Cab Calloway owes his debut, and his comeback, to Chicago

Long before there was Black History Month, there was Cab Calloway.During the 1930s and ’40s the jazz-blues-swing-poet introduced an urban African-American lexicon to an unsuspecting white audience 365 days a year. He sang about reefer while dressing high. He wore Zoot suits accented by a wide-brimmed white hat that was derived from plantation life. Calloway’s hit song “Minnie the Moocher” (“The …