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Calloway was the first African-American musician to sell a million records from a single song. In 1993, Calloway received the National Medal of Arts from the United States Congress. He posthumously received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. His song "Minnie the Moocher" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999 and added to the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry in 2019. He is also inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame and the International Jazz Hall of Fame.10.

Cab Calloway and Marcus Garvey, Part One

October 17, 2020 admin2Band, Cab Calloway, Garvey, Liberia0 comment

Dag Walker In the 1920 and 30s, Harlem, Manhattan, was hopping, but for some, Liberia was hoping. The music scene was on fire, as was the imagination of one man who hoped to change the future of Black America, to lead the people back to Africa. Cab Calloway led the band; Marcus Garvey led the charge to Liberia. Folks were jitterbugging: across the Cotton Club dance floor; folks were steaming shipboard across the Atlantic Ocean. Two leaders, one destined for musical fame, the other destined for disgrace and imprisonment.…

As a traveler for the past 50 years, every country I have been to is a foreign country. As an old guy, one who lives in the past, even my home country is a foreign country. I travel back to my childhood home fairly often, my mind returning to the joys of childhood, much of it musical. In that foreign country of the past, I am no longer a stranger adrift in a world I don’t understand. I am home again. I am not alone and bewildered by the mysteries of the world spinning out of control. I am happy. “Baby, it’s you.”

Music

The Shirelles: Baby, It’s You!

August 10, 2020August 10, 2020 admin2Band, Music, The Sirelles0 comment

By Dag W. Walker “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” So wrote Leslie Poles Hartley in The Go-between, in 1953. As a traveler for the past 50 years, every country I have been to is a foreign country. As an old guy, one who lives in the past, even my home country is a foreign country. I travel back to my childhood home fairly often, my mind returning to the joys of childhood, much of it musical. In that foreign country of the past, I…