I'm Still Ridin With The King

I heard the following words spoken by a guy in the year 2000, taken from a cut entitled ‘Riding With The King’,and I will always hold the speaker and this expression close to my heart.

I stepped out of Mississipi 

when I was 10 years old,

With a suit cut sharp as a razor

And a heart made of gold.

I had a guitar 

Hangin just about waist high

And I’m gonna play this thing

Til the day I die…

Yup. It’s B.B. King who passed this past Thursday, May 14, 2015. He was born Riley B. King on September 16, 1925, and took on the moniker  Blues Boy, while a Disc Jockey at radio station WDIA in Memphis, Tennessee. He has been recognized as B.B. King from that point forward.

When it comes to those we know, love and respect, the date of birth and date of transition may not always be remembered, but there is something in the dash that lies between those two dates that we’ll never forget. The phrase I opened this blog with is that something I’ll never forget about B.B., because from the time I first became interested in his music in 1968, I saw him live what he talked about. 

So many times we are limited in our ability to hear the story from what is called the ‘horses’ mouth’, and are restricted to biased media, and admittedly semi-factual websites like ‘Wikipedia’. Good fortune smiled on me again in this particular writing endeavor however, because last night, while my wife and I surfed the Netflix channel, what should pop up but a 2012 B.B. King documentary. So let me pass on to you, a bit of what B.B. and the people that knew him shared.

By 1940 his sole caretaker, his grandmother, had died, and at the age of 14 B.B. was on his own as a sharecropper, earning 35 cents per hundred pounds of cotton. He said he picked from ‘cain to cain’t’ which meant you picked from the time in the morning when you ‘cain’ see, till the time at night when you ‘cain’t’.

He had been farming since the age of 7 and said that he walked behind a plow mule for 18 years, 30 miles a day, 6 days a week, 6 months a year, and that if you add it up he had walked around the world. This work ethic transferred to his blues career where he averaged almost 300 one night stands a year. One of his wives, Sue Carol Hall, said he was on the road one year for 365 days, and another year, early one morning told her he was going fishing. When asked why he was wearing a silk suit, he responded…”Cause it’s all I got.”

B.B. King was a multi millionaire when he died and albeit money was certainly a catalyst and sustainer of the altered lifestyle that came with time, he never faltered in his mission. As he put it, “I want everybody to hear and know B.B. King and his music.

Something I noticed in watching that 2012 documentary, was an eighty-six year old blues legend who seemed to have no regrets. He had lost two wives to divorce, and had missed a lot of lost time that he could have spent with his children. His sentiments? “Marriage should not be a part of a musician’s life until he stops traveling, and I tell my kids, grandkids, and great grandkids I love them as much as I can, cause although I know he did, my daddy never told me."

We can definitely learn from others what to do and what not to do before we make that choice. What B.B. leaves with us is to be dedicated to what you do, but be aware of how what you do affects those everyone around you, especially those closest to you. He leaves a wonderful legacy but a somewhat broken family dream. Balance is what is missing in most of our lives, and every now and again we must STOP, reassess who and where we are in our quest, and then readjust whatever is needed to get back on track.

I thank B.B. King for sharing the joy and pain of his life with us all through his music, and for his ardent dedication to letting the world know that we all have a story to tell and must tell it through whatever means we have available to us. As B.B. has said to himself, I now say to you… “Saw a little boy remind me of me, and said what can I tell him? And I thought,…The sky’s the limit”.

I’ll holla…


To comment or respond please click on the word comments at the bottom of this page, or email me at grace.calvin187@gmail.com

Nine One One, Nine Eleven, Or Right Now

Reportedly, the first-ever 9-1-1 call was placed in 1968, and it was a testing of the efficiency of the system. The first 9-1-1 call I was ever affiliated with was placed in 1974. It was placed from a public phone booth near Chicago’s Dearborn Housing Projects, to the city’s police department, and was my cousin’s response to me experiencing a heroin overdose. Reportedly he called 911 two times, between three minute intervals. It was not until the third call however, when he announced that a white caseworker was unconscious in a black housing project, that an ambulance arrived almost immediately.

