Calloway, Blanche, 1902-1978

Blanche Dorothea Jones Calloway (February 9, 1902 – December 16, 1978) was an American jazz singer, composer, and bandleader. She was the older sister of Cab Calloway and was a successful singer before her brother. With a music career that spanned over fifty years, Calloway was the first woman to lead an all-male orchestra and performed alongside musicians such as Cozy Cole, Chick Webb, and her brother. Her performing style was described as flamboyant and a major influence on her brother's performance style.

Calloway was born in Rochester, New York. When she was a teenager, the family, including her four siblings - Bernice, Henry, Cabell III (later Cab Calloway), and Elmer who was born in 1912 before the move to Baltimore - moved to Baltimore, Maryland around 1912 or 1913. The family had originally lived in Baltimore prior to Rochester but had left due to tough times with the crash of the real estate market where Cabell II worked. Her father, Cabell, was a lawyer and her mother, Martha Eulalia Reed, was a music teacher. In Baltimore, the family lived with the grandparents, Cabell I and Elizabeth Calloway, at 1017 Druid Hill Avenue. The neighborhood was populated only by African-Americans at the time. The family was described as being middle-class, even upper-class for the particular section of the city they lived in. The date of Cabell II's death is debatable, some sources argue that he passed after the family had moved to Baltimore on October 15, 1913. Another source claims that he died in 1910, and her mother married insurance salesman John Nelson Fortune a few years later. The couple would have two more children: John in 1916 and Mary Camilla in 1918. The family later moved to 2216 Druid Hill Avenue.

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