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The Great Jazz Music Of 1930s And 1940s Black Harlem ''Including Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Nat King Cole, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Lena Horne and Many, Many More'' Hosted And Narrated By The Jazz Great Cab Calloway, ''Jive Talk" Professor And ''Zoot Suit" Inventor, Who Navigates The Harlem Of The 1930S And 1940S As He Recounts His Personal Experiences, Supported By Excellent Film Footage Of Himself And Fellow Jazz Geniuses (Color, 1981, 60 Minutes.) PLUS BONUS: A CARAVAN OF BLACK MUSIC FILMS OF THE 1940S (Black/White, 29 Minutes), Including:

The Delta Rhythm Boys: Take the 'A' Train
Fats Waller: Your Feet's Too Big
Count Basie Orchestra Featuring Jimmy Rushing: Take Me Back, Baby
The Jubalaires: Preacher And The Bear
The Cabin Kids (Possibly): Ring Those Bells
The Ali Baba Trio Featuring Valaida Snow: Patience And Fortitude
Maurice Rocco: Rocco Blues
Gloria Grey: Oh By Jingo
Lucky Millinder And His Orchestra Featuring Annisteen Allen: I Want A Man
LaVilla Tulos: Swanee Swing (Swanee River)

All Presented In Our Highest DVD Quality MPEG Video Format At 9.1 MBPS As An MP4 Video Download Or Archival Quality All Regions Format DVD! #MinnieTheMoocher #CabCalloway #LouisArmstrong #CountBasie #NatKingCole #FatsWaller #DukeEllington #LenaHorne #DeltaRhythmBoys #JimmyRushing #Jubalaires #CabinKids #AliBabaTrio #ValaidaSnow #MauriceRocco #GloriaGrey #LuckyMillinder #LaVillaTulos #BlackMusicFilms #SwingMusicFilm #JazzMusicFilms #Jazz #JazzSingers #CottonClub #Harlem #ScatSinging #BigBands #MinnieTheMoocher #TheHiDeHoMan #Swing #SwingMusic #MP4 #VideoDownload #DVD

*October 20, 2026: Updated With A CARAVAN OF BLACK MUSIC FILMS OF THE 1940S!


"Minnie The Moocher" is a jazz song first recorded in 1931 by Cab Calloway and His Orchestra, selling over a million copies. "Minnie The Moocher" is most famous for its nonsensical ad libbed ("scat") lyrics (for example, "Hi De Hi De Hi De Ho"). In performances, Calloway would have the audience and the band members participate by repeating each scat phrase in a form of call and response, until making it too fast and complicated for the audience to replicate it. Released by Brunswick Records, the song was the biggest chart-topper of 1931. Calloway publicized and then celebrated a "12th birthday" for the song on June 17, 1943, while performing at New York's Strand Theatre. He reported that he was then singing the song at both beginning and end of four performances daily, and then estimated his total performances to date: "she's kicked the gong around for me more than 40,000 times." In 1978, Calloway recorded a disco version of "Minnie The Moocher" on RCA Records which reached No. 91 on the Billboard R & B chart. "Minnie The Moocher" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999, and in 2019 was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress. It has been argued that the record was the first jazz record to sell a million copies. The song is based lyrically on Frankie "Half-Pint" Jaxon's 1927 version of the early 1900s vaudeville song "Willie the Weeper" (Bette Davis sings this version in The Cabin in the Cotton). The lyrics are heavily laden with drug references. The character "Smokey" is described as "cokey", meaning a user of cocaine; the phrase "kick the gong around" was a slang reference to smoking opium. The "hi-de-ho" scat lyrics came about when Calloway forgot the lyrics to the song one night during a live radio concert.