kickin' the gong around

This past October I had occasion to mention one of Cab Calloway's doper songs from the 30's on this space, and recently I ran across another one quite by accident, a totally off-the-hook virtuoso performance which showcases an omnivorously talented young man at the zenith of his creative powers.

Cab did a number of drug songs, and was doing them in the days before there was a Drug Enforcement Administration, and before most local police departments had separate narcotics divisions. The titles included "The Funny Reefer Man," "Viper's Drag," and this one, "Kickin' the Gong Around," during which Cab daintily pantomimes a cokehead sniffing a line off his wrist.

It's more or less what you'd expect from a guy who called his orchestra "The Harlemaniacs."

Besides being a very bad man, Calloway was enormously talented. He wrote the music, sang the songs, scatted and jived, danced, and did it all extremely well. He must have cut his performer's teeth during the vaudeville days, when musicians and hoofers learned to do as many different kinds of stage routines as they could, as a survival tactic. Blacks had their own, segregated version of vaudeville -- the "chitlin' circuit."

As a performer, I find that Calloway has no equal today. His singing is characterized by an unerring sense of intonation -- he hit every note squarely on its head -- combined with flawless enunciation, so the listener easily understands every word. He moved and danced like a rubbery acrobat, and combined all these elements in a casual and offhand way that makes his performance look easy and natural. In addition, there is a subversive element to this music which makes it attractively dangerous.

And it wasn't easy. Doing what he did has to have taken many hours of rehearsal and practice, and a lot of dedication.

My appreciation of antique music goes way beyond nostalgia; nearly all the greatest American performances originated in a time before I was born. Today's performers are not capable of such feats, not because they're less talented than their cultural ancestors, but because the culture itself has become impoverished.