Minnie the Moocher

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"Minnie the Moocher" is a jazz song co-written by American musician Cab Calloway and first recorded in 1931 by Calloway and his big band orchestra, selling over a million copies.^[1] "Minnie the Moocher" is famous for its nonsensical ad libbed lyrics, also known as scat singing (for example, its refrain of "Hi de hi de hi de ho"). In performances, Calloway would have the audience and the band members participate by repeating each scat phrase in a form of a call and response, eventually making it too fast and complicated for the audience to replicate.^{[citation needed]}

First released by Brunswick Records, the song was the biggest chart-topper of 1931.^[2] Calloway publicized and then celebrated a "12th birthday" for the song on June 17, 1943, while performing at New York's Strand Theatre. He reported that he was then singing the song at both beginning and end of four performances daily, and then estimated his total performances to date: "she's kicked the gong around for me more than 40,000 times."^[3]

In 1978, Calloway recorded a disco version of "Minnie the Moocher" on RCA Records which reached No. 91 on the Billboard R&B chart.^[4]

"Minnie the Moocher" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999, and in 2019 was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress.^[5] It has been argued that the record was the first jazz record to sell a million copies.^[6]