1. Blanche Dorothea Jones Calloway was an American jazz singer, composer, and bandleader.
29 Facts About Blanche Calloway
1. 2.
Blanche Calloway was the older sister of Cab Calloway and was a successful singer before her brother.
3.
Blanche Calloway's performing style was described as flamboyant and a major influence on her brother's performance style.
4.
Blanche Calloway's father, Cabell, was a lawyer and her mother, Martha Eulalia Reed, was a music teacher.
5.
Blanche Calloway's mother was a major influence on her and her siblings' passion for music.
6.
Blanche Calloway's mother made her take piano and voice lessons as a child, but never promoted the idea of a musical career for the young Blanche Calloway.
7.
Blanche Calloway dreamed of a musical career and was influenced as a youth by Florence Mills and Ida Cox.
8.
Blanche Calloway appeared in one of the brothers' skits Up and Down as one of the featured 'Bronze Beauties' on December 5,1921.
9.
Blanche Calloway made her professional debut in Baltimore in 1921 with Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle's musical Shuffle Along.
10.
The club, the Sunset, became her main stage and where Cab Blanche Calloway likewise worked after his move to Chicago.
11.
Surprising for the time, Blanche Calloway earned higher wages than Cab, making around two to three hundred dollars whereas Cab regularly made $35 a week.
12.
Blanche Calloway became popular in the Chicago scene and would continue to tour nationally, performing at New York's Ciro Club in the mid-1920s.
13.
Blanche Calloway would go on to form another big band, Blanche Calloway and Her Joy Boys, which included Ben Webster on tenor saxophone and Cozy Cole on drums.
14.
Blanche Calloway wrote a number of songs for the group, including "Rhythm of the River" and "Growling Dan".
15.
Blanche Calloway struggled in the racially segregated and male-dominated music industry of the period.
16.
The musicians went their own separate ways and Blanche Calloway sold her yellow Cadillac for cash to leave the state.
17.
Blanche Calloway was a major influence on her brother's career and performance style.
18.
Blanche Calloway would teach her brother about performing, and the two would sometimes perform together as a brother and sister act.
19.
Blanche Calloway helped her brother get his first role on stage, in Plantation Days, when another cast member fell ill.
20.
Blanche Calloway says he came up with the phrase when he forgot the words during a performance, but his sister had performed and recorded a song earlier in 1931 called "Just a Crazy Song".
21.
Blanche Calloway continued to sing on occasion and moved to a suburb of Philadelphia with her husband in the mid-1940s.
22.
Blanche Calloway became a socialite and served as a Democratic committeewoman.
23.
Blanche Calloway eventually separated from her husband after discovering he was a bigamist.
24.
Blanche Calloway hired Ruth Brown to perform at the club and would become Brown's manager.
25.
Brown credited Blanche Calloway with discovering her and helping her get a contract with Atlantic Records.
26.
Blanche Calloway became an active member of the NAACP and the Congress of Racial Equality, serving on the board of the National Urban League.
27.
Blanche Calloway converted to Christian Science and credited the religion with helping her fight her 12-year battle with cancer.
28.
Blanche Calloway moved back to Baltimore and married her high school sweetheart.
29.
Blanche Calloway died from breast cancer on December 16,1978, at the age of 76.