Cab Calloway

Singing, dancing and conducting his band in a flamboyant white tuxedo, Cab Calloway possessed a supersized Jazz Age persona that would strongly influence James Brown and Michael Jackson. Born in upstate New York in 1907, Calloway learned how to take a hip Black sound mainstream from Louis Armstrong, who also taught him how to scat sing. Released in 1931—the same year he made his Cotton Club debut in New York City—Calloway's signature tune, "Minnie the Moocher", made the "Hi-de-ho" man the first African American to sell a million copies of a single. His hep jive, drug references and rotoscoped panache translated remarkably well to the Fleischer Brothers' Betty Boop cartoons of the early '30s, and he challenged the colour line by appearing onstage with Bing Crosby and on film with Al Jolson. Ben Webster, Illinois Jacquet and Milt Hinton are just a few of the jazz legends to pass through his band, which thrived throughout the '40s. Calloway enjoyed a late-career bump when he performed “Minnie the Moocher” in the 1980 hit The Blues Brothers; he passed away in 1994, after suffering a stroke.