Utente:Falcodigiada/Sandbox/Minnie the Moocher
"Minnie the Moocher" is a jazz song recorded by Cab Calloway and His Orchestra. "Minnie the Moocher" is most famous for its nonsensical ad libbed ("scat") lyrics (for example, "Heidi heidi heidi 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.
Basis
The song is based both musically and lyrically on Willie the Weeper [1] [2] The lyrics are heavily laden with drug references. "Smoky" is described as "cokey" meaning a user of cocaine; the phrase "kicking the gong around" was a slang reference to smoking opium, and other verses describe Minnie's opium dream, involving living with the King of Sweden and having a "million dollars worth of nickels and dimes."
Extended version
Calloway also wrote an extended version, adding verses which describe Minnie and Smoky 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 Minnie, poor Min." [3].
Recording history
Calloway first recorded the song in 1930, around that time also recording a very similar song entitled "Kickin' the Gong Around" [4].
Calloway performed the song in the 1955 movie Rhythm and Blues Revue, filmed at the Apollo Theatre. Much later, in 1980 Calloway performed the song in the movie The Blues Brothers.
Cartoon connections
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, and Bimbo comes with her. While walking away from home, Betty and Bimbo wind up in a spooky area, and hide in a cave. While in the cave, a ghost walrus appears—(whose dance movements were rotoscoped from footage of Calloway dancing)—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."
Other references to Minnie
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.
Cover versions and references in popular culture
The song was covered successfully in 1967 by Australian band "The Cherokees". It was sung in a style briefly popular at the time similar to "Winchester Cathedral" by "The New Vaudeville Band"
"Minnie the Moocher" was also performed in another film from 1980 besides The Blues Brothers, Richard Elfman's Forbidden Zone, with singer Danny Elfman modifying the lyrics to go with the film's plot.
In A Night at the Opera (1935), Groucho Marx as Otis Driftwood says, "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."
Chris Berman of ESPN also referenced the song many times in the late 1990s and early 2000s by singing "Heidi Heidi Hi" whenever wide receiver Chris Calloway (no relation to Cab Calloway) of the NFL's New York Giants caught a pass for a touchdown.
It came up again in 20th century pop culture by being sampled by rappers Tupac Shakur and Ol' Dirty Bastard. Puerto Rican hip hop artist Tego Calderon used a slower version of the song's melody as the backbeat of his first single, Abayarde. The song appeared in an episode of Jeeves and Wooster, performed by Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, in which Fry's character Jeeves 'plays merry hell with the rhythm' by appending 'Sir' to the end of each line - it was later released on the soundtrack album. It has been covered by many artists.
External links
- The Max Fleischer Minnie the Moocher cartoon, at the Internet Archive.
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- 1955 performance in Rhythm and Blues Revue