Fairbanks Daily News Miner
July 20th, 2000
Singer jazzed to be back at arts festival
Chris Calloway was 21 when her famous father introduced her to the world on the "The Ed Sullivan Show." For nearly 20 years, she toured with Cab Calloway and his Hi-De-Ho Orchestra and sang the songs he had made famous. At some point, she knew she had to discover her own style. She credits Eddie Madden for helping her find the way. "He's the one who told me I could be a jazz singer," she said.
Madden, who was the artistic director of the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival, invited Calloway to teach cabaret during the 1982 festival-and to sing jazz with a group of musicians he recruited from Boston. Up until that point, Calloway considered herself a cabaret singer.
As Madden recalls, she was a little bit nervous about that performance-and drove to Boston from New York to rehearse. During the festival's closing concert, he said, "She sang 'Ain't Misbehavin' and knocked them dead."
Calloway would return to the festival for five more seasons, until she began touring European jazz festivals with her father.
Madden and Calloway will come together again Friday for the opening concert of the festival and its 20th anniversary.
Calloway will be joined by Madden on piano, Josh Davis on bass and Dome Moio on percussion. Madden will pick up his trombone for the second half of the concert when pianist Barney McClure joins the combo. The concert begins at 8 p.m. in the Davie Concert Hall.
Calloway, who is traveling with her younger sister, Cabella, and brother-in-law, arrived in Fairbanks on Sunday. They plan to tour the town and Denali National and Preserve.
Resting in her Sophie Station suite earlier this week, Calloway laughs when she remembers her first trip to Alaska. As the plane flew over some remote territory, she wondered what she was getting herself into.
"I'm from New York, where you're right on top of one another," she said. Her fears were allayed in Fairbanks, where she found a warm audience, enthusiastic students and friends.
"It was terrific," she said. "I'm psyched, to be back."
When Calloway smiles, she flashes a big toothy smile reminiscent of her father. She has what she jokingly calls the "Cab mouth." Singing jazz with the festival musicians, like Madden and trumpeter Greg Hopkins, was easy, she said.
"They were just wailing," she said. "All you had to do is open your mouth."
Calloway relocated to Santa Fe, N. M. in 1991 after she traveled to the town with a one-woman play about Billie Holiday, "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill." Her father died three years later.
In Santa Fe, she said, she was able to develop herself as an artist and as an individual.
"My whole entire raison d'etre was Cab Calloway," she said.
Calloway is now comfortable with her own music, which is a mix of jazz and cabaret, and her father's legacy. Last summer, she brought together former members of the Hi-De-Ho Orchestra and performed at New York's JVC Jazz Festival. In January, she will tour three months with the orchestra.
During the tour, she will sing numbers composed and/or made famous by her father, some of which haven't been heard in 50 years.
In Fairbanks, she may sing his "Jumpin' Jive," but she probably will also sing works by Duke Ellington, Cole Porter, George Gershwin and Harold Arlen.
She believes her greatest legacy from her father is the way he connected to his audience.
"I just feel compelled to talk to the audience," she said.
Calloway is honored to be part of the festival and admires Festival Director Jo Scott for all she has accomplished.
"She's a dear, dear soul," she said.
Reflecting on the festival's past 20 years, Scott said, "It's bigger and better than I ever dreamed."
The dream began in the late 1950s when Scott heard about a woman in Anchorage who had founded an arts festival there.
"I thought that Fairbanks should have something like that," she said. The idea brewed for more than 20 years, until Scott's children were mostly grown.
Scott, who moved to Fairbanks in 1953 to teach school, had run a preschool and a summer arts camp for children.
When she finally decided to get the festival going she asked for Eddie Madden's help lining up guests. Madden was a Boston trombonist and composer whom she had met while he was teaching in Fairbanks.
"He knew the musicians and I didn't," she said.
Madden, who is credited with being the cofounder of the festival, invited seven jazz musicians from the Boston area that first year. Trumpet player Clark Terry agreed to be the spotlight artist. The instructors taught mostly in the schools.
The following year, the festival only sought adult students and expanded to include classical music. By the third year, visual arts, theater and dance were included. Ice skating was added in 1990.
Reminiscent of "Field of Dreams," Scott said she was confident that if she could get the right people to teach, registrants would come.
The formula has worked. Over the years, the festival has attracted some impressive talent for its instructors and for its opening concerts. Guests have included Mel Torme, Marvin Hamlisch, Hal Holbrook, Sarah Vaughn and, of course, Cab Calloway, who performed two years-in 1984 and 1985. Greg Hopkins, an internationally known jazz trumpet player who taught at the first festival, has returned every year except one.
The festival has grown substantially from its beginnings. Seventy-six instructors will teach at this year's festival, which begins Monday at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The 1999 festival attracted 633 fulltime and part-time registrants from 17 states and four foreign countries, including Sweden, Canada, Japan and England. Alaskans came from 20 communities.
Participants play in a variety of symphonies, ensembles, vocal and dance groups or study visual arts during the two-week festival.
After five years. with the festival, Madden went on to other pursuits, which include trombone performance, musical arranging and conducting his own big band, The Eddie Madden Orchestra.
He was happy to return this year and is amazed that the festival has done as well as it has and that Scott has been able to consistently drum up volunteers who help her put the festival together.
"I'm still in total bewilderment as to how she does this year after year," he 'said. "She cajoles, she does everything that needs to get done." |
