Soulacoaster Read online

  On my first day at Kenwood I went to music class, held in room 126.1 didn’t know what to expect.

  I remember there were 40 or 50 kids in the classroom. Everyone except me seemed to be old friends; I didn’t know a soul. I took a seat in the front row and thought to myself: What the hell am I doing in here? I felt like an alien.

  Then the teacher arrived. The minute she stepped into the room, all talking stopped. Her hair was stylishly done. I saw from how she dressed that she had class.

  Her eyes were dark brown. Her eyes were looking over the room, seeing who’s who and what’s what. Her eyes told me that she was no substitute teacher. This lady wasn’t playing.

  Her name was Miss Lena McLin.

  She said, “There are two students in here with gum in their mouths. I’m going to give them two seconds to put the gum in the garbage or I’ll fail them.” Right away 20 students got up and put their gum in the trash can. I saw that this lady was smart. If she’d said six seconds, they woulda had time to think about it and maybe only five or six kids would have gotten up. She could sure take charge of a classroom.

  Next thing I knew, she was pointing right at me. I got scared and checked to see if I was chewing gum. I wasn’t. I didn’t know what she wanted from me.

  “Do you know who you are?”

  “Yes, ma’am; I’m Robert Kelly.”

  “No, you are God’s child. The spirit of God is on you, son. You are going to be famous. You are going to write songs for Michael Jackson. You are going to travel the world. People will pay to see you. You are anointed. God has given you a gift that no one can take away.”

  I had never met this lady before and she had never met me. I didn’t have a clue as to what she was talking about. I had heard prophecy stuff before, but never about me. Besides, I wasn’t into prophecies. I didn’t believe them. Even in my mother’s church, I was always too shy to jump up and start hollering. I never did catch the Holy Ghost. Now here at school, this teacher was talking in tongues, and I was confused as I could be. I loved music, sure, but my main plan in life was to play basketball.

  Meanwhile, Miss McLin kept on talking, even as she walked over to the upright piano and sat down. She began playing gospel chords, which seemed weird to me, I’d never seen a teacher play gospel songs.

  At the time I didn’t know that she was a pastor as well as a teacher. I didn’t know anything. All I knew was that Miss McLin was lifting her hand with her fingers spread apart and prophesizing on me like a preacher.

  While she was playing, she was praying, “Praise God. Praise His holy name. Praise Him for giving this child a talent that the world will recognize. Praise Him for putting this boy in my classroom where he can grow. Lord, let him grow. Keep him strong.”

  Then she looked over at me and said, “Stand up, boy. I want you to sing.”

  “I’m not really a singer,” I said. “I’m a basketball player.”

  “Son, you’re not a basketball player anymore. You’re singing today. Just follow me.”

  She started singing Billy Preston’s, “You are so beautiful … to me.”

  I followed her and sang the same words, the same notes. I was so shy, though, that I wouldn’t face the class. I just faced her. Her face, bright and smiling, gave me confidence. Her voice inspired my voice. I started singing stuff that was amazing, even to me. Something clicked in me; I don’t know exactly what. I started flying. The weirdest sensation came all over me. I was able to sing lower than I ever had; I was able to go higher; new ideas popped off in my head, and I could sing them all. The girls in the class were going crazy, and the guys were giving me the “woof-woof-woof” dog cheer. I was a new person. This woman was taking me someplace I’d never been before.

  I had a new lease on life. Part of it had to do with the girls. In high school, if you were light-skinned or could sing a little, it was a wrap. I wasn’t light-skinned, but having heard me sing a little, the girls were showing me serious love. That was enough to make my day … but not enough to make me change my mind. I still wanted to be Michael Jordan.

  Next day I was at basketball practice when I saw Miss McLin coming around to talk to my new coach. No one had told him about my reading problem, so he thought I was like everyone else.

  “Do you have a Robert Kelly?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Call him over here, please.”

  Coach called me over. I stood in front of both of them.

  “I want Robert off the team,” said Miss McLin.

  “He’s a good player,” said the coach.

