Jumpin' Jive

"Jumpin' Jive" (also known as "(Hep-Hep!) The Jumpin' Jive") is a famous jazz/swing composition, written by Cab Calloway, Frank Froeba and Jack Palmer. originally recorded on 17 July 1939, on Vocalion Records, it sold over a million copies. He performs it with his orchestra and the Nicholas Brothers in the 1943 musical, Stormy Weather.

Covers

Joe Jackson version

"Jumpin' Jive" was covered by new wave artist Joe Jackson (under the band name Joe Jackson's Jumpin' Jive) on his 1981 album of the same name. The album, originally conceived as "a few pub gigs for a laugh," also featured other jump-blues tracks, including Callaway's "We the Cats (Shall Hep Ya)."

After its release on Jumpin Jive, Jackson's version was later released as a single, where it charted at #43 in Britain.

Charts

Other covers

It has been recorded notably by The Andrews Sisters, Glenn Miller, and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.

References

Cab Calloway

Cabell "Cab" Calloway III (December 25, 1907 – November 18, 1994) was an American jazz singer and bandleader. He was strongly associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York City, where he was a regular performer.

Calloway was a master of energetic scat singing and led one of the United States' most popular big bands from the start of the 1930s to the late 1940s. Calloway's band featured performers including trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Adolphus "Doc" Cheatham, saxophonists Ben Webster and Leon "Chu" Berry, New Orleans guitar ace Danny Barker, and bassist Milt Hinton. Calloway continued to perform until his death in 1994 at the age of 86.

Biography

Early years

Calloway was born in Rochester, New York, on Christmas Day in 1907. The family relocated to Baltimore, Maryland. His mother, Martha Eulalia Reed, was a Morgan State College graduate, teacher and church organist. His father, Cabell Calloway, Jr., was a graduate of Lincoln University of Pennsylvania in 1898 and worked as a lawyer and in real estate.

Jive

Jive may refer to:

Language

People

Arts, entertainment, and media

Dance

Fiction

Music

Print

Software and technology

Jump

Jump or Jumping primarily refers to the physical action of jumping, that is, propelling oneself rapidly upward such that momentum causes the body to become airborne.

Jump or Jumping may also refer to:

Places

Science and engineering

Computing

Media

Magazine

Film and television

Nicholas Brothers

The Nicholas Brothers were a team of dancing brothers, Fayard (1914–2006) and Harold (1921–2000), who performed a highly acrobatic technique known as "flash dancing". With a high level of artistry and daring innovations, they were considered by many to be the greatest tap dancers of their day. Their performance in the musical number "Jumpin' Jive" (with Cab Calloway and his orchestra) featured in the movie Stormy Weather is considered by many to be the most virtuosic dance display of all time.

Growing up surrounded by vaudeville acts as children, they became stars of the jazz circuit during the heyday of the Harlem Renaissance and went on to have successful careers performing on stage, film, and television well into the 1990s.

Early lives

Fayard Antonio Nicholas was born October 20, 1914, in Mobile, Alabama.Harold Lloyd Nicholas was born March 17, 1921, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

The Nicholas Brothers grew up in Philadelphia, the sons of college-educated musicians who played in their own band at the old Standard Theater—their mother at the piano and father on drums. At the age of three, Fayard would always sit in the front row while his parents worked, and by the time he was ten, he had seen most of the great African-American vaudeville acts—particularly the dancers, including such notables of the time as Alice Whitman, Willie Bryant, and Bill Robinson. The brothers were fascinated by the combination of tap dancing and acrobatics. Fayard often imitated their acrobatics and clowning for the kids in his neighborhood.