Swing meets spooky!
Cab Calloway x Betty Boop: when jazz, animation, and ghosts collided 
Step into the eerie swing world of Minnie the Moocher (1932) and St James Infirmary Blues (1933).
A new kind of magic
In the early 1930s, Fleischer Studios — the rival to Disney — mixed surreal animation with the hottest jazz acts of the time.
Their cartoons captured the wild imagination of the Jazz Age: smoky clubs, ghosts, and syncopation.
Nothing else looked — or swung — like them.
Minnie the Moocher (1932)
Cab Calloway and his orchestra open the cartoon with a live performance — then Cab’s dance moves were rotoscoped onto a ghostly walrus leading Betty Boop through a haunted cave.
The song’s strange story of Minnie, jazz rhythm, and spectral dancers made it an instant hit.
St James Infirmary Blues (1933)
Dark, elegant, and mournful — yet irresistibly rhythmic.
Calloway’s haunting voice narrates a jazzy funeral scene filled with skeletons, spirits, and dazzling swing choreography.
It turned sorrow into style, showing how jazz could make even death dance.
Who was Cab Calloway?
Singer, dancer, bandleader — and pure showman.
He ruled Harlem’s Cotton Club, brought scat singing to the mainstream, and inspired generations with his exuberant energy.
Known for “Hi-De-Ho!” and sharp zoot-suit flair, he made swing glamorous, theatrical, and alive.
Swing on screen
These collaborations bridged music, movement, and imagination.
Cab’s real dance steps animated frame-by-frame — a perfect metaphor for swing itself: rhythm made visible.
Even in black-and-white, it feels like pure motion and joy.
This Halloween 
Put on your best vintage outfit, turn up some Cab Calloway, and dance like Betty Boop followed you into the underworld!
Let the ghosts of swing remind us: rhythm never dies.
Research and text by,
Paulo Santos e Pilar Portela