In 2001, when the twin tower incident (nine-eleven) occurred, I was a guest in the 73 story Detroit Marriott hotel, that is in very close proximity to Dearborn, Michigan, which has the largest Arab American population in the United States. After returning about 10:00 that morning from a cancelled conference , a note had been slipped under my hotel door informing me that I could stay that night, but that there would be no staff or hotel service available. I decided to stay, even though every body that didn’t live there was leaving by taxi, rental car, boat, or plane to get away from the preconceived danger.

The last 9-1-1 that I was involved in occurred in 2012, right here in Long Beach, California. About 3:00am one morning, our dog CoCo started barking, and my wife Nicole and I got out of bed to witness a man using all the effort he could muster to open our locked door. While Nicole inexplicably conversed with the 911 operator, I held the door knob and used every ounce of strength I had to offset the pressure that this much larger individual was applying to the wooden door frame. One police car finally arrived, then another, but the two police officers stood outside their vehicles with flashlights drawn, and waited until there were a total of four officers before they even approached the assailant.

What i garnered from these three experiences is: 1. Illegal drug use is hazardous to your health. 2. A response should not be entirely based on a group of peoples’ ethnicity or what another group of people think they might do, and 3. Don’t expect others to adequately serve and protect just because they wear uniforms that say they will. Unexpected circumstances are going to take place, yet how we respond is not always dependent on the initial situation because there might be other factors and other people over whom we have no control. What we can do, nonetheless, is prepare ourselves for whatever might take place.

Although I have no regrets toward how I’ve responded in the past, I know that it is imperative that I focus on right now, and do what I can to be prepared for what might happen later. What I’m doing along those lines is simply trying to be a better person today than I was yesterday.  I’m paying closer attention to what I’m doing, than to what’s being done around me. In that way, if a 911 situation materializes, I don’t have to worry about how to react…I can just go with the flow.

I’ll holla…


To comment or respond please click on the word comments at the bottom of this page, or email me at grace.calvin187@gmail.com

Experience 101

Experience is the best teacher, so how do we get our grades? The cut, ‘Hard Knock Life’,from the broadway hit ‘Annie’,speaks to how some people feel about life’s merit system. 

Steada treated, we get tricked  
Steada kisses, we get kicked 
It's the hard knock life!

What I’m hearing is that we want to be accepted and respected, but instead we’re being hoodwinked and rejected. What I’m believing is that life is simple but the way we approach it will determine the amount of hardship we encounter. In short, our attitude and actions will dictate how well we learn from what we’re experiencing. I’m doing my best to accept that people, including myself, are going to be who we are, and do what we do, until we make a spiritual decision to change. If I’m having a hard time dealing with others, or am upset about the situations I find myself in, then  my only option is to change.

Most of you already know about the discomforts I’ve experienced, like cancer, divorce, drug addiction, and racism. What you might not know is that I’ve been lied to, cheated, stolen from, and suffer from bouts of unworthiness and low self esteem. You wanna know how I feel about all of this? I am not alone. We all go through stuff, and as long as we’re living on this earthly realm, …it ain’t gon stop. It’s not about what happens to us, or who we think caused it, it’s about how we respond.

I thank God for my drug life, cause can’t too many people beat me out of money or compromise my financial well being. I knew that pimps, players and hustlers were in the night clubs and houses of ill repute, but now I know that they reside in executive offices and corporate boardrooms as well. I appreciate the illnesses I’ve endured because I’ve come to realize that all the surgeries, medications, herbs, and alternative treatments have their place, but faith and the desire to be healthy is what’s most important in the recovery process. Last but certainly not least, I thank all the haters and naysayers for not believing in me cause you only provoke me to be stronger in fulfilling my God-Given Purpose for being here. That purpose…To be of service to others.

Now don’t get it twisted. There's the good experiences as well, which teach us how important it is to give and to be grateful for what we receive. Y’all actually read my blogs and listen to my radio show. I’ve even been approached by those of you young and old, friend and stranger, who have thanked me for something I’ve said or done to enhance your life experience, and it’s those particular encounters that coerce me into wanting to do so much more.

Everyone, everywhere has had similar experiences, and my contention is that it is through these experiences that we grade ourselves. An acquisition of knowledge is fine, but a Bachelor, Master, or Doctorate Degree in life skills is what makes us who we are. We will continue to  experience life, and it's how we respond to its challenges that will determine our grade point average.

