One of the great jazz personalities, Cab Calloway was already gravitating toward show business as a child. In 1931, Calloway took over as the bandleader at the Cotton Club in New York City, replacing Duke Ellington. The band would make the Club its home for the next decade, with a steady stream of some of the finest jazz musicians in the world filing through its ranks. Calloway himself would become a celebrity, appearing in film, on television, and even rotoscoped into a Betty Boop cartoon.

Although his popularity would begin to wane in the 1950s, he experienced a resurgence in popularity following an appearance in the 1980 film "The Blues Brothers," where he performed his signature song, "Minnie The Moocher." He passed away in 1994.