Musical Monday with Cab Calloway

Cab Calloway was a singer, dancer, songwriter, and band leader without whom we wouldn't have had any number of more recent pop stars... with Michael Jackson being prime among them. He had such a unique and enviable style about him that many have borrowed from him and added it to their own routines. To this day, Calloway stands as an unmatched giant in the history of American dance and popular music. (In these parts, we celebrate him primarily for his contributions to three of the Betty Boop animated shorts.)

Calloway co-stars in this week's Musical Monday feature, as he is joined by an equally amazing pair of performers--tap dancers Nicholas Brothers. In this self-contained performance from the 1943 musical "Stormy Weather", Calloway and his band swing away with the tune "Jumpin' Jive", while the Nicholas Brothers deliver one of the most spectacular dance routines ever put on film.



If you enjoyed that clip--and if you didn't what's wrong with you?!--you might enjoy the movie it came from. It features a veritable who's who of top African American singers and dancers from the 1940s, with Lena Horne leading the cast.

'Minnie the Moocher' is a freaky trip

Minnie the Moocher (1932)
Starring: The Voices of Cab Calloway and Mae Questal
Director: Dave Fleischer
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars


Betty (Questal) and her boyfriend Bimbo run away from home, but they are confronted by a ghostly walrus (Calloway) and other spooks when they seek shelter in what turns out to be haunted cave.

"Minnie the Moocher" is one of the greatest Betty Boop cartoons, and some even say it is the greatest. Me, I think that honor goes to "The Old Man of the Mountain", but there's no question that this is one jazzy, snazzy, kooky. spooky filmlette!

"Minnie the Moocher" was the first of three collaborations between producer Max Fleischer and pioneering jazz-man Cab Calloway, and, like the other two, it plays like a precusor to the sorts of music videos that were the hallmark of MTV during its glory days: Each is a tour-de-force of creativity and surreal weirdness, as well as vehicle for delivering excellent music to present fans and introducing it to new ones.

As for the cartoon itself, "Minnie the Moocher" will keep you engaged with both its storyline, its weird visuals, and the great songs, with the main attraction being the song of the title, but Betty singing about how distressed she is over her mean parents is fun as well. Like the other two cartoons that Calloway made with Fleisher, it's also a great deal of fun to see him turned into a cartoon creature that still moves in a very Calloway-esque fashion thanks to Rotoscope--which was invented by Fleischer animators and first used on these cartoons.

Why don't you take a few minutes to enjoy some great music and watch an even greater cartoon? Just click below to start the video!

'Snow White' ala Calloway & Boop

Snow White (1933)
Starring: Mae Questel (as the voices of Betty Boop and the Evil Queen) and Cab Calloway (as the voices of Koko the Clown and the Magic Mirror)
Director: Max Fleischer
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

An evil queen orders Betty "Snow White" Boop (both voiced by Questal) put to death after a magic mirror declares Betty to be the most beautiful woman in the land. Complications ensue.

"Snow White" has been celebrated by critics as the most surreal of all the Betty Boop cartoons. I've not seen enough of them to know whether this is true or not. What I can say for sure is that's the weirdest adaptation of "Snow White" I've ever come across!

There's not much I can say about this film without ruining the viewing experience. I was slightly disappointed that the story felt a little more chaotic here than in other Betty Boop cartoons I've watched, but that was more than made up for how impressive I found it that despite being represented by a cartoon clown and a cartoon ghost that is nothing but legs, arms, and a head, Cab Calloway's mannerisms and demeanor still shine through. I was also enthralled by the backgrounds in the Magic Cave once the singing started. Instead of the usual static images that repeat with some minor variations as the animated characters sing and bounce their way through the action, it's a constantly changing set of images that visually tell the story of the "St. James Infirmary Blues" song being performed by Cab Calloway in his freakish ghost guise.

If you haven't seen this great old cartoon before, you should take a few minutes NOW to check it out, especially since the version embedded in this post has both perfectly clear visuals and audio. You won't regret it.

2019

Musical Monday with Calloway and Boop

The early Betty Boop cartoons are very trippy experiences... but this one seems moreso than others.

The Old Man of the Mountain (1933)
Starring: Cab Calloway (as the voice of the Old Man) and Bonnie Poe (as the voice of Betty Boop)
Director: Dave Fleischer
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

Although warned of the danger by an entire town of fleeing citizens, Betty Boop decides that she must see the Old Man of the Moutain herself.

Betty Boop had some surreal adventures in the early 1930s, and this is one of them. Although you have to wonder what when through that extra-large head of hers when she chose to disregard warnings from EVERYONE (including a woman who, depending on how darkly you want to view the storyline, was either the Old Man's unhappy wife, or a rape victim), and heads up to mountain to see for herself what everyone is so afraid of, this is among the more surreal of them. From the moment Betty meets the Old Man of the Mountain, this cartoon just keeps getting weirder and weirder... and keeps getting more and more entertaining.

