Here’s an immensely enjoyable short film starring Cab Calloway, his orchestra and the great and unsung black actress Fredi Washington called ‘Hi De Ho’. Directed by Fred Waller (who also directed the pioneering Duke Ellington short ‘Symphony in Black’ and was–get this–responsible for the development of the Cinerama process) the film features three sensational Calloway numbers as well as a plot that is frankly rather audacious, not to say salacious. My mother, who was born in 1928, was an avid jazz and swing fan from her youth and recalled seeing Calloway live in the early 1940s. I remember her telling me how scandalized she and her proper Bronx-born well raised Jewish girlfriends were by his outrageously infectious sexual energy and how disturbed her parents were when they finally saw him in the film ‘Stormy Weather’ (1943) and realized who their daughter and her friends were so infatuated with.  Calloway actually gives us some of his best dance moves (at 4:40), a talent of his that he let drift away as he got older and became more of an ‘act’ in quotes. I saw him at Disneyland, of all places, in the 1970s and he performed well into the 80s. Click here for an excellent Wikipedia entry on his life and career. It even mentions his 1952 arrest for speeding and attempting to bribe a police officer. Now that hep!