Minnie the Moocher

Cab Calloway’s Minnie the Moocher

One of the best songs in the Blues Brothers was Cab Calloway’s Moocher song. After watching Danny Elfman singing the song on Becca's blog, (third clip down) I decided to compile some of the various versions of the song. One of the key things this song reveals is the Call and Response that is so important in Black music. Call and Response actually has its origins deeply rooted in African culture, but has pretty much found its way into all forms of modern music. Blues and Black Church music uses this method in their types of music. I find this funny, because Blues and Church music generally have had long history of not getting along, despite coming from the same basic musical roots.

Cab would call out to the crowd with scat words and they would repeat them back to him. For fun, he would mess with the crowd by making the scat difficult to repeat, so that the crowd stumbles at responding to him.

blues brothers- minnie the moocher : Of course, this is the one in the Blues Brothers, which I posted before. The production values of this one makes it stand out from the rest. It sounds great with the Blues Brothers band.

Here's a younger Cab singing the song: This one is little bit jazzier than the Blues Brothers version.

He used more of the muted trumpet and the wording is a bit different.

Jeeves and Wooster doing Minnie the Moocher: I have no clue what or who the hell these guys are, but I like seeing very stiff British guys trying to figure out the meaning of this very American song.

Country Version of Minnie the Moocher: Man, this one is bad. While I find the instrumentation interesting, it's just done badly.

Grace Moore and Cary Grant doing The Moocher: While the band plays it very Jazzy, Grace sings it too proper and straight. I don't really like this one either. Plus, the lyrics in this one is really clean, the song is meant to be dirty. What a way to ruin a song...

Tamyra Gray doing this song on American Idol: I actually liked the way she did this song, and adding her own touch to it. Too bad it’s so short.