"Hi de hi de hi de ho!" Charismatic music and dance pioneer Cab Calloway is an exceptional figure in the history of jazz. As a singer, dancer and bandleader, he charmed audiences around the world with his boundless energy, bravado and elegant showmanship. Calloway was also an ambassador for his race, leading one of the most popular African-American big bands during the Harlem Renaissance and jazz and swing eras of the 1930s-40s.
American Masters celebrates the career and legacy of "The Hi De Ho Man" with the new documentary Cab Calloway: Sketches, premiering Monday, February 27, 2012, at 9:00 p.m. on KUED.
Emmy-winning filmmaker Gail Levin explores Cab Calloway's musical beginnings and milestones in the context of the Harlem Renaissance and segregationist America using archival footage, animation based on caricatures by famed illustrator Steve Brodner and French cartoonist Cabu, and interviews. The animated Cab dances alongside Matthew Rushing, choreographer/principal dancer of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (Uptown), who explains how modern Calloway's movements were and his impact on hip-hop.
Additional interviewees include Calloway's daughters Cecelia and Camay; grandson and Cab Calloway Orchestra bandleader Chris "Calloway" Brooks; horn player Gerald Wilson; and The Blues Brothers (1980) director John Landis and band members Steve Cropper, Lou Marini and Donald "Duck" Dunne. The film introduced Calloway and his music to a new generation, when he acted and performed as the Blues Brothers' mentor, Curtis.
"I am especially delighted to bring Cab Calloway to younger audiences - and he does become quite alive through the inventive animation in this film," says Susan Lacy, American Masters series creator and executive producer. "He, and his era, is such a vital part of our musical cultural heritage - and such an energetic one!"
"This film is not just another biopic in the sense of interviews and recollections, but a reinvigoration of the whole Calloway presence - a reprise of a timeless virtuoso," adds Levin.
With the Cotton Club - where blacks could perform but not attend - as his home stage, Calloway became a star of New York's jazz scene and then a household name with his signature song "Minnie the Moocher." Despite its tragic, taboo subject matter, the song broke into the mainstream and was even used in Max and Dave Fleischer's Betty Boop cartoon of the same name, along with Calloway's dance moves. Breaking the color barrier with this "hi de ho" hit, he was one of the first black musicians to tour the segregationist South.
He published a Hepster's Dictionary of his jive slang in 1938, starred in films, including Stormy Weather (1943) with Lena Horne and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, and played Sportin' Life - a role George Gershwin modeled on him - in a 1952 touring production of Porgy and Bess, making "It Ain't Necessarily So" an enduring part of his brand. With his zany theatricality - scat singing, jive talking, zoot suit wearing, straight-hair head-shaking, and backslide dance (a precursor to Michael Jackson's moonwalk) - Calloway transcended racial specificity on his own terms.
###
Please visit our website at www.kued.org/jobs for information about job opportunities at KUED.