Cab Calloway
Jazz bandleader, composer, and documenter of Harlem vernacular. A history of his music, 'Reefer Man,' and the myths that followed.
Cab Calloway sang about cannabis culture in 1933's 'Reefer Man' and compiled the slang that describes it. But treating him as a 'viper' himself — a cannabis smoker — rests on a confusion between being a songwriter and being the character. His autobiography and sidemen's accounts show he ran a disciplined band and disapproved of impaired musicians. The myths grew because 'Reefer Man' is catchy and Harlem in the 1930s was dangerous territory for American racial history.
Early life and rise
Cabell Calloway III was born on December 25, 1907, in Rochester, New York, and grew up largely in Baltimore [1]. His mother was a teacher and church organist; his father a lawyer. He studied briefly at Crane College in Chicago before committing full-time to music, first as a drummer and singer in Chicago's South Side clubs [1].
By 1930, Calloway had taken over a band called the Missourians, renamed it the Cab Calloway Orchestra, and secured a residency at Harlem's Cotton Club as an alternate to Duke Ellington. In March 1931 the band recorded 'Minnie the Moocher,' whose 'hi-de-ho' call-and-response chorus became one of the most recognizable phrases in American popular music [1][2].
'Reefer Man' and the viper songs
'Reefer Man,' written by J. Russell Robinson and Andy Razaf, was recorded by Calloway's orchestra in 1932 and featured in the 1933 film International House alongside W.C. Fields [3]. The lyric — 'Have you ever met that funny reefer man?' — is a comic character sketch of someone visibly high on cannabis Strong evidence[4].
It sits inside a small cluster of early-1930s 'viper' songs, a slang term for cannabis smokers popularized by musicians of the era [4]. The song became Calloway's most-cited cannabis credit, but it was one number in a very large book. 'Minnie the Moocher' itself references cocaine and opium ('kicking the gong around'), and Calloway's catalog is full of Harlem street characters. He was, in the terminology of the day, singing about the scene, not necessarily from it.
For more detailed analysis of this song and its place in jazz history, see Cab Calloway's 'Reefer Man' and Cannabis in 1930s Jazz Lyrics.
The Hepster's Dictionary
In 1938 Calloway published Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary: Language of Jive, distributed free through his record label and later expanded through the 1940s [5]. It defined terms like 'viper' (a marijuana smoker), 'muggles' (marijuana), 'tea' (marijuana), 'gauge,' and 'reefer,' alongside hundreds of non-drug slang words Strong evidence[5].
The dictionary was one of the first mass-circulated documents of African American jazz vernacular, and it remains a primary source for linguists and cannabis historians tracing how words like 'reefer' and 'tea' entered wider American English Strong evidence. Importantly, Calloway framed the book as a translation guide for outsiders — a lexicon for decoding Harlem speech — rather than as personal endorsement or advocacy.
Calloway's actual stance on cannabis
The persistent myth is that Calloway was a 'viper' himself — a regular cannabis user and member of that subculture. The historical record is more restrained. In his 1976 autobiography Of Minnie the Moocher and Me, Calloway described running a tightly disciplined band and expressed disapproval of heavy drug use among sidemen, including his frustration when musicians showed up impaired [6] Strong evidence.
Sidemen including Dizzy Gillespie, who played in the Calloway orchestra from 1939 to 1941, confirmed in his own memoir that Calloway was strict about professionalism [7]. Gillespie's famous 1941 firing stemmed from a backstage spitball incident that Calloway wrongly blamed on him [7] Strong evidence.
Whether Calloway personally used cannabis is not well documented in primary sources, and biographers have generally not made strong claims either way Weak / limited. What is clear is that he was not a public advocate, and treating 'Reefer Man' as a personal manifesto misreads the era's songwriter-performer distinction. The song is a character study, like many of Calloway's numbers.
Later career and legacy
Calloway's big band dissolved in 1948 as the swing era ended. He continued performing, notably as Sportin' Life in a 1952 revival of Porgy and Bess [1]. A new generation met him through the 1980 film The Blues Brothers, in which he reprised 'Minnie the Moocher' at age 72 Strong evidence[1]. He received the National Medal of Arts in 1993 and died on November 18, 1994, at age 86 [1].
In cannabis history, Calloway matters for two concrete reasons: he put reefer imagery into a mainstream Hollywood film in 1933, and he compiled the vocabulary that lets historians and linguists read the Harlem cannabis scene today Strong evidence. He did not, contrary to some retellings, campaign for or against prohibition — the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 passed without significant public comment from him Strong evidence.
How the myths developed
Two modern retellings distort the record.
The 'viper' myth. The first is the claim that Calloway was a leading figure in a self-identified 'viper' subculture. In practice, that label better fits musicians like Mezz Mezzrow, a saxophonist and bandleader whose 1946 memoir Really the Blues explicitly celebrated cannabis and detailed his career selling it in Harlem [8] Strong evidence. Calloway sang about vipers; Mezzrow was one. The confusion conflates songwriting with autobiography.
The Anslinger targeting myth. The second is the recurring internet claim that 'Reefer Man' was banned or that Calloway was targeted by Harry J. Anslinger's Federal Bureau of Narcotics. There is no primary-source documentation of a ban on 'Reefer Man' or a specific investigation of Calloway by the FBN Disputed. Anslinger did compile files on jazz musicians in the 1940s and reportedly discussed a mass arrest plan for drug-using musicians that never materialized, but claims of a specific Calloway file are not well sourced [9]. The myth may have grown because Billie Holiday and other Black jazz musicians were targeted by federal narcotics enforcement, but Calloway was not publicly involved in those cases.
For more on Anslinger and his role in drug enforcement history, see Harry J. Anslinger.
Sources
- Reported Watrous, Peter. 'Cab Calloway, Cotton Club Star Who Went 'Hi-De-Ho,' Dies at 86.' The New York Times, November 20, 1994.
- Government Library of Congress, National Recording Registry. 'Minnie the Moocher — Cab Calloway (1931).' National Recording Preservation Board registry entry, added 2019.
- Government American Film Institute Catalog. 'International House (1933).' AFI Catalog of Feature Films.
- Book Sloman, Larry 'Ratso.' Reefer Madness: A History of Marijuana. St. Martin's Griffin, 1998 (originally published 1979).
- Book Calloway, Cab. Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary: Language of Jive. Cab Calloway Inc., 1938 (expanded 1944).
- Book Calloway, Cab, and Bryant Rollins. Of Minnie the Moocher and Me. Thomas Y. Crowell, 1976.
- Book Gillespie, Dizzy, with Al Fraser. To Be, or Not... to Bop: Memoirs. Doubleday, 1979.
- Book Mezzrow, Mezz, and Bernard Wolfe. Really the Blues. Random House, 1946.
- Reported Hari, Johann. 'The Hunting of Billie Holiday.' Politico Magazine, January 17, 2015.
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