About Blanche Calloway

Blanche Dorothea Calloway (February 9, 1902 – December 16, 1978) was an American jazz singer, composer, and bandleader. Born in Baltimore, MD., she was the first child of Cabell Calloway II and Martha Eulalia Reed, and the older sister of Cab Calloway.

A musically gifted child, Blanche grew into her many talents and became a singer in the Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle show “Shuffle Along” and then the traveling show “Plantation Days”. When the tour ended in Chicago, she became the band leader for Blanche Calloway and Her Joy Boys and later, Blanche Calloway and Her Orchestra.

With a music career that spanned over fifty years, Calloway was the first woman to lead an all-male orchestra and performed alongside musicians such as Cozy Cole, Chick Webb, Louis Armstrong and her brother Cab Calloway. Her performing style was described as flamboyant and a major influence on her brother’s performance style.

In the words of…

“Blanche was vivacious, lovely, personality-plus, and a hell of a singer. She was fabulous, happy and extroverted. As a performer she really qualified for the wider descriptive term; entertainer”.

~ Cab Calloway

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“Blanche Calloway, Cab’s sister, had a very good way of entertaining. She was wild and wiry in certain things and very sensitive in others…Although Cab may not say this himself, all of his style was from her. His sister taught him everything he knew about performing.”

~ Earl ‘“Father” Hines

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“One of the most progressive performers in the profession.”

~ Pittsburgh Courier

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“I hope you’ll forgive the question,” a Boston radio interviewer asked her in 1937, “but I know it’s one that every listener would like to ask, just because you are a woman. Do you really rehearse your orchestra, and make them work, or do you leave that up to a man in the group?” Blanche wrote a faint note in the transcript’s margins…

“I do the work.” ~ Blanche Calloway