Time & Perspective Quote by Cab Calloway

Cab Calloway delivers this like a bandleader’s backhanded valentine: generous on the surface, ruthless in the margins. He stacks praise in big, brassy phrases - “very good,” “tremendous,” “leading… of the country” - the way an emcee works a room, building a pedestal fast. Then comes the turn: “And, of course…” The phrase is doing sly work, signaling that what follows is common knowledge, almost too obvious to dignify. The compliment collapses into a punchline about voice, and the audience is invited to share the inside joke.

The context matters. Calloway is talking about John W. Bubbles, a tap innovator who helped define the rhythm language of American entertainment. In an era when Black performers were routinely forced into narrow market categories, “dancer” versus “singer” wasn’t a neutral distinction; it was a booking logic, a hierarchy, a survival strategy. Calloway’s line reinforces that hierarchy even as it celebrates a peer. He’s separating the pure specialist from the all-around star, implicitly asserting standards that bandleaders and venues policed: you can be extraordinary, but only in your lane.

There’s also a bruised tenderness in it. Calloway came up in a world where talent had to be undeniable to be tolerated. The joke reads as camaraderie, but it’s also gatekeeping: admiration delivered with a reminder that greatness still gets measured, ranked, and trimmed to fit the show.