Cab Calloway "Minnie the Moocher"
Performed by Cab Calloway in "Rhythm & Blues Revue" 1955. He also performed this same song in "The Blues Brothers" 1980.
The song was written by Calloway in 1930 and is based both musically and lyrically on "Willie the Weeper". The lyrics are heavily laden with drug references. "Smoky" is described as "cokey" meaning a user of cocaine; the phrase "kicking the gong around" was a slang reference to smoking opium, and other verses describe Minnie's opium dream, involving living with the King of Sweden and having a "million dollars worth of nickels and dimes."
Hmmm...fifty years of playing the same number - that's got to be some kind of record. Calloway died in 1994 aged 86.
Malcolm Lambe
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