Sunday 6 February 2011

Cab Calloway: singer, band leader, ghost walrus.


If you are like me then you will know Mr Cab Calloway, jazz/scat singer, bandleader and super smooth dancer, for his hit song Minnie The Moocher, and if you are like me you will have heard it for the first time in the Blues Brothers movie. It is what I would call a big tune.


The Blues Brothers is a wonderfully over the top movie and a joy to watch, but Cab had performed this song decades earlier alongside a couple of other pop culture icons that makes the Blues Brothers movie look pretty darn normal. I'm talking about Cab Calloway in the Betty Boop cartoon "Minnie The Moocher". which came out in 1932. I've started delving into Betty Boop cartoons recently and like a lot of these early black and white 'toons, they are more than a little bizzare. I won't explain it too much but all you need to know is that Cab Calloway appears in it as a singing ghost walrus. This is some freaky stuff but fantastic.


So there you go, Cab as a singing ghost walrus. Crazy. Next thing you'll be saying he was in Sesame Street... oh wait, he totally was! AMAZING!




What a guy!

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