  “Doesn’t matter to me how good he is. His music comes first. Robert must be focused. Basketball is a distraction.”

  “But he loves it.”

  “I realize that. But if he plays ball and does music, he’ll wind up diluting them both. He’s going to have to choose.”

  “But shouldn’t that be his choice?” the Coach asked.

  “God has already made the choice,” Miss McLin explained. “God has given this boy a precious gift. And I wouldn’t want to defy God’s will, would you?”

  I had some thoughts about Miss McLin’s attitude. Music was cool, but hoop was still my heart. I couldn’t give up hoop.

  “You aren’t giving it up,” she explained. “You’re just giving up your place on the team. Basketball is good recreation, and I’m sure you’ll be playing it for the rest of your life.”

  “But I need to …”

  “You need to listen to me, young man. You need to be in this music classroom every single day. I expect you to arrive early and leave late. I expect you to work twice as hard as any of the other students.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re twice as talented. One day your records will be bought by millions. One day your songs will be played all over the world.”

  I was asking myself, How is that possible? That’s just a crazy lady talking crazy talk.

  “You think this is crazy talk,” Miss McLin said, as if reading my mind, “but you can ask anyone in this school, and they’ll tell you that I am not a crazy woman. I am a serious woman. I am a God-fearing woman. I am a trained musician, personally trained by my uncle, Thomas A. Dorsey. Have you ever heard of Thomas A. Dorsey, Robert?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Thomas A. Dorsey was a genius. They call him the Father of Gospel Music. He started out playing piano for the famous blues singer Ma Rainey in the twenties. You need to study these things, Robert. This is your heritage. My uncle used to go by the name Georgia Tom. In 1928, he wrote a song and recorded it with Tampa Red called ‘Tight Like That’ that sold millions of copies. Then in the thirties, his wife died giving birth to his son. The baby also died. My uncle was so grief stricken that he wrote a song called ‘Precious Lord, Take My Hand.’”

  “I know that song,” I said. “My mom sings it.”

  “Everyone sings it. Aretha Franklin sang it at Dr. King’s funeral. Before that, Mahalia Jackson sang it. I know you’ve heard of Mahalia Jackson.”

  “She sang here in Chicago.”

  “Mahalia got famous singing my uncle’s songs, like ‘Peace in the Valley.’ When Uncle Thomas went from writing blues songs to gospel songs, though, some people didn’t like them. I’m talking about church people. They thought his church songs sounded bluesy and jazzy. Well, they did. But Uncle Thomas knew that there’s no sin in writing a gospel song with jazz chords. No sin in putting blues feeling into God’s music because all music is God’s music. You must understand, Robert, that Uncle Thomas invented modern gospel because he wasn’t listening to anyone except God. He knew that God wanted His message sent out to the world. And if a jazzy feeling or a bluesy feeling made God’s message more appealing, then so be it. Uncle Thomas taught me to play piano, to write music, and to recognize genius. He had genius, Robert, and I see his genius in you.”

  “I still have to come early and leave late every day?”

  “Every single day. Not only that, but I’m going to teach you more
than popular singing and gospel singing. I’m going to teach you opera.”

  “Opera?”

  “That’s right. I’m going to teach you the most difficult singing there is. The more styles you learn, the better you’ll be.”

  I wanted to complain; I wanted to say that I still wanted to be on the basketball team; I wanted to refuse to come early and leave late every day; I wanted to reject all this hard work she was talking about. But I didn’t open my mouth for one simple reason:

  The lady intimidated me.

  I loved Miss McLin. I loved her because I could feel that she loved God, she loved music, and she loved me. She was strong, but I was used to strong women. My mother was strong. Miss McLin couldn’t sing like Mom—she didn’t have Mom’s powerhouse voice—but she could teach me things my mother couldn’t. Miss McLin knew about breathing. She taught me to breathe deeply from my diaphragm.

  “Shallow breathing leads to shallow singing,” she said, “and you aren’t a shallow singer, Robert. You’re a singer who must sing from your soul.”

