 This video was sponsored by Skillshare. Head on over to skl.sh slash polyphonic25 to get two months free and start learning today. One of the most iconic moments of Queen's entire career came at live aid. Standing on the stage at Wembley Stadium, Freddie Mercury put on a clinic in crowd work, singing a stunning call-in response with 72,000 people. And that exemplified part of the magic that was Freddie Mercury. It was more than just the music, it was the way he performed it, the way he worked with the crowd. And honestly, you could say that about so many of the greatest musicians of all time. Whether it's Michael Jackson or Elvis, Beyonce or James Brown, most of the all-time greats are not just musicians, they're performers. Each of these artists entertains and works with their crowd using fashion, dance, and interaction to elevate their musical performance to another level. In rock and soul, this role is usually referred to as the frontman. It's the job of the frontman to make sure that every single person in the crowd is having as much fun as they can, is vibing the music as much as possible. It's their job to read the room, to bring the audience to the same emotion as the music and the music to the same emotion as the audience. And I think you can trace the lineage of all of the great performers, all of the great frontmen of modern music, back to one man, the original great frontman, Cab Calloway. Let's take a closer look. To tell the story of Cab Calloway, it's important to also tell the story of his older sister, Blanche Calloway. Five years cab senior, Blanche was one of Cab Calloway's biggest influences personally and musically. She got her start singing with church choirs as a child, but soon moved to the world of jazz, touring with cabaret troops and becoming a mainstay in the Chicago Jazz scene. She would even make history as the first woman to lead an all-male orchestra in the States. And Blanche Calloway was known for a lively, energetic performance that mixed great jazz with great dancing. This kind of performance was clearly an influence on the younger Calloway who would go on to make his career on entertaining, energetic performances. Blanche even got Cab one of his first real musical roles in the Black Musical Review, Plantation Days. And following Plantation Days, Cab Calloway's music career would begin to take off. He would sing and drum at Chicago's Dreamland Cafe and then he got a gig at the Sunset Cafe, a jazz institution in Chicago. While at the sunset, Cab shared the stage with Louis Armstrong, who mentored Calloway and taught him how to sing scat. Scat is a kind of vocal technique that uses improvised melodies to turn the voice into an instrument. Armstrong was one of the first to bring scat into the mainstream, but it would become a cornerstone of Calloway's performance. And Calloway would get a chance to shine when Armstrong and Carroll Dickerson moved on to greener pastures. Calloway became the band leader for Armstrong's old band and his career took off. Within a few years, Cab Calloway would find himself opening at Harlem's prestigious Cotton Club, shows that would be broadcast over the radio to a national audience, and word of Calloway's performances at the Cotton Club alongside the radio broadcasts would elevate him to becoming one of the biggest names in showbiz. And that was because of the way Calloway was able to work a crowd and lead a band. Watching Calloway performances almost 90 years later, you can still feel his charisma. Watch the way his dramatic facial expressions are able to create both comedy and drama. He was also an incredible dancer. Look at this performance of kicking the gong around. Calloway's dance begins calm, restrained, but as the song goes on, he lets loose with vibrant, fluid dance moves. The influence on pop stars to come like Michael Jackson is evident, and some have even credited Calloway with popularizing the moonwalk, though he called it the buzz at the time. One of the most impressive things about Calloway was the way he was able to adapt his movements to his space. Look at this 1933 performance in pajamas where Calloway and his band perform in a train car. This energy, creativity, and versatility meant that Calloway was a perfect candidate to take advantage of the emerging medium of film. Calloway appeared in a number of film shorts throughout the 1930s, helping to set the standard for musical performance on films. These kinds of performances were a clear influence on shorts like Jailhouse Rock, which would help turn rock and roll into a phenomenon a generation later. The exaggerated motion of Cab Calloway's dancing helped define another aspect of film cartooning. Calloway was one of the first performers to be rotoscoped into animated cartoons. My favorite of these is probably his performance in St. James and Firmary Blues, one of three songs he did for Betty Boop cartoons. These videos are strange, dark, and just really funny. Calloway's physical humor translates naturally to cartoons, and his movements would inspire animated dancing for years to come. In fact, Calloway's performance in St. James and Firmary became the main inspiration for the Uggie Boogie song in The Nightmare Before Christmas. But of course, the physical performance is only part of why Calloway had the success that he did. He wanted to reach the heights he reached without creating some fantastic music. A big part of this was due to the talented bands he led. Throughout the 30s, some of the most gifted musicians of the era played under Calloway, including Choo Berry and Dizzy Gillespie. But Calloway was no slouch himself. He had a real powerful voice and a real knack for scat, something that you can hear in a song like Nagasaki. Calloway knew how to work his music around his stage persona too, and you would often hear him working call and response choruses into his songs. Of course Calloway didn't invent the call and response, but few were able to do it so effective. He had fun with the crowd, sticking his chorus in their head as he brought them closer to the performance. It's the kind of crowd work that Freddie Mercury would put on display decades later. And of course the call and response chorus that Calloway is most famous for is Mini the Muture. Originally recorded in 1931, Mini the Muture was a monumental success for Calloway. It sold more than a million records, making Cab Calloway the first black artist to hit those numbers off of a single song. The success of Mini the Muture allowed Calloway and his band to become the first all-black jazz orchestra to tour the American South. In live performances, Calloway would improvise call and response scat lines, getting increasingly complex until the audience couldn't follow. This call and response became forever associated with Calloway, so much that he even became known as the Heidi Ho Man. He also starred in a 1934 short film called Cab Calloway's Heidi Ho. It's worth noting that the Heidi Ho might have been another remnant of Blanche Calloway's influence. She used that phrasing in her own just a crazy song which was recorded around the same time as Mini the Muture. By the time the 1940s rolled around Cab Calloway was fading from the spotlight. Though he still featured in the musical Stormy Weather, a landmark film that saw some of the biggest black performers of the time hit the silver screen. That appearance would start a trend, as swing faded away Cab Calloway made a new career out of musicals. The most notable of these probably came in 1950 when he played a role in Gershwin's Porgy and Bess which ran in Broadway, Paris and London. Then in 1980 Calloway enjoyed another moment in the spotlight thanks to an appearance in The Blues Brothers. Despite being more than 70 years old, Cab Calloway is still able to bring his signature dance energy to a memorable performance of Mini the Muture in that movie. And Cab Calloway kept performing until his death in 1994 at the age of 86. The legacy that Cab Calloway left behind is massive. Many of the greatest performers of the modern age owe something to Cab Calloway. Thanks to his natural charisma, his creative eye and his incredible dance talents, Calloway was able to change the way that we interacted with music and he was able to lay down the blueprint for the modern frontman. When I was making this video I really fell in love with the Betty Boop cartoons that Calloway featured in. I thought the animation style was just so vibrant and fun so I decided to look into animation a little bit. Luckily for me Skillshare has a whole host of courses on animation. I really enjoyed Libby Vander Ploeg's animation for illustration. But if animation isn't up your alley, Skillshare has plenty more to choose from. Skillshare is an online learning community for creatives. With thousands of courses on topics like illustration, design, photography, music and more, it's the best place to go if you want to kick off your new year right. Skillshare's courses take on all skill levels so whether you're a beginner looking to learn or a pro looking to hone your abilities you'll be able to find something useful. Most classes are easy to take too less than 60 minutes long with short lessons that can fit into your schedule no matter how packed. 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