Hidden Figures: Blanche Calloway #BlackHERstoryMonth 17/29 (Patreon)

Blanche Calloway was a jazz singer, composer, bandleader, and older sister of Cab Calloway. A successful singer before her brother, she was the first woman to leads an all-male orchestra. Born February 9, 1902 in Rochester, NY, her family moved to Baltimore, MD around 1912. In 1921, Calloway left home to tour with cabaret troops, and she made her professional debut in Baltimore in 1921 in the Josephine Baker-led musical 'Shuffle Along.' In 1923 she went on the national tour for Plantation Days, which featured her idol, Florence Mills, and after the show ended in 1927 in Chicago, Calloway decided to stay there. 

Her brother, Cab Calloway, soon followed, gaining fame in his own right as a singer and performer. The two often performed as a brother and sister act, yet Blanche became much more popular than her brother in the Chicago entertainment scene, making around two to three hundred dollars a week, and began to tour nationally. In 1925, she recorded two blues songs, one of which featured Louis Armstrong; after performing with her brother's band, she began to work with an orchestra called the Clouds of Joy in 1931. Led by Andy Kirk, Blanche recorded three songs with the Clouds of Joy , including a song which later became her trademark: "I Need Lovin". While working with Kirk, Blanche learned extensively about music management.

After leaving the Clouds of Joy, she formed her own big band: Blanche Calloway and Her Joy Boys. This made her the first woman to lead an all-male jazz orchestra. The band performed and recorded from 1931 to 1935, releasing recordings on RCA Victor under the name ‘Blanche Calloway and Her Orchestra.‘ In 1933, the Pittsburgh Courier called Calloway and her orchestra one of the top ten outstanding Black American orchestras.

Despite her success, Blanche struggled in the racially segregated and male-dominated music industry of the period. As a Black American performer, she and her band had to frequently play to segregated audiences, and while on tour in 1936, she was arrested and jailed after using a white-only woman's bathroom at a gas station in Mississippi. Blanche was also known as an lively and dramatic entertainer whose style heavily influenced her brother Cab, but her provocative lyrics and flamboyant style were seen as inappropriate for a woman. By the mid-1930s, her career had stalled while her brother grew in popularity. In 1938, she declared bankruptcy and broke up her orchestra. She moved to Philadelphia in the mid-1940s becoming well known as a socialite and getting into local politics as a Democratic committeewoman. 

In the early 1950s, Calloway moved to Washington, D.C., where she managed the nightclub Crystal Caverns. In the late 50s, Calloway moved to Florida and became a dj in Miami Beach, working her way up to becoming program director of the station where she worked for 20 years. While in Miami, Blanche became the first Black American precinct voting clerk, and the first Black American woman to vote in Florida in 1958. She was an active member of the NAACP and the Congress of Racial Equality, also serving on the board of the National Urban League. Around 1968, she formed Afram House, a mail-order cosmetics company for Black Americans. In the 70s, Blanche retired from radio and moved back to Baltimore, where she married her high school sweetheart. She died from breast cancer on December 16, 1978, at the age of 76.

#HiddenFigures #BlancheCalloway

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Links:

'Blanche Calloway, bandleader and much more:'

https://aaregistry.org/story/blanche-calloway-bandleader-and-much-more/

Women In Jazz - Blanche Calloway:

http://wijsf.com/jazzwomen/blanchecalloway.htm

'The Uncrowned Bandleader:'

http://www.angelfire.com/jazz/ninamaemckinney/BlancheCalloway.html

Blanche Calloway:

https://www.streetswing.com/histmai2/d2blnch1.htm

Blanche Calloway:

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/blanche-calloway-mn0000758950/biography

Blanche Calloway (Wikipedia):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanche_Calloway