Customer Reviews

1930-31

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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.