Cab Calloway: the Freemason and his brother musicians

Jazzmen and Freemasonry… You almost never read articles on this topic despite the fact that all jazz musicians are deeply spiritually minded! Undoubtedly because there is little study on jazz and Freemasonry. French jazz musician and researcher Raphaël IMBERT initiates us into the relationship between jazz and Masonic lodges, and in a more general overview, spirituality, with his book “Jazz Supreme: Initiés, Mystiques et Prophètes,” (L’éclat poche, 2018). Published in French and updated several times, it is revered as the international reference on this matter. By empowering African Americans, Freemasonry also allowed jazzmen to create a new corporatism close to a fraternity. The Hi De Ho Blog is particularly focused on Brother Cab Calloway, who was introduced to Masonry by his musicians.

Freemasonry in the United States is a fraternal organization that emphasizes moral teachings, charitable works, and brotherhood through symbolic rituals and different degrees of membership. Historically, American Freemasonry was marked by racial segregation, with traditional lodges excluding African Americans until the 1930s and beyond (until 2000!)—which led to the creation of a separate Freemasonry, Prince Hall Freemasonry, for Black members.

Martha Eulalia Reed-Calloway, proud and demanding mother of his son Cab Calloway (1933)

It all started in Rochester...

How to talk about Cab Calloway’s spiritual life? Cab tells about it in his autobiography “I don’t think myself as a religious person. I love to live. I like the good life. I enjoy entertaining and I get as much satisfaction out of giving people pleasure sure as I do out of going to church. Maybe entertaining is my way of expressing godliness. Lord knows, there are worse ways.”

A typical Sunday school in the early years of the XXth century

Cab Calloway was first influenced spiritually by his mother, Eulalia, who played organ at the church and was very involved in the community, hosting meetings in her home as a clubwoman. She ensured that her son attended “every damned Sunday, rain or shine, from early in the morning till late afternoon” the services and the Sunday school, “Bible classes during the week, Bible school every day during the summer” despite his aversion for such activities, as he remembers in his autobiography (he used to play craps or chase girls instead of attending the services). “Going to church was like going to school – there was nothing else to do.” He was later sent to a church-run boarding school in Pennsylvania, the Downingtown Industrial and Agricultural School. Cab also sang in church choirs and was quickly noticed for his vocal abilities. When he was 17, he dated Zarita Steptoe, the daughter of the pastor of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore. Quoted by Vaughn A. Booker in his noteworthy book “Lift Every Voice and Swing,” Cab Calloway remarked “In fact, the main reason that I was going to church at all those days was to be near Zarita.”

Democrat and Chronicle, April 22, 1906

A lesser-known fact concerns Cab’s father, Cabell Calloway the Second. Already belonging to the Elks club of Baltimore, when the family moved to Rochester, NY, Calloway (the father) decided to start a new branch of the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World. The black Elks association had been formed in 1898 because the white Elks clubs were segregated. They would provide financial assistance to members who were sick and even help pay for burials. In Rochester, NY, the Flower City Lodge No. 91 I.B.P.O.E. of the W. was founded on April 18, 1906, by Cabell Calloway II, father of Cab, just one year before Cab was born. Yet, the father’s influence on his son is barely traceable since he had a mental breakdown when Cab was only 4 years old and was institutionalized. Cab III has never been able to see his father again because Cab II died shortly thereafter.

Twin City Herald (June 24, 1933) informs its readers that Cab Calloway entered Freemasonry in their town.

Pioneer Lodge No.1 in St. Paul: the place to rejoice

Early in his career, Cab played benefits for fraternal organizations and regular dances in Masonic temples. This was an era when such venues held by Freemasons had on the first-floor large auditoriums, ballrooms, and places rented for social events, banquets and ceremonies.

New Pittsburgh Courier, July 18, 1931

But the game changed for Cab Calloway while touring in St. Paul, Minnesota. This was the birthplace of Pioneer Lodge No.1. The lodge served as both a spiritual center and vital community institution during an era of racial segregation. For traveling Black musicians like Cab Calloway and his orchestra, these lodges provided safe havens and networks of brotherhood across the country, with St. Paul’s location making it an ideal place for African American entertainers to find fellowship and support during their tours.

Cab. Calloway became a Mason while touring in Minneapolis
in May-June 1933 (The Minneapolis Journal, May 27, 1933)

Between May 27 and June 2, 1933, Cab Calloway and his orchestra performed 5 sets per day at the Orpheum Theatre, Minneapolis, MN, with great success, breaking gross records. They would return almost each year to the Twin Cities.

On June 24, 1933, the newspaper Twin City Herald announces that Cab became a Freemason earlier on June 6. In this local African American newspaper, which was familiar with presenting the activities of fraternal organizations on the front page, this short article about Cab was just below the header on page 1! Quite an event, wasn’t it?

