| "Minnie the Moocher" | |
|---|---|
| Song by Cab Calloway & His Orchestra | |
| Released | 1931 |
| Format | 78 |
| Recorded | March 3, 1931, New York, NY |
| Genre | Jazz |
| Length | 3:00 |
| Label | Brunswick BR6074 |
| Writer | Cab Calloway Irving Mills |
"Minnie the Moocher" is a jazz song first recorded in 1931 by Cab Calloway and His Orchestra, selling over 1 million copies.[1] "Minnie the Moocher" is most famous for its nonsensical ad libbed ("scat") lyrics (for example, "Hi De Hi De Hi De Hi"). In performances, Calloway would have the audience participate by repeating each scat phrase in a form of call and response. Eventually Calloway's phrases would become so long and complex that the audience would laugh at their own failed attempts to repeat them.
"Minnie the Moocher" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.
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The song is based both musically and lyrically on Frankie "Half-Pint" Jaxon's 1927 "Willie the Weeper"[2][3] (Bette Davis sings this version in The Cabin in the Cotton). The lyrics are heavily laden with drug references. The character "Smokey" is described as "cokey" meaning a user of cocaine; the phrase "kicking the gong around" was a slang reference to smoking opium.[4] It was followed two years later by Lonnie Johnson's "Winnie the Wailer".
Calloway also wrote an extended version, adding verses which describe Minnie and Smokey going to jail; Minnie pays Smokey's bail, but he abandons her there. Another verse describes her tempting "Deacon Lowdown" when she "wiggled her jelly roll" at him.
Finally, they took Minnie to "where they put the crazies", where she dies. This explains why both the short version and the long version end with the words "Poor Min, poor Min".
Minnie herself is mentioned in a number of other Cab Calloway songs, including "Minnie the Moocher's Wedding Day", "Ghost of Smoky Joe", "Kickin' the Gong Around", "Minnie's a Hepcat Now", "Mister Paganini - Swing for Minnie", "We Go Well Together", and "Zah Zuh Zaz". Some of these songs indicate that Minnie's boyfriend Smoky was named Smoky Joe as well.
In the 1935 Marx Brothers' film A Night at the Opera, Groucho Marx famously quipped, "You're willing to pay him a thousand dollars a night just for singing? Why, you can get a phonograph record of 'Minnie the Moocher' for 75 cents. And for a buck and a quarter, you can get Minnie."
Jeffrey Lewis referenced "Minnie the Moocher" in his song "Mini-Theme: Moocher from the Future" from his 2009 album 'Em Are I.
Calloway performed the song in the 1955 movie Rhythm and Blues Revue, filmed at the Apollo Theatre. Much later, in 1980 at age 73, Calloway performed the song in the movie The Blues Brothers, when Jake and Elwood are stalled in a gas station. Calloway, who plays the church janitor and the brothers' mentor Curtis, played when the band's crowd became impatient.
The band Oingo Boingo performed the song in the Richard Elfman film Forbidden Zone, with altered lyrics and titled "Squeezit The Moocher", after one of the movie's characters, Squeezit Henderson. Danny Elfman, playing a rather vaudevillian Satan, sings the song as his band (other members of Oingo Boingo at the time) respond to his calls. Oogie Boogie's song is also similar to Minnie the Moocher
The popular refrain is performed by a funeral band in the 1999 film Double Jeopardy.
In 1932, Calloway recorded the song for a Fleischer Studios Talkartoon short cartoon, also called Minnie the Moocher, starring Betty Boop and Bimbo. Calloway and his band provides most of the short's score, and appear in the short themselves in a live-action introduction. The thirty-second live-action segment is the earliest-known film footage of Calloway.
In the cartoon, Betty decides to run away from her harsh parents (to the tune of "Mean to Me"), and Bimbo comes with her. While walking away from home, Betty and Bimbo wind up in a spooky area, and hide in a hollow tree. A ghost walrus—whose gyrations were rotoscoped from footage of Calloway dancing—appears to them, and begins to sing "Minnie the Moocher", with many fellow ghosts following along. After singing the whole number, the ghosts chase Betty and Bimbo all the way back to Betty's home. While Betty is hiding under the covers of her bedsheets, her runaway note is torn up and the remaining letters read "Home Sweet Home". In 1933 Another Betty Boop/Cab Calloway cartoon with "Minnie the Moocher" was The Old Man of the Mountain (film).
In "Blue Harvest", the kickoff episode of the sixth season of Family Guy, "Minnie the Moocher" is played while Han Solo (Peter Griffin) and Luke Skywalker (Chris Griffin) are boarding the Death Star, coolly walking so as not to be noticed by the stormtrooper guards. This is a direct reference to the film The Blues Brothers, as Jake and Elwood Blues try to sneak past the police officers at their concert.
"Minnie the Moocher" has been covered or simply referenced by many other performers. Its refrain, particularly the call and response, is part of the language of American jazz. At the Cab Calloway School of the Arts, which is named for the singer, students perform "Minnie The Moocher" as a traditional part of talent showcases.
In 1967, the song was covered again by an Australian band, The Cherokees. A version by the Reggae Philharmonic Orchestra made #35 in the UK charts late in 1988. Tupac and Chopmaster J made a Hip Hop version of the song in 1989. The song can be found on Beginnings: The Lost Tapes 1988–1991 from 2007. A contemporary swing band, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, recorded a cover on their 1994 album, Americana Deluxe. L.A.-based new wave/rock band Oingo Boingo has covered this song, as well as other Cab Calloway songs, during live performances throughout their career, dating back to their years as Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo.
On January 19, 2001, Wyclef Jean opened his "All Star Jam @ Carnegie Hall" concert with this number, walking to the stage from the back of the audience, dressed all in white. The song "The Mighty O" by Outkast is heavily inspired by the song.
In the 1980 film The Blues Brothers, Cab Calloway memorably reprises the song at the fundraising concert at the Palace Hotel Ballroom. It was performed in the 1984 Francis Ford Coppola movie The Cotton Club by Larry Marshall as Cab Calloway. K7 sampled the "Hi-De-Ho" section of "Minnie the Moocher" in his song of the same name, which was notably used in the 1994 film The Mask. Puerto Rican rapper Tego Calderón quoted the basic melody of the song—a favorite of his late father—as the beat used in his first hit, "Abayarde".
During a performance on the first season of American Idol, Tamyra Gray performed this song on "Big Band" night. Hugh Laurie, in a 2006 interview on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, stated that his charity cover band, Band from TV, has the most popular recording of "Minnie the Moocher" available on the iTunes Store. Laurie also performs a part of the song in the first episode of the British comedy television series Jeeves and Wooster, playing the role of Bertie Wooster, duetting with Reginald Jeeves, played by Stephen Fry. The episode first aired in 1990. A recording was later released on the Jeeves and Wooster soundtrack.
Although it is not heard, the song is explicitly mentioned by name in the 1991 Sylvester Stallone movie, Oscar.
The original Star Wars spoof from Family Guy, Blue Harvest features an instrumental of the song when Peter/Han tells everyone to "be cool."