I’ll Holla…


To comment or respond please click on the word comments at the bottom of this page, or email me at grace.calvin187@gmail.com

Someone You Should Know

We called her GaGa. Maybe it was because she was from Louisiana and it was a Creole idiom for grandmother. Or maybe it was because her oldest granddaughter had a speech impediment early on, and couldn’t say ‘grandmama’. Whatever the case, you might not have known Loretta Davenport Smith, but you knew GaGa.

She came to Chicago in 1920 with her mother Celestine Barber, and at the age of 16 she married Roosevelt Davenport with whom she had three children:  Calvin, Madeline, and Nathaniel. They all lived with Roosevelt’s mother and stepfather Georgia and Earl Jennings, in a kitchenette apartment, at 5526 S. Michigan. 

Times were tough back then because of the Great Depression, and employment wasn’t on an upward swing until America entered World War II in 1941. The Works Progress Administration, formed in 1939, provided hard earned, honest money for Earl and his stepson Roosevelt. GaGa, on the other hand, got involved in what was called  ‘policy’. She wrote numbers for patrons in betting parlors, and delivered numbered slips and money to the policy headquarters located in a basement apartment on 54th and Prairie. Dangerous and illegal, but steady income, this precursor to today’s lottery was one of her earlier means of contributing to the family’s financial well-being.

Now GaGa was very fair-skinned with hazel eyes that turned gray or blue dependent on the color of her attire. Had she so desired, she could have easily passed for white but her refusal to do so caused her to be denied a job at Marshall Fields which her fair complexioned friend accepted without hesitation. GaGa’s favorite phrase, ‘Got to keep on keepin on’ was a never ending stimulus, and she was seldom without employment. She held several ‘legal’ occupations, the most sustainable being a waitress at an army officers’ club. From our conversations, her presence there can ironically be attributed to her being able to pass Hollywood’s ‘brown bag test’.

GaGa’s husband’s unfaithfulness, and her son Calvin’s heroin addiction caused her extreme vexation for several years. After a divorce she met Reon Smith, whom she married, and who was very adamant about moving to California. Wanting to start a new life, and seeing an opportunity to be relieved of her son’s continued harassment for money,  she and her new husband, in their mid fifties, moved to LA. Reon died suddenly a few years later, she remained in LA, but decided, at the age of 70, to return to Chicago.

She moved into a building about 5400 North, in a predominantly white area. At the age of 75 she shared with us that she wanted a companion. When asked why she didn’t pursue one she responded that there were only white men available, and  that she preferred men of the black persuasion. Within a month or so, after being informed that elderly black men frequently gathered at a McDonald’s on 7800 South Cottage Grove, she had moved into a building on 7600 South Maryland, 3 blocks from that particular McDonalds. 

Being the enterprising person she was, Ga Ga had no need to go to 7800 South Cottage Grove. Soon after the move, she came down from her apartment on the sixth floor and noticed an appealing gentleman in the lobby. She leisurely approached him and inquired if he knew how to defrost a freezer. He replied that he did and although the freezer was never defrosted they developed and maintained an intimate relationship for the next 15 years. They totall enjoyed traveling together and alternating their overnight night stays between her sixth, and his fourth floor apartment. According to GaGa , she had never been that happy in her entire life.

Today would have been her 101st birthday. I remember the day before she left this earthly realm, when just before her 91st birthday she announced, “If you want to see GaGa again, you’d better do it today”. I didn’t see her that day but I called that night. “How you doing GaGa?”, I asked. “I’m doing well”, she responded, “Just waiting on my mother”. Evidently her mother came, cause early the next morning, Ga Ga had passed on. 

The GaGa I speak of is my grandmother ya’ll, I love her, I appreciate the legacy she left, and I feel that she’s someone you should know. I ask that you join with me in saying ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY GAGA’, and implore you to at least consider her conviction to ‘keep on keepin on’, despite all odds, cause someday someway it’s gon all work out…in this realm and in the next.

I’ll holla… 


To comment or respond please click on the word comments at the bottom of this page, or email me at grace.calvin187@gmail.com