Backstage, Cab surrounded by his musicians and staff, circa 1934. How many of them were Masons?

A band of brothers

Another witness is bassist Milt Hinton, but a few years later after he joined Cab’s band in the spring of 1936. According to his accurate yet often fluctuating and inventive memory, Cab’s “real initiation” would have occurred in the spring of 1937, in Minneapolis, at the insistence of Doc Cheatham. In his Jazz Oral History Project interview, Milt Hinton adds:

“There was a lot of happiness in that band on the road. We were quite fraternal. I remember in 1937, in St. Paul, Minnesota, I think Doc Cheatham [note: Doc had relatives from St. Paul and the band used to stay or dine at their place when they played in the area] had joined Pioneer Lodge No. 1, in St. Paul, Minnesota. And Doc had been with that lodge and we came through there. Morally this band was really a decent band. We did everything that everybody else did. We ran around with chicks and all that sort of stuff. But morally we really tried to -- Cab was very adamant about us being dignified. (...) And as I say 1937, Doc Cheatham had belonged to this Masonic Lodge and we all expressed our desire to want to become a Mason, because this is a system of morals and [inaudible] was illustrated by signs and symbols, and we wanted to become part of something that was dignified. And this lodge accepted us and we were initiated into this Pioneer Lodge No. 1, Cab Calloway, Ben Webster, Tyree Glenn, all but a half a dozen of us went in at the same time.”

“(...) Every time we would play St. Paul we would try to get there and try to set up. If there was some guys that had shown that they were worthy, we’d try to have the Lodge set up a time for an initiation. (...) It was great to see the guys being initiated into the Lodge and then we could welcome them. And as we traveled across the country, we would sit and read and enlighten this guy into what we were doing, intro the Society of Masonry.”

Another Calloway musician, Dizzy GILLESPIE, who joined the band in 1939, also wished to become a Freemason but lacked an official signature on his marriage contract. Therefore, the zealous attendant refused to accede to the request of the fiery trumpeter.

Members of the Cab Calloway orchestra
in front of the segregated entrance of the Atlanta Railroad station
(circa 1940, photo by Milt Hinton)

Being a jazz musician and a Mason on the road

Milt Hinton: “Being a Mason is a sacred thing. There is a lot of secrecy about it, so people don’t talk about it as far as they are concerned. It is really a moral system based on the Bible. There are many signs and symbols that only Masons know, and if you don’t belong to it, it’s hard to understand.”

“We had no authority, but we used to close our doors and get in one dressing room in the theater and set up a lodge, just like a regular lodge. [It coud also happen in the train, while touring]. We’d put a sergeant at arms right outside of the door and we would study together so we would know the rules and regulations of Masonry. It was one of the highlights of my life to know about this kind of things.”

“If someone in the orchestra proved themselves worthy and expressed a desire to join us, one of us would recommend them and try to arrange the initiation. But there were enough of us in the orchestra to organize our own meetings while on tour. Sometimes, between sets, backstage, we had short meetings and guided readings. We always spent time with the guys who were newly initiated, trying to teach them the real meaning of Masonry, and how it could help them in their everyday lives.”

A segregated fraternity

Maybe for Cab and his colleagues, being a Mason was a way to strengthen the feeling of being part of a private society similar to the world of jazz musicians (including language, like Jive). Still, Freemasonry in the USA at this time was segregated.

Milt Hinton: “I’ve always thought that the major problem with Freemasonry is its relationship to race. There shouldn’t be separate black and white systems, yet that’s the case. It seems to completely contradict the philosophy of the organization. But since I’ve been a Mason, I’ve been able to form my own opinion on the racial issue thanks to this framework. It’s never been a problem for me. I’ve tried to keep it at a normal level. And I have never felt that I had to accept someone just because they are a Mason. If a person does not behave appropriately---if they do not live by the rules they have sworn to obey---I feel that I simply have nothing to do with them.”

In his autobiography, Garvin BUSHELL (saxophonist who played with Cab between 1935 and 1937) explains that during the 1940s, he had to travel in a “Jim Crow” train car because of his skin color. But the conductor, who probably saw his Freemason pin, granted his request to travel in better conditions. For his part, Jelly Roll MORTON said that a passenger tried to show his pin and his alleged membership in Freemasonry to ask for money and assistance from all the passengers! Milt Hinton added that in the deep South, white Masons obeyed to a rule to not kill or lynch Black Masons. Hence many of them would proudly and visibly wear their Mason pin.

Brothers Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington on the stage of the Strand, New York, 1943

The brotherhood among jazz musicians

Many other jazz musicians were Freemasons: Count Basie, Nat King Cole, Kenny Clarke, Oscar Peterson, Eubie Blake, W.C. Handy, Oscar Papa Celestin, Earl Hines, Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson, Paul Whiteman, Harry Dial, Jimmy Rushing… And some reached high ranks in the Masonic hierarchy: Duke ELLINGTON, Lionel HAMPTON.

