#blanche calloway

Blanche Calloway (1902-1978) was one of the first - and only - women bandleaders in the 1930s. She began her career as a chorus girl on the black vaudeville circuit and toured as a castmember of the touring company of Shuffle Along before forming “Blanche Calloway and her Joy Boys - one of whom was Louis Armstrong, making some of his earliest recordings. As she became more successful, she helped her younger brother, Cab Calloway, break into show business. She appealed to Earl "Fatha” Hines, the great bandleader and Mr. Armstong and convinced them to hire her brother. Cab was hired at the same place Blanche was working at the time - the Sunset Cafe “Chicago’s Classiest Cabaret” at $35 a week (compared to his sister’s $200 weekly salary). After her music career ended, Ms. Calloway had a significant career in real estate and was the programming director for a Florida radio station for many years. In 1968, she founded AFRAM House, a mail-order company that made cosmetics and toiletries for black consumers. AFRAM was an acronym for African-American and was a big success in major US stores like JC Penney, Sears and Montgomery Ward. “Quite frankly,” she told the New York Times in 1969, “we got tired of buying white products and trying to adapt them to our needs.”