Cab Calloway was a world-famous jazz singer and performer. Born in New York, Calloway grew up in the Druid Heights neighborhood of West Baltimore, just a few blocks away from Greater Mondawmin. He attended “Colored High and Training School,” later renamed Frederick Douglass High School, with his classmate Thurgood Marshall. In addition to being a stellar musician, Calloway was also a talented basketball player who played for the Baltimore Athenians, the city’s team in the then segregated Negro Professional Basketball League. After honing his act on the Pennsylvania Avenue jazz club circuit in Baltimore, Calloway moved to Harlem to pursue his career as a professional musician. He became famous for his mixing of big band jazz, scat singing, and theatrical vaudeville performance, particularly during his legendary performances at Harlem’s Cotton Club. Calloway became an international sensation, touring the world, recording with other jazz greats, and starring in movies. He also proudly promoted Black culture, publishing books on jazz culture and “jive,” a 1930-40s dialect of African American Vernacular English spoken in Harlem.
As other forms of pop music replaced jazz in the second half of the twentieth century, Calloway faded from the public eye. His iconic appearance in the 1980 film Blues Brothers brought him back to fame with a younger generation, and he continued touring throughout the 1980’s, including with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Cab Calloway passed away in Delaware in 1994 at age 86. Calloway’s family home on the 2200 block of Druid Heights Ave sat vacant, along with most other houses on the block, for much of the 21st century and had become structurally unsound. In 2020, to some objections from those who wanted the home turned into a historic site, the block was razed and replaced with the Cab Calloway Legends Park. A short biography with a collection of Calloway’s music is linked below.