Weirdly, my introduction to Cab Calloway’s “Minnie the Moocher” did not come from the Blues Brothers cameo that indoctrinated others my age and spurred a Calloway renaissance; it came from Hugh Laurie. Laurie sang the song on TV as Bertie Wooster—P.G. Wodehouse’s platonic Edwardian gentleman, who did as much as anyone else to get me through middle school—and it was Laurie’s version I carted around on a burned CD and listened to on endless repeat. Later I got hold of Calloway’s “Blues Brothers” version, which plays a little like a reunited Pixies concert—good, but not, you know, it.

It is undoubtedly the original 1930 recording. A young, impossibly cool Calloway delivers the song’s smoke-filled slither with impeccable confidence, sounding like he’s grinning at all the right people—a group amongst which the listener, for three minutes, may count himself, which means something if you’re a chubby white middle-schooler who listens to Hugh Laurie. The call-and-response scatting (in live performances, when the audience served as the chorus, Calloway delighted in slowly increasing the phrases’ complexity, eventually leading his laughing audience past where they could follow) is one of the most recognizable and blatantly enjoyable moments in modern musical history, but it’s also one of the most influential, and not just in a general sense. More songs harken back directly to “Minnie the Moocher” than to anything else this side of “Eleanor Rigby”’s string arrangements; take, for example, Talking Heads’ “Swamp.”

“Swamp” is from Speaking in Tongues, whose 1983 release marked Talking Heads’ descent from the artistic pinnacle of the African-polyrhythm-obsessed Remain in Light and back to the band’s previous incarnation as a merely very good art-punk outfit. This isn’t to say that the album is bad—it’s mostly excellent, and “Swamp,” featuring an uncharacteristically growly, mumbling vocal performance from Byrne, is one of the highlights. Byrne’s affected New Orleans drawl approaches the foggy strut of Calloway’s delivery if it doesn’t quite have his ease, and the scatterbrained, Burroughsian lyrics typical of mid-period ‘Heads combine with the mumbling to make something that’s as close to scatting as the band ever got. The wordless chorus, like “Minnie”’s, builds itself around an ascending series of “hai-hai-hai”’s, and though Byrne’s growling goes unanswered it’s almost impossible not to join in yourself. Both “Minnie the Moocher” and “Swamp” are audience-participation songs; it’s just that Calloway brings his own audience, while Byrne is confident one will be provided.

If the ‘Heads invite an audience in, The Knife don’t acknowledge one exists. The Swedish electro-pop duo whose “Heartbeats” has been delighting Superball fans and the incurious in the hands of Jose Gonzales take a far more blatant Calloway reference and crack the mirror so severely that they find originality again. Claustrophobic, ultra-controlled, and deliberately terrifying, “One Hit” lurches into its “Minnie”-aping chorus with demonic glee, taking the familiar camaraderie of the original and turning it into an isolated exchange of shivering, low-frequency howls—first between siblings Karin and Olaf Dreijer, then between Olaf and himself—and sure, you can sing along, but you might be a little afraid. If “Minnie the Moocher” started as a recorded exchange between artist and audience, and was reinterpreted in “Swamp” as a half-finished template for a similar exchange, it comes to the end of the line in “One Hit” as a lonely funhouse nightmare—and it’s still almost impossible not to adore. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to listen to Hugh Laurie.

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