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.