BLANCHE CALLOWAY: CAB CALLOWAY’S OLDER SISTER
Blanche Dorothea Jones Calloway (February 9, 1902 – December 16, 1978) was an American jazz singer, composer, and bandleader. She was the older sister of Cab Calloway and was a successful singer before her brother. With a music career that spanned over fifty years, Calloway was the first woman to lead an all-male orchestra and performed alongside musicians such as Cozy Cole, Chick Webb, and her brother. Her performing style was described as flamboyant and a major influence on her brother’s performance style.
Surprising for the time, Blanche Calloway earned higher wages than Cab, making around two to three hundred dollars whereas Cab regularly made $35 a week.
Calloway was born in Rochester, New York. When she was a teenager, the family, including her four siblings – Bernice, Henry, Cabell III (later Cab Calloway), and Elmer who was born in 1912 before the move to Baltimore – moved to Baltimore, Maryland around 1912 or 1913. The family had originally lived in Baltimore prior to Rochester but had left due to tough times with the crash of the real estate market where Cabell II worked. Her father, Cabell, was a lawyer and her mother, Martha Eulalia Reed, was a music teacher. The couple would have two more children: John in 1916 and Mary Camilla in 1918.
Calloway’s mother was a major influence on her and her siblings’ passion for music. Aside from her and Cab, their brother Elmer would also go on to briefly pursue a musical career. Calloway’s mother made her take piano and voice lessons as a child, but never promoted the idea of a musical career for the young Calloway. Martha hoped that her daughter would pursue a “respectable” career, such as a teacher or nurse. Calloway dreamed of a musical career and was influenced as a youth by Florence Mills and Ida Cox. Her music teacher would encourage her to audition for a local talent scout and to her mother’s annoyance, Calloway dropped out of Morgan College in the early 1920s to seek out a career in music.
HER INFLUENCE ON CAB CALLOWAY
Blanche Calloway was a major influence on her brother’s career and performance style. Her own performance style was lively, dramatic, and animated. She would teach her brother about performing, and the two would sometimes perform together as a brother and sister act. Calloway helped her brother get his first role on stage, in Plantation Days, when another cast member fell ill. She may have served as the influence for Cab’s signature “Hi De Ho” chant in his song “Minnie the Moocher”. He says he came up with the phrase when he forgot the words during a performance, but his sister had performed and recorded a song earlier in 1931 called “Just a Crazy Song”. In the song, Calloway opened it with her wailing “Hi Hi Hi, Ho De Ho De Ho”, with the backing band performing call and response. Another song of Calloway’s, “Growlin’ Dan”, tells the story of Minnie the Moocher and the King of Sweden, and also uses the phrase “Ho De Ho De Ho.” The two performers most likely collaborated and often borrowed from one another.
BLANCHE CALLOWAY PROFESSIONAL CAREER
Calloway made her professional debut in Baltimore in 1921 with Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle’s musical Shuffle Along. Her big break came in 1923 on the national tour for Plantation Days, which featured her idol, Florence Mills. The show ended in 1927 in Chicago, and Calloway decided to stay there, as it was the jazz capital of the world during the time. The club, the Sunset, became her main stage and where Cab Calloway likewise worked after his move to Chicago.
At one point, she performed with her brother’s band before going on to work with Andy Kirk’s orchestra, the Clouds of Joy, at the Pearl Theater in Philadelphia in 1931 and recorded three songs, including a song she wrote which has been called her “trademark” song: “I Need Lovin”. While working with Kirk, Calloway failed to take over his orchestra, to serve as bandleader. Despite her attempts to take over his band, she learned extensively about music management.
Surprising for the time, Blanche Calloway earned higher wages than Cab, making around two to three hundred dollars whereas Cab regularly made $35 a week.
She became popular in the Chicago scene and would continue to tour nationally, performing at New York’s Ciro Club in the mid-1920s. Shortly after her time at the Ciro Club, she moved to Chicago, Illinois. In 1925, she recorded two blues songs, which would be promoted as race records, accompanied by Louis Armstrong and Richard M. Jones; the first inception of her Joy Boys orchestra. During this decade, she would also perform with Reuben Reeves and record on Vocalion Records.
She would go on to form another big band, Blanche Calloway and Her Joy Boys, which included Ben Webster on tenor saxophone and Cozy Cole on drums. This made her the first woman to lead an all-male jazz orchestra. This big band recorded four times in 1931 and once in 1934 and 1935, releasing recordings on RCA Victor. The band would eventually change their name to Blanche Calloway and Her Orchestra and in 1933 the Pittsburgh Courier called Calloway and her orchestra one of the top ten outstanding African American orchestras. During 1934 and 1935 she would record eight songs with this group, including songs such as “Just a Crazy Song”, “Make Me Know It”, “You Ain’t Livin’ Right”, and a remake of “I Need Lovin'”. Calloway and Her Joy Boys performed heavily in New York City, including at the Lafayette Theatre, the Harlem Opera House, and the Apollo Theatre. A version of the Joy Boys would tour, featuring Cozy Cole still on drums, Bennie Moten, Andy Kirk, Chick Webb, and Zack Wythe. She wrote a number of songs for the group, including “Rhythm of the River” and “Growling Dan”.
After years of struggling for major success in the racially segregated and male-dominated music industry of the period, in 1938 she declared bankruptcy and broke up her orchestra.
In the early 1950s Calloway moved to Washington, D.C., where she managed the nightclub Crystal Caverns. She hired Ruth Brown to perform at the club and would become Brown’s manager. Brown credited Calloway with discovering her and helping her get a contract with Atlantic Records.
In the late 1950s Calloway moved to Florida and became a disc jockey for WMBM in Miami Beach. Eventually, she became program director of the station, and served in that role for 20 years before moving back to Baltimore.
While still in Florida, she became the first African American precinct voting clerk and the first African American woman to vote in Florida in 1958. She became an active member of the NAACP and the Congress of Racial Equality, also serving on the board of the National Urban League. In 1964, she and about forty other African American women protested with the NATO Women’s Peace Force at The Hague.
Around 1968, she formed Afram House, a mail-order cosmetics company for African Americans. She moved back to Baltimore and married her high school sweetheart. She died from breast cancer on December 16, 1978, at the age of 76.
