By Steve Rhodes
An American Masters episode on Cab Calloway debuted this week on PBS to generally good reviews. While Calloway is mostly a New York figure, Chicago played an important role in his career. Let’s take a look, first with a bit of background and then some video.
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“Although Calloway came of age at the Cotton Club in Harlem (during a time when blacks were not allowed to sit in the audience), his Chicago connections are important,” Dave Hoekstra wrote in the Sun-Times.
The links that follow are mine because the Sun-Times still doesn’t know how to make them. See how they enrich the story – along with the videos. 3-D journalism, my friends.
“His older sister Blanche was the bandleader for Blanche Calloway and her Joy Boys, a Chicago-based band that included Louis Armstrong and future Calloway drummer Cozy Cole. Cab Calloway debuted in Chicago in 1928 at the Dreamland Cafe.
“According to Dempsey Travis’ An Autobiography of Black Jazz, the Dreamland was managed by Bill Bottoms, who later became the chef for boxer Joe Louis. Calloway’s first full-time gig was as house singer with Armstrong and Earl Hines at the Sunset Cafe, 35th and Calumet. The mobbed-up Sunset was the South Side’s version of the Cotton Club, with chorus girls, comedians and tap dancers.”
Posted on February 29, 2012