Скачать или смотреть Music & Film Spotlight from the Golden age of Jazz: Blanche Calloway

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Music was a tradition in the Calloway home with Blanche in her early days studying piano and voice and even singing in her church choir.

Blanche Dorothea Jones Calloway born
February 9, 1902, She was an American jazz singer, dancer, composer, and bandleader.
She was the older sister of Cab Calloway.
Florence Mills and Gertrude saunders was her
inspiration of going into show business.

she sang with her brother’s band for a number of years before forming her own group. After years of slight success, she fronted the Andy Kirk band for a short period, which gave her the momentum to form her most famous orchestra, known as Blanche Calloway and Her Joy Boys (an all-male band.)

Though her last official orchestra disbanded in 1938, Calloway ran an all-woman band briefly during World War II. By 1944, she had tired of life on the road and settled in Philadelphia, where she became active in community and political affairs.

In the 1950s she moved to Florida and became a DJ for WMBM radio.The same station hired her as the Program Director, a position she held for 20 years before moving back to Baltimore where she spent the last years of her life. Blanche Calloway had a strong and influential career as a jazz singer and composer.