FEATURE
TRANSCRIPT - CAB CALLOWAY
(INTRO)
"The
Calloway family has been dazzling audiences' with their authentic big band
sounds for almost 100 years. Assignment the World had a chance to speak with
Calloway Brooks, who now swings the baton for the legendary Cab Calloway
Orchestra." (:18)
(CALLOWAY BROOKS) "This
is really the greatest (I feel) American music that occurred during the last
century. During the period of the 1900's this was the music that really got
America to begin starting to play its own music and it was the kind of music
that was broadcast for the first time all over the world.
It was put together by a
lot of different kinds of people-people from Europe, people from Africa, there
are Native American influences, Latin American influences and people from all
sorts of different cultures came together to create this great music that we
call Swing Music.
The Calloway family has
been involved with music ever since the 1920's if you can imagine that--my
granddad was the most famous of the Calloways his name was Cab Calloway, He had
a fantastic career that spanned decades and decades.
He started back in New
York, went to a place called the Cotton Club, he led one of the greatest big
bands in history and a lot of the musicians in the orchestra today, played with
my Granddad way back when.
One of the things the Cab
Calloway Orchestra brings to Jazz is we bring the fun side of Jazz out, and when
you come to a concert like this you get to hear what a lot of different
instruments are like. You hear some saxophones, some trumpets, some guitar
playing, some piano playing some bass playing--I try to feature all the
musicians in the band during the course of a show, and so as a result I think it
really helps to enrich the experience for everybody.