Milt Hinton’s lifelong dedication to the lodge stands as testament to the profound impact this spiritual journey had on him:

"To this very date [1981], concludes Milt Hinton, my card is paid up to this very day. I joined that lodge in 1937 and I have belonged to the same lodge, and I think I’m the only one that’s left. I spoke to Cab the other day, he’s become delinquent. But I have paid up my dues from that day to this right now in this lodge.”

 

Cab Calloway’s entry into Freemasonry reveals a mesmerizing intersection between jazz culture and African American fraternal traditions. For Calloway and his fellow musicians, Masonry provided dignity, brotherhood, and a moral framework that helped them navigate the challenges of being Black entertainers in segregated America. The bonds formed in Pioneer Lodge No.1 created a traveling fraternity between the leader and his bandmates and within the orchestra, where musicians found support and belonging that transcended the entertainment world and its issues.

The Afro American, Nov 12, 1932

Cab Calloway’s journey and repertoire
and their links to spirituality

“However, as stated by Vaughn A. Booker, given Calloway’s autobiographical reflections about his adolescent disdain for church attendance and fondness for the church sisters his age, it is probable that he enjoyed the opportunity to sing” a repertoire filled with tension between religion and irreverence, sermons and humorous exclamations (“yowza!), misbehavior and dignity…

And don’t forget that the call-and-response which was Cab’s signature with “hi de ho,” was one of the attributes of any preacher from any religion (some would call this attitude “low-church preaching”).

Cab Calloway appears as the Archangel Gabriel for télévision (1969)

• In 1932, on a Sunday evening, at the request of a white pastor, Cab sang “some moving Negro spirituals” for a white audience in New York’s Broadway Temple Methodist Episcopal Church.
• In 1935, he and his entire orchestra gave a concert in a Baptist church in Detroit.
• Raised Presbyterian, Cab converted to the Episcopal Church in the 1930s. He prided himself on having always been a devoted Christian.
• Some of his records liken Cab’s singing to Yiddish incantations like a cantor: “Utt-Ta-Zay” (1941), “Minnie the Moocher” (1933 and 1942 versions), “The Hi De Ho Man, That’s Me” (1947)
• In 1942, Calloway was among the favorites casted to play the devil in the MGM film “Cabin in the Sky”. The role ultimately went to Louis Armstrong.
• “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” Sportin’ Life’s signature song in Gershwin’s opera “Porgy & Bess,” states, on the contrary, never to believe what is written in the Bible.
• In 1957, Cab was scheduled for the role of Gabriel in the TV production of "Green Pastures", but he quit before it was filmed.
• In 1969, Cab played the Archangel Gabriel in the Hallmark’s Christmas TV show “The Littlest Angel” (he even appeared caricatured like Gabriel in the 1937 cartoon “Clean Pastures”).

A personalized sleeve of Cab Calloway's record, "Is That Religion?"
(Belgian private collection)

A repertoire with several religious references

The repertoire of the “Satanic Sultan of Scat Singing” (as designated by African American journalist Roi Ottley) contains several songs denoting religious references:

“IS THAT RELIGION?” (1930) – “a comedic criticism of sexual impropriety in black houses of worship” (Vaughn A. Booker), with an imitation of folk sermon.

“YALLER” (1930), is a much deeper song dealing with issues of lighter-complexioned African Americans regarded as “not enough Black or white” (something resented by Calloway his whole life). The end of the song is a prayer to God by Cab.

“HARLEM CAMP MEETING” (1933) – takes everyone (Black and white) to a joyful black Protestant revival setting, with a “scat sermon” by Cab.

“KEEP THAT HI-DE-HI IN YOUR SOUL” (1936) where Cab shows that “hi-de-ho” can save people!

“SAVE ME SISTER” (1936) – appears in “The Singing Kid”, with Al Jolson. With actress Wini Shaw blackfaced, and Al Jolson (without makeup), Cab Calloway sermons a large audience of Black people with old-fashioned calls-and-responses.

“MISS HALLELUJAH BROWN” (1938), created for a Cotton Club Revue, depicts the new life of an attractive woman, formerly very pious and the resentment of other women.

“I’ll Pray for You” (1940) – A lover's prayer, during a 1940 broadcast.

“SUNDAY IN SAVANNAH” (1943) – Recorded during the “Stormy Weather” scoring sessions, this song deals about the joy of attending a celebration in the Deep South. Cab told it was his favorite song ever.

“THE BEGINNIN' OF SINNIN'” (1958) – written for the Cotton Club Revue of 1958 let us hear Cab preaching among chorus girls…