CAB CALLOWAY - 2012 DOCUMENTARY DVD - VERY RARE

Description: This is a rare promotional DVD from PBS in2012. The DVD contains the full 55-minute biography on Cab Calloway. The DVD has basic information stamped on it, and it comes in a plain jewel case. The DVD is un-sealed and in mint condition. See my other items for another DVD about black tap dancing artists: "Tap Dance." American Masters programs on PBS are almost always rewarding, but the episode about Cab Calloway is unusually so, with smart, well-presented insights into his music, his dancing, his acting and his barrier-crossing appeal. The film, Cab Calloway: Sketches jettisons much of what would be in a conventional biography, we are given only a vague picture of his early life and instead focuses on his work as a bandleader, in savvy but accessible detail. A grandson, C. Calloway Brooks, explains the unusual Calloway practice of having the bass play slightly ahead of the beat, with the drums staying fractionally behind. The bass player pulls the whole groove forward, Mr. Brooks, himself a bandleader, explains. It gives it tremendous momentum. A weak drummer would speed up. They'd say, Oh, I've got to lock in with the bass player, so I've got to speed up to get with that bass player. But what you have to do is have the strength to be able to stay in the center of the beat and let the bass player play in front of the beat. That was one of the things that gave Calloway, who died in 1994, a distinctive sound and helped propel him to success at the Cotton Club in Harlem and, with the recording of Minnie the Moocher in 1931, to national cult status. Another, of course, was his wildly energetic scat singing. There was nobody in his band who could play out of their horn more jazz than he could get out of his throat, Mr. Brooks says. The film also explores Calloways crossover appeal in amusing but forthright detail, with comments about how his straight hair and relatively light skin tone made him more acceptable to white audiences of the day. That made for a certain incongruity when Minnie the Moocher, a song with a catchy singalong chorus that was actually about shady characters, became a national hit. When I look back now and think of middle-class whites hi-de-ho-ing as Cab Calloways singing about cocaine, its like surreal, the critic Gary Giddins says. How clueless was white America? Ms. Levin wraps the film in a clever device with a sweet payoff: she periodically shows footage of a painting of Calloway as it takes shape. At the end, the painting comes to animated life a fitting metaphor for what this film does for Calloway himself.

Price: 14.99 USD

Location: Chino, California

End Time: 2023-12-28T20:19:33.000Z

Shipping Cost: 0 USD