Cab Calloway was an influential singer and actor in the 1930s. Born in Rochester, New York on December 25, 1907, he started from the bottom and worked his way up to 'until it is discovered and at the top. To reach the top, Cab participated in many different scenes and had help from family and friends. According to Dan Gediman, Cab was the man from "Hi De Ho", a legendary showman, gifted singer, bandleader, actor and fashion designer. He was a larger-than-life figure, immortalized in cartoons and caricatures, and also the leader of one of the biggest bands of the Swing era (Dan Gediman, "Cab Calloway"). Scott Yanow thought Cab was "one of the great artists", and Cab's name had become a household name by 1932 and never really declined in fame (Scott Yanow, "Biography of Cab Calloway"). Cab grew up in Baltimore and attended law school. there briefly, before leaving school and heading off to try to make it as a singer and dancer. As a young man, Cab followed in his father's footsteps by becoming a lawyer, attending law school, and studying law. Cab wanted to become an artist even though his family discouraged him. They thought it would be more appropriate for him to become a lawyer like his father. However, at the time he was studying law, his sister, Blanche Calloway, was a popular singer and produced and sang some good records before retiring in the mid-1930s (Yanow). Well, his sister Blanche, who was a prominent singer of the time, convinced Cab to put more effort into his entertainment career. So while Cab was studying at Chicago Law School, he was also moonlighting in local nightclubs as an entertainer. While performing in Chicago, he met the famous trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong, who taught him scat. According to the Schoumbrg Center for Research on Black Culture, scat singing in music is "a jazz vocal style using emotive, onomatopoeic, and nonsense syllables instead of words in solo improvisations set to a melody." Scat has a weak antecedent in the West African practice of assigning fixed syllables to percussion patterns, but the style was made popular by trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong beginning in 1927. The popular theory that scat singing began when a singer forgot the lyrics may be true, but this origin does not explain the persistence of the style..