Cab Calloway

CTL-E-5943 · Person · musician · 1907–1994

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07185 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-5943.

Cab Calloway (Cabell Calloway III, born December 25, 1907, Rochester, New York; died November 18, 1994, Hockessin, Delaware) was the singer, bandleader, and entertainer whose “hi-de-ho” scat made him the swing era's most theatrical frontman. Raised in Baltimore, he briefly attended law school in Chicago — Crane College — while singing in Chicago nightclubs, then reached New York in 1929 and sang “Ain't Misbehavin'” in Fats Waller's revue Connie's Hot Chocolates. From 1931 his orchestra was a house band at Harlem's Cotton Club alongside Duke Ellington's. “Minnie the Moocher,” first recorded in 1931, became the first record by a Black musician to sell one million copies, and his band employed Dizzy Gillespie, Ben Webster, Cozy Cole, and Milt Hinton. Calloway appeared in Stormy Weather (1943) and, at seventy-two, in The Blues Brothers (1980). He received the National Medal of Arts in 1993; “Minnie the Moocher” entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999 and the National Recording Registry in 2019.

The record

• Also known as: Cabell Calloway III

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 2 — 747 Program, Wave 9; second Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): no Cab Calloway entity in the live graph at 3,603 entities (exact / normalized / alias + token containment); ID CTL-E-5943 free. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 4 — Scan Tail Wave 1 packet ordered reserve, position 18 of 20 (corpus-gap-candidates-2026-10-15.json ranked clean survivor #680). The scan supplied the NAME STRING ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — defining swing-era bandleader whose formation ran through Chicago nightclubs and law school; core scope. Vital status: DECEASED — died November 18, 1994 (Britannica; Wikipedia). Tribute treatment in the Curator's Judgment. STATISTICS (sourced, dated): “Minnie the Moocher” (first recorded 1931): first record by a Black musician to sell one million copies (Wikipedia). National Medal of Arts 1993; the recording entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2019. One low-quality source dates his death November 19; Britannica and Wikipedia agree on November 18, 1994, which the record carries. MEDIA: photo HELD (Cab Calloway portrait (Carl Van Vechten, Library of Congress) named as candidate; no file-page verification in this pass); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-5943-cab-calloway.svg); video HELD (no matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged); audio HELD (no rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Non-place record; no map attaches at the entity layer.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created SVG (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced facts) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map catalog (checked by name and variants), and no official/em) | audio = HELD (No recording with a CTL rights basis was staged in this pass.)

Relationships

• Cotton Club — performed at
  Calloway's orchestra was a Cotton Club house band from 1931.
• Fats Waller — collaborated with
  Calloway sang “Ain't Misbehavin'” in Waller's revue Connie's Hot Chocolates in 1929 — a documented stage collaboration between the two packet-mates.

Referenced by

• Pearl Bailey — collaborated with → this record

Sources

• Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Cab Calloway" (accessed 2026-10-16) — December 25, 1907 Rochester birth, November 18, 1994 Hockessin death, the Chicago law-school episode, the 1929 Connie's Hot Chocolates appearance, the 1931 Cotton Club engagement, and the film record — http://www.britannica.com/biography/Cab-Calloway (primary source · build store)
• Wikipedia, "Cab Calloway" (accessed 2026-10-16) — the million-selling “Minnie the Moocher” first, the band alumni, the National Medal of Arts (1993), Grammy Hall of Fame (1999), and National Recording Registry (2019) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cab_Calloway (build store)

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Record CTL-E-5943 · Combined Graph record U-07185 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 2 sources · 3 mapped relationships.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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