Early Life
Blanche Calloway was born in Rochester, New York. When she was a teenager, the family, including her three younger siblings, moved to Baltimore, Maryland. Her father, Cabell, was a lawyer and her mother, Martha Eulalia Reed, was a music teacher. The family was described as being middle-class. Her father died in 1910, and her mother married insurance salesman John Nelson Fortune a few years later. The couple would have two more children.
Calloway's mother was a major influence on her and her siblings passion for music. Aside from her and Cab, their brother Elmer would also go on to briefly pursue a musical career. Calloway's mother made her take piano and voice lessons as a child, but never promoted the idea of a musical career for the young Calloway. Martha hoped that her daughter would pursue a "respectable" career, such as a teacher or nurse. Calloway dreamed of a musical career and was influenced as a youth by Florence Mills and Ida Cox. Her music teacher would encourage her to audition for a local talent scout and to her mother's annoyance, Calloway dropped out of Morgan College in the early 1920s to seek out a career in music.
Read more about this topic: Blanche Calloway
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“In the early forties and fifties almost everybody “had about enough to live on,” and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“What a vast fraternity it is,—that of ‘Hearts that Ache.’ For the last three months it has seemed to me as though all society were coming to me, to drop its mask for a moment and initiate me into the mystery. How we do suffer! And we go on laughing; for, as a practical joke at our expense, life is a success.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)