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4 unusual facts about Cab Calloway


Aaron Bell

In the 1950s, Bell appeared on Billie Holiday's album Lady Sings the Blues and with Lester Young, Stan Kenton, Johnny Hodges, Cab Calloway, Carmen McRae, and Dick Haymes.

Joe Keyes

After Keyes had pawned his trumpet, Cab Calloway offered him the opportunity to join his band if he could clean up his act, but Keyes was unable to do so.

Moochie Norris

He was given his nickname by his grandfather, who loved the Cab Calloway song, "Minnie the Moocher".

Stepping Out: The Very Best of Joe Jackson

All tracks were written by Joe Jackson, except for "Jumpin' Jive", penned in 1939 by Cab Calloway, Frank Froeba and Jack Palmer.


Chuck Cissel

In his early 20's Chuck performed on Broadway in Hello Dolly with Pearl Bailey and Cab Calloway, Purlie, Lost in the Stars, Via Galactica, Don’t Bother Me I Can’t Cope and as an original member of the Broadway musical A Chorus Line, back when Broadway was starting to open up its doors to African American performers.

Dorothy Donegan

She appeared in Sensations of 1945 with Cab Calloway, Gene Rodgers and W. C. Fields and was known for her work in Chicago nightclubs.

Frankie Jaxon

Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher" (1931) is based both musically and lyrically on Jaxon's "Willie the Weeper" (1927).

Hal Seeger

During the later part of the 1940s, he worked as a screenwriter for a series of movies featuring well known Black performers, including the 1947 Cab Calloway musical Hi-De-Ho and two films featuring Dusty Fletcher and Moms Mabley, "Killer Diller" and "Boarding House Blues".

L.S. Alexander Gumby

The scrapbooks contain autographed photos, stories and letters from such notable performers as Paul Robeson, Josephine Baker, Langston Hughes, Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie and Ethel Waters, and letters and autographs from Black historical figures such as Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, Father Divine, W.E.B. Dubois, and Marcus Garvey.

Mighty O

The song contains a prominent sample of Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher", written by Calloway, Clarence Gaskill and Irving Mills.

TKA

Kayel recorded under the name K7 and had a hit hip-hop album called Swing, Batta, Swing, which contained the hit singles "Zunga Zeng" produced by Platinum Producer Frankie Cutlass (which interpolated and was loosely based on Reggae legend Yellowman's 1983 early Dancehall hit "Zungguzungguguzungguzeng"); "Come, Baby, Come"; and the Cab Calloway-influenced "Hi De Ho".


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