Chris Calloway, your “Main Queen” introduces herself as a singer and the torch bearer of the 60-year Calloway Legacy.
She plays her recordings and her father’s recordings of the same Harold Arlen songs.
She also plays her aunt Blanche Calloway singing her theme song “Growlin Dan” and herself singing the same song 70 years later.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Your “Main Queen” recounts life on the road in 1939 for Cab Calloway and his orchestra.
An incident took place at a “white dance” in Longview Texas involving Benny Payne Cab’s piano player at that time. It resulted in a racial riot. Great comments by Milt Hinton about Cab “Living Large.”
This is good stuff.
This show picks up at the Cotton Club on the night that Cab forgot his lyrics.
It was his first national radio broadcast and Cab made a rather humorous mistake with his introduction of Irving Berlin and Oscar Levant.
It’s a funny story.
In 1931 at the Cotton Club in New York City, Cab Calloway forgot the lyrics to the song he was singing and sang Hi De Hi De Ho.
Your Main Queen begs the question where did Hi De Ho come from? She introduces Blanche Calloway, Cab’s older sister, on a recording with Louis Armstrong in 1924, as the source of the Hi De Ho legacy.
On this show, “Your Main Queen” tells the story of a young Cab Calloway growing up on the streets of Baltimore, hustling newspapers and shooting craps on the church steps.
Oh we do love those bad boys. You WILL enjoy this insight into Cab’s youth.
This kick-off show introduces the “Cab Calloway Heartbeat of Hi De Ho” Podcast.
It also introduces “Your Main Queen Chris Calloway (daughter to Cab) a solid sender of a chirping canary and gasser of an MC.” There is a lot of Cab Calloway singing Hi De Ho, Hi De Ho and the answer to the question “What IS the Heartbeat of Hi De Ho?” Check it out.
