Entry · catalog no. 8201
hi-de-ho
/ /ˌhaɪ di ˈhoʊ/ /HY-dee-HOH
interjection · Harlem, New York · 1930s
✓ Verified
1.
A nonsense scat refrain, sung by a bandleader and thrown back by the crowd or the band in call and response. By extension, a cry of Harlem swing-era showmanship and a shorthand for Cab Calloway himself.
“He sang "hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-ho" and the whole room sang it right back.”
Origin & Attribution
The refrain is bound to Cab Calloway's \"Minnie the Moocher,\" first recorded in New York on March 3, 1931 and issued on Brunswick (BR 6074). By Calloway's own account, in his autobiography Of Minnie the Moocher and Me (1976), he forgot the lyrics during a live radio broadcast from Harlem's Cotton Club in 1931, improvised the syllables, and invited the audience to repeat them. The syllables are vocables, not a word with a fixed meaning, and they sit inside the older Black vocal tradition of scat and call and response. The origin story rests mainly on Calloway's recollection; the recording date is documented. The record became the first jazz record to sell a million copies.
1931
Calloway records "Minnie the Moocher" in New York
1931
Refrain improvised at the Cotton Club, by Calloway's account
1980
Calloway performs it in The Blues Brothers
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Harlem, New York · 1930s
Spoken by
Jazz and swing musicians, Harlem audiences, later fans of Calloway
$HIDEHOThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady49 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
55/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1931
in the culture
Mainstream crossover
1980
search interest spikes
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
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Atlanta, GA
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Memphis, TN
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Citations & Sources
■
Cab Calloway, "Minnie the Moocher," Brunswick BR 6074, recorded March 3, 1931
1931
■
+ Cite a sourceCab Calloway and Bryan Rollins, Of Minnie the Moocher and Me (Crowell, 1976)
1976
See also