Cab Calloway

Fans knew Cab Calloway as the scat-singing hep cat, the hi-de-hi-de-hi'ing bandleader whose career spanned six decades and ranged from Harlem to Hollywood. Josh Langsam knew him as the grandfather whose smile could stretch a mile wide. "He was always cheerful and he was a great family person," Calloway's 13- year-old grandson said Saturday. Calloway, who suffered a severe stroke on June 12 at his home in White Plains, N.Y., died Friday in Cokesbury Village, a retirement community, with his family at his side. He was 86. Josh loved the forays they'd make to the race track. "We used to sit in the clubhouse together and bet on the horses. I used to win more than he would and he just didn't want to admit it," the youngster said. Josh's mother, Cabella Langsam, is Calloway's youngest daughter. Calloway's wife, Nuffie, was resting Saturday at Cokesbury, where she lives. She spent a quiet hour alone with her husband after he died: "I put my head on his shoulder, and that was very healing," Mrs. Calloway said. "He had two separate lives: His life on stage and his life with the family. When he closed the door on his dressing room, he came home as a husband, father and grandfather." As a bandleader, singer, author, dancer and songwriter, Calloway performed for more than 60 years, from Chicago jazz joints to the Cotton Club, on Broadway and in Hollywood movies. His influence in the music world was huge. Calloway was the man who hired the then-unknown Dizzy Gillespie and promoted the careers of Pearl Bailey and Lena Horne. He became known to a younger generation through the 1980 hit film "The Blues Brothers.'" Even in old age, he was a marvel to watch - a dervish who dashed from one end of the stage to the other, his limbs and his mop of unruly hair flying in all directions as he flashed an enormous smile. His trademark song was "Minnie the Moocher," and audiences would respond in kind when he sang the chorus of "hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-ho." He once said his scat refrains were the product of a faulty memory - he couldn't recall the words. "I love being called a living legend. Sure, I love that," Calloway said in 1985. Calloway cast himself as the ultimate hep cat. At his performances he sold "Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary" and "Prof. Cab Calloway's Swingformation Bureau," how-to books for the unhep. In his early days he was known as a womanizer and traveled well, in a special train car with his green Lincoln riding on a flatbed. Always a stylish dresser, he was said to have 50 suits in his closet, along with 50 matching pairs of shoes. But he married Nuffie in 1953 and stayed with her until the end. Cabell Calloway III was born in Rochester, N.Y., in 1907 and raised in Baltimore. He studied law at Crane College in Chicago and was offered a contract to play basketball for the Harlem Globetrotters in 1928, but became a song-and-dance man instead, inspired by his musician-sister Blanche. At Chicago's Sunset Cafe, he played opposite Louis Armstrong. "I was thrilled just to be there; he was an inspiration to me," Calloway said once. The first band he took to New York bombed in 1928. The next year he took over the Missourians, which came to be known as Cab Calloway's band for the next 19 years. Calloway had played the saxophone, but his talents were not stellar; when he offered a job to legendary saxophonist Chu Berry, Berry accepted on the condition that Calloway never play again. In 1931, the Calloway band took over for Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club, the Harlem nightspot where black artists played to an overwhelmingly white audience. That same year, he recorded "Minnie the Moocher," the story of a "low- down hoochy coocher. She was the roughest, toughest frail, but Minnie had a heart as big as a whale." The song, accompanied by Calloway's theatrics and scat singing, brought the house down. Calloway's career took off. He appeared in a series of movies - including "The Big Broadcast," "International House" and "Stormy Weather" - and took his all-black band on the road, integrating halls long before the civil rights movement. "I did things that my people didn't do at the time. Played in clubs, theaters - first blacks to play in them. Made history. Music has no barriers of any kind," Calloway said. Some of his songs were about drugs, though his listeners didn't always know it. But the man who recorded "Reefer Man" and "Kickin' the Gong Around" claimed he fired band members who smoked marijuana. Calloway's band broke up in 1948 with the end of the big-band era. He toured with a trio and even performed at Globetrotter games until his career was rescued by a 1952 revival of George Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess." The role of Sportin' Life - a charming narcotics peddler - had been written with him in mind. They toured Europe, then took it to Broadway, where Calloway later performed in an all-black "Hello Dolly." He also appeared in "Eubie" and "Bubblin' Brown Sugar." His music made a comeback, too. In later years he toured with Chris, the only one of his five daughters to go into the music business. His great passion, though, was the horses. During the racing season, he spent his days at the track, which he called his "office." He lost a great deal of money there, though he never said how much. "I don't think of anything else when I'm there: It clears my mind. And I enjoy it," Calloway said. "That's what music is supposed to do, clear your mind, make you feel better." A memorial service will be held at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan sometime after Thanksgiving, Mrs. Calloway said.