📍Druid Hill Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21217, USA
1918 – 1927“I was born Cabell Calloway III in Rochester, New York, in December 1907, and when I was small my family moved to Baltimore, where my parents had roots. My father was a lawyer, and my mother, Martha, a teacher and church organist. We lived for a time at my grandparents' house on Druid Hill Avenue, the main street of Black West Baltimore, and as a teenager I lived further up the avenue, at number 2216, with my older sister, Blanche. I was always hustling: I skipped school to sell newspapers, shine shoes, and cool down the horses at the Pimlico racetrack, where I learned to love racing and betting. My mother had me take music lessons, and I studied voice with W. Llewellyn Wilson, a gifted teacher at Frederick Douglass High School. I sang in church, and though I was told to steer clear of jazz, I couldn't resist singing with Ike Dixon's band at school dances. I also played basketball, and in my senior year I played for the Baltimore Athenians, a professional team. But it was Blanche, already an accomplished singer and bandleader, who inspired me to go into show business. After I graduated from Douglass High in 1925, I joined Blanche on tour with the revue Plantation Days in 1927, and stayed in Chicago, singing in clubs. In 1931 my band followed Duke Ellington into the Cotton Club in Harlem, and I recorded Minnie the Moocher, with its hi-de-ho call and response, and became the Hi-De-Ho Man. My grandson and Baltimore preservationists fought to save my Druid Hill Avenue home, and the avenue still remembers the Hi-De-Ho Man.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today