Another really cool aspect of "The Old Man of the Mountain" is that it's essentially a music video; it's not just a cartoon where the characters sing a song or two, it's filled from beginning to end with jazz music and songs performed by Cab Calloway and his orchestra, along with Bonnie Poe. The character of the Old Man dancing was also reportedly rotoscoped from film of Cab Calloway performing. I've read this is one of three Betty Boop cartoons where the Calloway and his music are bascially the stars; I will be seeking out those and reviewing them in this space.

Meanwhile, if you like funky animation and even funkier jazz, you need to take a few minutes out of your day to watch "The Old Man of the Mountain".

A Cab Calloway Classic

I'm starting the week with something a little different: An entire short film you can watch right here on the blog.

Cab Calloway's Hi-De-Ho (1934)
Starring: Cab Calloway, Fredi Washington, and Ethel Moses
Director: Fred Waller
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

Jazz star Cab Calloway (Calloway) advises a porter to buy a radio in order to keep his wife from stepping out while he is away from home. Unfortunately, the wife (Washington) stays in with Cab Calloway himself.


This fun little ten-minute short features a trio of great Cab Calloway songs, including "The Lady with the Fan", a song written specifically for Calloway's Cotton Club show and performed here in his fictitious Cotton Club Show. They illustrate one of the things I've always found so much fun about Calloway's songs--characters appear in several of them, like Smokey Joe and Minnie--so they can combined to sort of tell larger stories. And then there's always the endless variation on the call "hi-de-ho."

Aside from the gag ending, this film is interesting from the point of view that it shows a black patron at the Cotton Club, a Harlem nightclub that was notoriously racist in its policy of only admitting white customers, despite specializing in black performers and black jazz music. By 1934, however, the policies had been been somewhat relaxed at the insistence of Duke Ellington, whose band and music had been a major part in building the club's high reputation. None the less, the black patron is shown separated from the rest behind a low wall.

Those were different times.

On the other hand, the film also shows that Cab Calloway would fit right into today's entertainment scene if he were a young musician and performer today. With the grasp of cutting-edge technology and tendency toward sex scandal on display in this film, Calloway might even be a politician Tweeting pictures of his penis for the world to see.

They don't make 'em like Cab Calloway anymore!

In my review of "Hi-De-Ho", I lamented the lack of a "Minnie the Moocher" performance. Here's Cab Calloway performing it with a higher-than-average degree of craziness.




And here's the title song from 1947's "Hi-De-Ho". The opening and closing sections that sounds like a Jewish synagogue prayer is super cool! (Oh... and if you listen closely, you'll discover that the hippies weren't quite as cutting edge as one might thing; their lexicon predates them by more than a decade, as this song proves. They may not have trusted anyone over 30, but they sure spoke like some of them. Or were the hippies just the wiggers of their day?)




And then there are the stoners. Calloway and his pals were there first, too.

'Hi-De-Ho' has virtually no plot to interfere with the musical numbers

Hi-De-Ho (1947)
Starring: Cab Calloway, Jenni Le Gon, Ida James, James Dunmore, and George Wiltshire
Director: Josh Binney
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

When struggling musician Cab (Calloway) and his band are on the verge of their first big break, his jealous girlfriend Minnie (Le Gon) gets him embroiled in a fight with a deadly gangster (Wiltshire) because she believes he is having an affair with his female manager (James).

Made primarily for theaters that catered to black audiences in the segregated south, "Hi-De-Ho" is a short movie that is first and foremost a showcase for bandleader and legendary jazz man Cab Calloway. The paper-thin plot is just an excuse to move us from Calloway performance to Calloway performance, and it vanishes almost entirely at the halfway point where it gives way to a supposed club performance by Calloway and several other very talented, real-world acts from the late 1940s. It is so perfunctory that when three people die in a shoot-out, including one innocent bystander, the police's reaction is basically to walk away while saying, "Hey, great job killing those gangsters, Cab! Good riddance to them!"

This film is of interest only to fans jazz, scat-music, and great big band performances. Calloway does show himself to be a better actor than many of his fellow musicians--like when he is performing a mournful acapella version of "Minnie's a Hep Cat Now" (a song he performs earlier in an upbeat fashion).

Surprisingly, Calloway doesn't perform "Minnie the Moocher", the song he is perhaps best known for today--especially considering that song includes the "Hi-De-Ho" phrase from the movie's title and he refers to the Minnie character as a moocher at one point. Of course, the film more than makes up for its absence a song title "I am the Hi-De-Ho Man" and the aforementioned "Minnie's a Hep-Cat Now".

The target audience for this movie--fans of Cab Calloway and 1940s jazz--will love this movie. I would even recommend that wanna-be musicians check it out, especially if you're fancying yourself a hip-hop or rap artist. You will find some things in this movie that may surprise you. Everyone else can't help but be awed by the talent and energy of Calloway... although you will likely find yourself wishing for a little more story to go with the excellent musical numbers.