the body of the text is overkill. Still, it’s about time someone took the time to find out more about Cab Calloway beyond Hi-De-Ho.