Cab Calloway Quotations

A phoenix ain't nuthin' but a burd.

You don't think it was because a white man wrote it, a black man wrote it, a green man wrote it. What-doesn't make a difference!

And then there's my Grandson: He's certainly got the music together, there's just no question about it.

A movie and a stage show are two entirely different things. A picture, you can do anything you want. Change it, cut out a scene, put in a scene, take a scene out. They don't do that on stage

I think it was just an opera. Now, you go to opera, you expect to see and hear what the opera is. So, it was Catfish Row. It was singers. Marvelous voices. It didn't make no difference what color they were

What opera isn't violent? Two things happen, violence and love. And other than that, name something else. You can't

Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

Pass that thing, slightly, lightly and politely.

He was a silly guy. Out - do the other guy. That was his effort at all times.

Everybody that you could name would join in our audiences from, Laguardia on down. Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

That's what George wrote! He wrote it. Why change it? There was this European company that I was speaking about awhile ago - course, didn't nobody know what Porgy was.

We usually never got out of there before four or five o'clock in the morning. Every morning. So it was rough.

You hear about the Duke Ellingtons, the Jimmie Luncefords, and the Fletcher Hendersons, but people sometimes forget that jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones.

Everybody did something. It was very entertaining. We had a lot of fun. Lot of fun. And there was no segregation, that I could see. I never saw any

It's very difficult to photograph an opera. And they messed up on it. It just wasn't there. And I don't blame the Gershwins for taking it away. Of course, if they had gotten the original company to have done it, it would have been very good

Jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones.

Of course, nobody knows what Porgy was, whether he was on his knees all the time or was pulled by a goat or - they don't know what he was.

My audience was my life. What I did and how I did it, was all for my audience.

Bubbles was a very good dancer. Tremendous dancer. He was one of our leading dancers of the country at that time. And, of course, he didn't have much of a voice.

The only credit I can give them. They synchronize wonderful. That's all. They synchronize very - you would have thought that they were actually acting, but they were synching all the time, and that's a rough job.

We didn't have any segregation at the Cotton Club. No. The Cotton Club was wide open, it was free.

Well, he didn't have much of a conversation with me. Not that I can remember. I wasn't used to him. That's about all. I don't know. No conversation.

They were all good. Can't say that none was best and none was worst. I don't know, they were all good as far as I was concerned.

At times as a performer they segregated us in some of theatres.

Charleston was a good town. It was a nice town. I played there years ago before Porgy and Bess. And I think the conception wasn't bad. It was good.

You can't say they look up to him - if you did, you've got to look up to everybody in the show. But he's an outstanding character in the show.