"Minnie the Moocher" was written by the famous band leader, jazz composer and singer Cabell "Cab" Calloway III, and the jazz music publisher Irving Mills. It was first recorded in 1931 by Cab Calloway and His Orchestra, and became their signature song for the next decade. Beloved by audiences, "Minnie the Moocher" earned Calloway the nickname "The Hi De Hi De Hi Man" based on his unique form of scatting in the song.
The song tells the sad story of a "red hot hoochie coocher" girl called Minnie. The hoochie coochie was a style of belly dancing with non-respectable gypsy origins, and was considered lecherous at the time. The licentious Minnie gets involved with a "kokie" conveniently called Smokey, a "kokie" being someone who takes cocaine. Smokey takes her down to Chinatown where he introduces her to opium, which is what Calloway meant when using the jive expression "to kick the gong around" in the lyrics. The rest of the song describes her opium-induced wish-fulfillment fantasy in which the king of Sweden gives her many gifts, including "a diamond car, with the puh-latinum wheels." Calloway doesn't tell us how this story ends, but he does wail "Poor Min! Poor Min" Poo-oor Min" at the end, which may be an indication that Minnie's a goner.
"Minnie the Moocher" is riddled with jive slang most white listeners of the time didn't understand. So, although it is quite a sordid tale, the song was not censored and reached a very wide audience, selling more than a million copies. Calloway became an authority on this jive and was highly enthusiastic about the subject; in 1944 he published a dictionary of the Harlem patois called The New Cab Calloway Hipster's Dictionary: Language of Jive.
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