(Thread titles just can’t be long enough in these circumstances. My apologies for the necessary abbreviations.)
Okay, I’m watching an offensively edited version of The Blues Brothers, and I’m reminded that I’m the only one outside of the 1930’s who has been touched by the magnificence of Cab Calloway.
For my own part, I’ve spent the better part of the last year, and expect to spend most of 2003, writing a novel which is heavily flavoured with eau du Cab.
My book is set in the present-day Chinatown of Vancouver, B.C. and, while superficially concerned with the impact of heroin-addiction on a couple of bright young moderns, chinese mysticism, alchemy, rave culture, the myth of Orpheus, gnosticism, pornography and prostitution, much of the plot, and one of the supporting characters, are taken from the life and work of Cab Calloway, who I consider to be one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century. (Hopefully, only folks that are intimately familiar with his recordings will pick up on this at all, though.)
I’m wondering how many others are out there that place Mr. Calloway in the same league as ol’ Ludwig, Bach, Shakespeare, and the all other major contributors to western culture.
Cab Calloway. What a freaking genius. I hope that by referencing, I’m not so much riding on his immaculate coat-tails, as affirming that I see what he saw.
Suffering Christ, that sounds pompous.
Let me rephrase that: Uh-- “I really like Cab Calloway. What’s your take on him?”
