She taught Santa Fe to swing
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8/14/2008 - 8/15/08
When Chris Calloway told her father that she was going to quit college to pursue a career in entertainment, he threw the television set at her. That's according to her mother, Nuffie Calloway, as related in a biography of Chris' famous bandleader father, Cab Calloway.Chris Calloway, who died in Santa Fe on Aug. 7, ultimately won him over. "Seeing Chris' talents as a singer, actress, and dancer, Cab changed his mind, and, in later years, often sang on the same program with her in public," her mother recalled. "'Well, Chris is all right,' he said to me. 'She's got a good style. She's a good performer, and she does exactly what I do, that's work for her public, for
her audience.'"
Cab Calloway (1907-1994) gained renown in 1931 with a stint at New York's Cotton Club and with his song "Minnie the Moocher" and its "Hi-De-Ho" chorus. In 1943, he starred in the film Stormy Weather with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Lena Horne. Horne became a good friend of the family. The singer was present at Chris' birth in Los Angeles on Sept. 21, 1945, and became her godmother.
"My dad had known Lena since the Cotton Club days, and they all moved into a little apartment," Chris Calloway told Pasatiempo in a May 2007 interview at her home. "My mom was pregnant with me, and she and Aunt Lena just hung out during her last trimester. Mom went to the hospital to have a baby, and my dad and everyone decided to celebrate. I guess they got into the wine bottles and the vodka bottles, and by the time they got to Cedars-Sinai hospital they were looped, and being entertainment entities, they were quite loud. They were so drunk that they named me Christopher.
My father either wanted a boy, or he couldn't tell the difference."
Chris was three semesters into a fine-arts major at Boston University when she made the decision to focus on show business. Her early work included an appearance with her father on the Ed Sullivan Show and occasional singing gigs at the Improvisation club in New York.
She sang with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra and in a 1967 all-black Broadway production of Hello, Dolly! that starred her father and Pearl Bailey, and she began performing with her father's Hi-De-Ho Orchestra in the mid-1970s.
Calloway portrayed jazz legend Billie Holiday in the Lanie Robertson play Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill. Santa Fe productions of Lady Day were produced by the New Mexico Repertory Theater in 1993 and by Santa Fe Stages in 1995. Six years later, Calloway wrote and starred in Clouds of Joy: The Spiritual Journey of Blanche Calloway, a Santa Fe Stages-produced piece about her Aunt Blanche, who was a pioneering bandleader in the 1930s.
In 1991, Calloway took up residence in Santa Fe. Among her activities during the 1990s was a two-year stint singing at La Posada and a 1999 performance series at Espiritu Canyon Road, captured on her CD Live at Espiritu. During her gigs at Espiritu, she frequently mentored other singers. One was Madi Sato.
"When Madi first met her, it was through a workshop Chris was giving at the College of Santa Fe in about 1998," said Tom Berkes, who owned Espiritu with Sato. "I told Madi, 'You should go work with her. That's Chris Calloway,' so she took the class, and they became good friends. Chris always said her dad used to bring her onstage, and that's what she did at her shows with Madi and other singers, too. She was very gracious in sharing the stage and the spotlight."
"She was the ultimate in terms of swing," said pianist Sharon Shaheen, who accompanied Calloway at La Posada and Espiritu. "Her timing was just impeccable, and it was just the height of my career to be playing with her. We had so much fun. She just took me under her wing and trained me in the art of swing."
After Cab Calloway died in 1994, Chris put together a new version of the Hi-De-Ho Orchestra and, in 2001, the group embarked on a tour of
55 cities.
Her most recent shows, performed with the Bert Dalton Trio, featured material by Horne. "She was a pure delight for us to work with. I cherish her memory," said Greg Grissom of Stars Never Fade Productions. "She had a great wit, and it came through onstage — especially when she would talk about her life. All through the Lena Horne show, it was amazing. She had wonderful stories about the days of the Cotton Club and when she was a little girl."
Chris Calloway's last scheduled performance was at the Lensic Performing Arts Center on July 20, as part of the New Mexico Jazz Festival, but she was too weak to leave home. It was to be a special concert with Dalton's trio, in tribute to her, and "Chris Calloway Day" proclamations from Governor Bill Richardson and Santa Fe mayor David Coss were read before the show.
"Even though she couldn't make it to the concert, I'm really glad that she was around to be honored," said Tom Guralnick of the Outpost Performance Space, one of the festival presenters and host of several Calloway performances over the years.
"She was a great performer and artist and a real positive force in the community, both through her entertainment and her energy, even in her struggle with cancer and right up until this last show she did in March. It was just fantastic, and I know it was not easy for her to do it."
Calloway had battled breast cancer since 1987. "It's not about life or death at this point," she said in the May 2007 interview. "It's about my spiritual growth and my mission to understand and really embrace and appreciate what life is about, what joie de vivre really is. I could be some single mother in Darfur or Baghdad. To be living with breast cancer in America, where I have access to some of the best medical treatment in the world, is just not that bad on a scale of one to 10.
"Of course, chemotherapy is not a walk in the park, and when I found out the cancer had returned and that I needed chemo, I just fell in a hump on the floor, and it was, 'I'm going to die. I'm going to die,' and a little angel voice said, 'And?'
"'And? I have cancer, and I have to have chemo and I'm going to die,' and the angel said, 'Oh, lithris, you're a blessed, beautiful, magnificent manifestation of God. You're perfect, and of course you're going to die. Life is a terminal disease. None of us gets out of this alive, so the question is, my darling, how are you going to live?'"
She lived well.
"I've seen a lot of great cabaret singers in my day, and Chris was right up there with the best," said TV writer and performer Ron Bloomberg, who did a show at the Santa Fe Playhouse with her last year. "Very few could interpret a Rodgers and Hart or Cole Porter lyric like she could. Not only did she possess a pitch-perfect voice, but Chris had style and humor and knew how to use it.
"Against all odds, she was a life force. At times the chemo treatments would sap her energy, but once she hit the stage, she owned it. She never missed a performance during the three weekends we ran at the Santa Fe Playhouse. Backstage, the actors adored her. There wasn't a hint of 'I'm Cab Calloway's daughter' attitude. She was just fun to be with and will be sorely m."
Pianist Dalton and his bassist and drummer accompanied Calloway during her final performances of the Horne material. She also did workshops with children at the National Dance Institute, where Dalton serves as music director.
"She had that Calloway attitude — the show must go on — through it all," he said. "She was very gracious, the way she conducted this battle, and was very open onstage about it and about how much she learned from this experience."
Dalton said a recording of her last public performance, March 20 at the Outpost Performance Space, will be released in the near future.
