CALLOWAY, Cab.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Signed wine list from Mancuso's Grill Room. Battered but evocative "on the road" relic of one of the hardest working bands of the Swing era, signed by Cab and eight band members: saxophonists Walter Thomas, Arville Harris, and Eddie Barefield, trombonists Keg Johnson and DePriest Wheeler, Bennie Payne (piano), Al Morgan (bass), and Leo Maxey (drums); all but Paine sign in pencil.It dates to around the mid-1930s (Harris left Calloway in 1935) and garners a good segment of Cab's 14-strong organisation at the time (perhaps the trumpet section was already on the band bus). The signature in the centre of the cover appears to be that of an R. Beall (apparently signing himself "barjock"). Mancuso's Grill Room stood at 214 East Main Street in Batavia, which lies on Interstate 90 between Buffalo and Cab's home town of Rochester. The Grill Room is today the location of the Mancuso Bowling Center. For a decade and a half from the early '30s Calloway spent up to 50 weeks a year on the road. "Personally if not always musically – [he] was loved and respected by his musicians. Says Bennie Payne: 'You could get drunk with him and bring him home on your back - but next day when he raised his hand for the downbeat he didn't want to know what had happened the night before!'" (Rough Guide, p. 96).The list includes cocktails (the Mancuso Special was two bits), mixed drinks (a New Orleans Gin Fizz would set you back 40 cents), and, for the more aristocratic imbiber, a quart bottle of Great Western

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