The world remembers Cab Calloway as “The Hi De Ho Man,” singer of the hit song “Minnie the Moocher” and star of Harlem’s legendary jazz club, The Cotton Club. Saratogian Ed Thomas, though, remembers a different Calloway—a lifelong horse-lover who grew up a short trolley ride from Baltimore’s Pimlico Race Course.

“I talked to him a lot in the late ’70s and early ’80s,” says Thomas, who crossed paths with the bandleader at NYRA’s downstate tracks. “I went up and down the escalators to look at the paddock, and he presented the trophy. I’d ask him how he was doing.”

In his youth, Calloway worked as a hot walker, cooling down racehorses at Pimlico, and never stopped loving the ponies. Later in life, his passion brought him up to the Spa City, where he became the only black guest at Union Avenue’s exclusive Saratoga Reading Room. His band also performed at the Black Elks Ball, held every year at the Canfield Casino on the evening of the Whitney Stakes.

In her memoir, Pride of Family, writer Carole Ione recalls when her grandmother “Be-Be” transformed her home on George Street bordering the Fasig-Tipton sales barns into the Spuyten Duyvil, a watering hole that became a hit with the racing crowd. “One night Be-Be’s old friend Cab Calloway came in and got the whole joint jumping, everyone singing chorus after chorus of ‘Minnie the Moocher,’ while Fred Astaire stood gracefully in the garden,” writes Ione. “Cab returned, and Be-Be could be seen doing some of her old dance steps with him.” 

This summer, Saratoga Race Course will host the 22nd running of the Cab Calloway division of the New York Stallion Series, a one-mile race on the turf, on Thursday, August 14. While Calloway died of a stroke at his Westchester home in 1994 at the age of 86, racing fans in 2025 can still lift a glass to the Hi De Ho bandleader, and place a bet on his namesake race.

Photo: SCHOMBURG CENTER FOR RESEARCH IN BLACK CULTURE, PHOTOGRAPHS AND PRINTS DIVISION, THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY