Cab Calloway Music

This cd has highlights from Cab's 1030-39 period, when his band was playing "hot" dance music, and swinging really hard. Calloway on this "L'art Vocal" series, is represented here as a vocalist(they also have the series on Lena Horn & an exellent Fats Waller series), who fronted one of the best big bands of the period. His vocals are wonderful and slightly over the top. As far as his singing ballads goes, he was hep and cool, not at all like the rhythmless Jolson, as another less educated reviewer wrote. Calloways's vocals on ballads could be dramatic yet hep as always a good example of his sounding great on a ballad is his singing on "The Lady With The Fan"(an essential Calloway performance), and "Moonglow", while those may not be on this set, you can acquire those on his more complete Calssics Chrono series which has almost all of his reocrdings. In any case this is a fine sampler of his mid period recordings, however you will also want to explore the peiod before this with Cab calloway and the Missourians(his hottest band od all!). Then you will want his R&B sides from the 40's. but this is a start... and a good one at that, as it features many uptempo hot numbers and an occasional ballad, which features Cab as a crooner, who has more in common with Bing Crosby then Al Joson.

Having purchased the terrific 'Are You Hep to the Jive?' CD which covers the period 1939-47, I then faced the task of finding a decent anthology of Cab's work for 1930-9. Having tried other discs and been disappointed, I have included that this is the best for this earlier period. The trouble with Cab anthologies is that, while he recorded some great songs, he also recorded a lot of cheesy stuff, and usually both categories are mixed together. Cab was at his best when he was being outrageous, singing his 'Hi-de-Ho' wailers and so on. But when he tried to sing ballads, he'd sing in this corny Al Jolson-style, which may have been popular at the time, but rather embarassing now.

On the whole, this CD focuses on Cab's good stuff. The opening 'St Louis Blues' is a definitive example of Cab's early style where he almost seems to hold on to a note forever. We also get the rare opportunity of hearing the original 1931 version of 'Minnie the Moocher', perhaps not as good as the 1942 version but its nice to have both in your collection. In fact we're treated to no less than five songs featuring Minnie and Smokey Joe, namely 'Minnie the Moocher' itself, 'Lady with the Fan', 'Zaz Zuh Zaz', 'Kickin' the Gong Around' and 'The Ghost of Smokey Joe'. Only 'Minnie the Moocher's Wedding Day' and 'Mr Paganini, Swing for Minnie' are missing, so until a CD is issued to include the entire Moocher series, I guess this is the closest we'll get.

If there was one song I wouldn't have included on this disc, it would be 'Miss Otis Regrets', a fine song by other people but, for Cab, it's more in that cheesy category referred to previously. But, despite the odd questionable selection, we do get to hear some of Cab's finest including the scat standard 'Nagasaki' and 'Jumpin' Jive', Cab's big hit from the movie 'Stormy Weather'.

I recommend 'Are You Hep to the Jive?' to hear Cab's best work for 1939-47. For pre-1939 recordings, I would recommend this album, as well as Columbia/Legacy's two "Best of the Big Bands" discs.

This first CD in the Chronogical (sic?) Classics collection is one of our favorites. Cab's voice at this early age is high and sweet, and his style wilder and less polished than his later style. His recording of St. Louis Blues is awesome! The Viper's Drag (a Fats Waller piece), St. James Infirmary, and The Nightmare are haunting and beautiful. This CD also includes the earliest recorded version of Minnie the Moocher. It also has Cab performing I'm Crazy About My Baby; it's fun to compare this to Fats Waller's version. The piece Six or Seven Times is an answer to two earlier songs by other artists: Four or Five Times and Once or Twice. There is little cheese and plenty of good stuff on this CD!

"Cab Calloway and His Orchestra, 1930-1931" brings together 24 memorable tracks from this great figure in United States music. The songs on this CD are a diverse group. They include "Yaller," a mournful-sounding reflection on skin color and racial identity ("I ain't even black, I ain't even white, / I ain't like the day and I ain't like the night"); the playfully satiric "Is That Religion?", which parodies the "call and response" tradition of African-American churches; the mellow "Dixie Vagabond"; the gentle "Creole Love Song"; and the fun, energetic "Levee Low-Down."

And of course, this CD features "Minnie the Moocher" ("She was a red-hot hoochie-coocher"), which is probably the quintessential Cab Calloway song. This CD is important for serious students of American music, but it is also, all these decades later, still an enjoyable listening experience.

I'm certain that I wouldn't be writing a note about this CD if I hadn't put it on the deck this afternoon for the first time in awhile, and, loving it again, thought to check Amazon to see what else is currently available from Chronological Classics -- I have a few of their releases and they're all first-rate.

Coming across this one (which seems to be getting pretty costly these days, along with most of the other CC releases), I wondered why it was rated only 4 stars, when it's really a nearly perfect CD. Then I saw that it was based on only one review, written before the turn of the century. Well then.

The program flows well, and the sound is uniform from track to track and actually bright in a way that closely resembles how these cuts used to sound as 78rpm records, at least when played on an electric pickup.
This is in huge contrast to possibly the majority of "restored" recordings in recent years, which remove all surface noise, but in the process shave off the top third of the recording's range. There's plenty of surface noise here, but it's not at all distracting, and anyway it was part and parcel of the original records even when they were new.

And there's the material: each cut is its own twist of genius and very much right at the [i]roots[/i] of a huge influence on American pop culture.

Plus: this music is so peppy and optimistic that you can't help but feel good, even if it's only playing in the background, and that rates fives stars all by itself, these days.

Well worth purchasing before it goes from "scarce" to "rare".

This compilation of Cab's early work (1931-1932) is a great example the development of his singing style and the band which became a staple at the Cotton Club. I really like these versions of 'Bugle Call Rag', 'Stardust', and 'Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea'. My absolute favorites, however, are 'You Can't Stop Me From Loving You' and 'Somebody Stole My Gal'. The band is tight and well balanced and Cab's singing is at its best.