Test your knowledge of Cab Calloway's biggest hits, deep cuts and iconic moments.
'Minnie the Moocher', 'The Jumpin' Jive' and 'Blues in the Night' are the sides players place once the 'hi-de-ho' kicks in.
The call-and-response scat, the young Dizzy Gillespie in his band, and the film that brought 'Minnie the Moocher' back.
Start with the 'hi-de-ho' hook, then place the Cotton Club years, the sidemen who broke out, and the screen revivals.
'Minnie the Moocher' is the giveaway: the 'hi-de-ho' scat begs the room to sing it back, and the 1931 hit is the one nearly every player names. It is the free point that opens a Cab Calloway round before the deeper cuts arrive.
Calloway led the Cotton Club orchestra as a whirlwind showman, conducting with his whole body, and his flowing white zoot suit became a signature of his later years. He compiled, documented and popularized Harlem jive slang in his 1938 'Hepster's Dictionary'. Placing a clip in that Harlem floor show, rather than a plain studio date, is the context a quiz likes to test.
His orchestra was a school for future stars: a young Dizzy Gillespie, tenor player Chu Berry and bassist Milt Hinton all passed through. Knowing a deep cut like 'Reefer Man' or 'Kickin' the Gong Around' from a short clip is where fans pull ahead.
Calloway kept resurfacing on screen: his dance drove early-1930s Betty Boop cartoons, he starred in 'Stormy Weather' in 1943, and he sang 'Minnie the Moocher' again in 1980's 'The Blues Brothers'. A clip from a later revival can point at the wrong decade on purpose.
A clip of a Cab Calloway recording plays and you name it, then answer trivia on his Cotton Club years, the 'hi-de-ho' scat and his film appearances.
'Minnie the Moocher' leads, alongside 'The Jumpin' Jive', 'Blues in the Night' and deeper sides like 'Reefer Man' and 'Kickin' the Gong Around'.
It is the wordless call-and-response scat at the heart of 'Minnie the Moocher', where Calloway sings a line and the crowd echoes it back.
The signature hit is easy, but the jive deep cuts and the later film revivals, from 'Stormy Weather' to 'The Blues Brothers', are where a round gets hard.
Cabell Calloway III, an American jazz singer and bandleader known as the Hi-De-Ho Man, who fronted the Cotton Club orchestra and made 'Minnie the Moocher' famous.
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