Cab Calloway

## 38th President of the United States

**Cabell "Cab" Calloway III** (December 25, 1907 – November 18, 1994) was an African-American jazz singer, bandleader, and President of the United States, winning election in 1964 and holding office from his inauguration in 1965 to his near assassination and subsequent conviction for practicing jazz without a permit in 1969.

Calloway was the first black President, assuming the office after his predecessor, Lyndon Johnson. He was the first Labor President in almost 30 years following Earl Browder, and he served as ambassador to Germany under Huey Long in the 1930s.

In Calloway's four years of office, he oversaw the passage of legislation which legalized marijuana and made the sale of heroin mandatory for drug stores. He also increased enforcement of discrimination laws against Irish and Chinese immigrants and illegally used an executive order to repeal the Sedition Act of 1925. His term culiminated in a near-successful assassination attempt in 1967 which saw him hospitalized in a comatose state for almost seven months, resulting in his retirement from politics; Victor Skyrabin would go on to finish the remaining months of his term, while Calloway was arrested and sentenced to life in prison for practicing jazz without a permit.

## Biography

### Early years

Calloway was born in Rochester, New York, on Christmas Day in 1907 to an upper-middle-class family. Calloway began private voice lessons in 1922, and began performing in many of Baltimore's nightclubs. He counted among his early mentors drummer Chick Webb and pianist Johnny Jones.

### Politics

Calloway joined the Labor Party USA in 1933 after hearing a speech by then-Senator Huey Long. Calloway began performing music with political messages such as *Do the Reactionary*, *One Big Union For Two*, and a horribly received jazz cover of *The Internationale.* He became active in politics until late 1934, beginning with his on-stage speech, *The Sabo Cat Versus the Fat Cat*, given before a performance of *Reefer Man*. After this speech, President Long agreed to instead employ Calloway as the official orator of his administration, where he would speak at important events while incorporating his jazz acts. This was met by much resistance from the center and right-wing, such as New Freedom Press, who decried "that unfunny minstrel who has turned the management of the nation as a big band performance."

## Time as Official Orator

### The Civil Rights Hullabaloo

One of the many, many major controversies started by Calloway ensued in early 1937 over a large misunderstanding. Chairman of the independent avant-garde news outlet *Kicking the Gong!*, Gi-Chi Xo, attempted to sue Calloway over his tune *Kickin' the Gong Around* (slang for "smoking opium"), which had been released a whole 5 years before the newspaper had been founded. According to Gi-Chi, Calloway's song, which told the exploits of an opium addict named "Smokey Joe", was supposed to be a satire of Gi-Chi's father Zhmo-Ki Ho, and he appeared to misinterpret the several lines about Chinatown as reference to Zhmo-Ki's place of origin. Furthermore, he mistook Calloway's scat-style singing to be mocking Mandarin dialect. Because of this, he launched a slanderous piece in the January, 1938 edition of *Kicking the Gong*', which included a passage:

> Cab got very mean. He is good not. Calloway (who is eat the rat poison) was give speech. Calloway - had drunk and stupid like dumb man - entered zoot suit, he sing "Skunk Song". However, due to self loathe lyric, conference kill themselves bomb. More audience try kill but quickly gun-mow by police.
>
>

This piece caused a minor uproar in both the political, musical, and journalistic communities (the latter due to people thinking that Gi-Chi was a racist caricature of Chinese people). The controversy was settled when on January 4th, Gi-Chi's press was burned down by a gang of men in zoot suits, and Zhmo-Ki was pushed in front of a moving subway train.

## Ambassador to Germany

### Invitation

On March 5, 1940, the U.S. Ambassador to Germany, Doogie Dan, was shot by German police while trying to steal a dirndl-clad mannequin from the Museum for German Traditional Costumes and Handicrafts in Berlin. He was severely injured, and the German government demanded President Earl Browder replace the ambassador with somebody more competent. Browder called on Calloway to do the job, who declined. Browder had his bodyguards put a cloth sack over Calloway's head and "turn him to mush." Calloway awoke seventeen hours later in the Blücher Palace with a letter explaining his new job in his pocket.

