Dinosaur Gardens

Merry Christmas, everybody. I’m in Detroit eating lamb, but I needed to take some time out to commemorate a very important date. Were Cab Calloway still alive, he would be 100 today. So here are some Christmas presents for you all: a series of Cab videos, spanning 1932–1990.

• Betty Boop: Minnie the Moocher (1932)
• “Reefer Man” from International House (1933)
• Betty Boop: Snow-White (1933)
• Betty Boop: The Old Man of the Mountain (1933)
• Cab Calloway’s Hi-De-Ho (1934)
• Cab Calloway’s Jitterbug Party (1935)
• “Blues in the Night” (1942)
• “The Skunk Song” (1942)
• “Virginia, Georgia and Caroline” (1942)
• “Geechy Joe” from Stormy Weather (1943)
• “Foo a Little Bally Hoo” (1945)
• “I Was Here When You Left Me” (1945)
• “We the Cats Shall Hep Ya” (1945)
• “Minnie the Moocher” (1950)
• “St. James Infirmary” (1950)
• “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love” (1951)
• “One for My Baby” (1951)
• “St. James Infirmary” and “Ol’ Man River” from The Ed Sullivan Show (1964)
• “Minnie the Moocher” from The Blues Brothers (1980)
• Janet Jackson: “Alright” (1990)

And now, a special bonus for making it this far: the 1944 edition of Calloway’s The Hepster’s Dictionary, in HTML format.

• The Hepster’s Dictionary

Finally, some YouTube links:

• Cab singing “September Song” in 1986
• Cab on Sesame Street: “Jump Jive” and “Hi De Ho Man”
• Dinosaur Gardens favorite Andre Williams talking about Cab’s influence

Recently there was a post on BoingBoing about a Bollywood video cover of I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and it reminded me of one of my favorite Bollywood finds — a videotape that I got from an Indian grocery I lived near. The catchy “Disco Disco” label first caught my eye, but the contents turned out to be better than I could have imagined: a compilation of solidly 80’s era Bollywood music videos. No plot developments, no Hindi dialogue I can’t understand; nothing but wall-to-wall music videos with guys dressed like forgotten Jacksons brothers singing in front of giant light-up Rubik’s cubes. Yesssss!

Buried in this kitschy mess was the video below. It’s a cut from the movie Disco Dancer (the title clip of which starts out the tape) but they don’t give the title for this song, so I’m calling it “Disco Killed The Radio Star” since it’s basically a take on The Buggles’ “Video Killed The Radio Star”. This is — well, not a cover, exactly — but the distinctive piano and “Oh-wah-oh” backup singing makes it the cheap, copyright-free “Hey, that reminds me of”–version of the song. And considering the root ersatzness of the Bollywood aesthetic, that make it even better.

• Disco Killed The Radio Star.mp4
• Disco Killed The Radio Star (XviD).avi