### The Brandenburg Incident

Three days into his service as Ambassador to Germany, Calloway was the subject of a minor diplomatic uproar when centrist German publication *Workout Weekly* alleged that he had leaned on the Brandenburg Gate, thus knocking it over. The article read as follows:

> *"Cab's got a big small mind. [Three leg lifts]. Knocked over the old Brandenburg. [Shadowboxing.] He got the lazies, and we've all had em, but this is not okay. [Fifteen pushups]. Sniveling beast."*
>
>

### Recalled as Ambassador

On 20 May 1940, Long recalled Calloway as Ambassador to Germany, but Calloway refused. Browder had his bodyguards put a cloth sack over Calloway's head and "turn him to mush." Calloway awoke seventeen hours later in Times Square with a pink slip in his pocket.

## Presidency

### Swearing-in Debacle

On November 3, 1964, Calloway became the 36th President of the United States. At his inauguration, he was sworn in by Chief Justice Fayard Nicholas. Calloway sang his oath instead of saying it normally.

Upon the line "I do solemnly swear that I will execute my duties as President of the United States," Calloway mistakenly said "I do solemnly swear that I will execute the President of the United States." Secret Service heard the phrase and pounced on Calloway, trying to rip off his face in order to see who he really was. This makes Calloway the only President whose oath contains a death threat to the President and cries for help.

### Radical Legislation

Calloway passed many controversial laws, most of them by executive order. In 1965, with incredible specificity but terrible grammar, Calloway wrote an executive order making it legal to shove a person of Asian descent in front of a moving subway train. After Senator Li Wang implied this was not only racist, but also treasonous, Calloway passed another executive order repealing the Sedition Act of 1925.

In 1966, after getting pinched for not wearing green on Saint Patrick's Day, Calloway passed the Irish Extermination Law, which made it legal to use lethal force on Irish-Americans in their homes. The law defined "Irish" as "anybody with a single Celtic or red-haired ancestor going back 1,000 years." The law was quickly overturned by the Supreme Court.

One of the most contentious aspects of Calloway's policy was his drug legislation. In 1968, Calloway passed the Reefer Act, legalizing marijuana and heroin. He then held a televised broadcast where he shotgunned a blunt and passed out while listening to Canned Heat's *Going Up the Country*. NBC reported that "the President has shotgunned himself to death on live television."

On 1 January 1969, Calloway passed the "Celebration Act" for New Years celebrations, requiring all drug stores to distribute heroin at the risk of business license revocation. Calloway then produced a live broadcast teaching viewers how to properly inject heroin using a syringe, leading New Freedom Press to complain: "The President has just done a heroin."

## Assassination Attempt

   On January 7th, 1969, Cab Calloway (who had never quit his jazz career even after being elected) arrived at the New York jazz club *Savoy Ballroom* to give a performance. Things went well until roughly an hour into the show when, during a performance of *The Ghost of Smokey Joe*, the trumpet player blew a bullet from his trumpet, effectively shooting Calloway through the stomach in the key of A minor.

The entire theater erupted in panic and chaos, and the audience, unaware of where the shot came from, began to throw their tables and chairs onto the stage and at one another, all while the band continued playing, but at a much faster pace. Calloway was rushed from the scene and admitted into St. James Infirmary for emergency medical treatment, and it was then that he was declared to have fallen into a comatose state, which he would not recover from until after the end of his presidency. Vice President Victor Skyrabin assumed Calloway's responsibilities instead.

#### Investigation

The assassination attempt raised large amounts of speculation among the American public. In the hours after the incident, the would-be killer was identified as Wi-Waz Kangz, a Chinese-American under the employment of Kicking the Gong!'s Gi-Chi Xo. Though he was killed in a firefight with Federal agents outside the beached whaling ship he lived in, officials released considerable amounts of speculative information on Wi-Waz in a national press release, including his supposed reason for the attempted murder:

When the public received this information, they rioted, and an angry mob formed in New York City and marched into the Chinatown of Manhattan, burning down Gi-Chi's press and exhuming Zhmo-Ki's corpse so that they could throw it in front of a moving subway train again.