  When Miss McLin gave me a song where the notes were too high for me to reach, she said, “Lift your eyebrows when you sing.”

  I lifted my eyebrows and hit the notes.

  Then when the notes got higher and I complained I couldn’t hit them, she said, “Think of a jet plane soaring through the clouds. Think of the highest, tallest things that you can imagine.”

  I thought of the jet and the Sears tower and hit the notes.

  But then, when the notes got ridiculously high and there was no way in the world I could sing them, she pressed my stomach real hard.

  I hit the notes.

  This is a technique that I still use to this day. That’s how I hit those notes on “When A Woman Loves,” by thinking about jet planes, the Sears Tower, and the sun and the stars.

  Miss McLin gave me a song called “Ama del Cuore,” the first love song. She said it was written in Italian 400 years ago.

  “I can’t sing a song that old,” I said. “I can’t sing a song written in Italian.”

  But I did. Miss McLin showed me that I could sing anything.

  Miss McLin said I could write an aria. So I created an aria.

  Miss McLin said I could create a gospel song, a love song, and a dance song. So I created them my way—all in the same afternoon.

  She told me that she had written cantatas, masses, orchestral works for piano and violin. She’d even written electronic music.

  “If I can do it, Robert,” she said, “so can you.”

  Miss McLin was college trained. She went to Spelman in Atlanta and then earned a master’s degree in music from the American Conservatory in Chicago.

  “Whatever melodies I have inside me,” she said, “you have even more inside you. Those melodies in you are limitless because they’re coming from a limitless God. Our job is to praise Him through music. As long as you keep praising Him, He’s going to keep blessing you.”

  I got to the point that if Miss McLin told me that I could jump off the Sears Tower and fly over Lake Michigan, I’d be jumping and flying.

  When it came to music, Miss McLin did wonders for my confidence. When it came to reading, though, I was still sunk. At one point my reading was so shamefully bad I stopped going to classes altogether. I couldn’t take the pressure. I ran to the music room instead. But even there I ran into trouble.

  There was this guy called Charles Craig. He was a Herbie Hancock fan, a wizard of the keyboard, and another protégé of Miss McLin. Not only could Charles play great, he could also write great. Gospel, jazz, blues, pop, classical—the whole nine yards. Meanwhile, I couldn’t play an instrument or read or write a single note of music; I didn’t know the sharps from the flats. When I looked at a musical score, I got a headache. I did everything by ear.

  Being around Charles was a little intimidating, but I saw how much Miss McLin admired him, and it made me want to learn piano. By watching him, though, I also learned something. He was a bad little guy, but when he read from the sheet music and played it flawlessly, it sounded cold. It didn’t feel good. On the other hand, when he let loose and just improvised, it felt great.

  I wanted to play in a way that felt great. Miss McLin always talked about following that good feeling wherever it leads. When I found this secret room at school that everyone seemed to have forgotten about, it became another place—a safe place—where I could escape from my classes and the world—and there was a piano in it.

  RIBBON IN THE SKY

  By the end of 9th grade, Miss McLin told me I was ready to enter the school-wide talent contest. I was still too shy and wanted to wait, but she insisted. She said I could practice it in our class before I sang it in the auditorium in front of the whole school.

  But even in my music class, my shyness had me acting strange. It was Miss McLin who handed me a pair of sunglasses and told me to put them on; and it worked. I pretended to be Stevie Wonder. That was easy ’cause I was doing his “Ribbon in the Sky.” My classmates encouraged me. They gave me the confidence to sing before the entire student body.

  On the day of the contest I wore the shades. I even had my friend Larry Hood guide me on stage like I was blind. I was still too shy to look at the audience and sing. Charles Craig accompanied me on piano. When I got to the line that says, “There’s a ribbon in the sky for our love,” the screaming started. The screaming got out of hand. I was afraid that I might start a riot, but I was also overjoyed. Girls were screaming for me, everybody was screaming for me. That’s the day, like Peter Parker, I got bit by the spider, a music spider. If Peter was Spider Man, I became Music Man.

  I got a feeling that day that I had never gotten on the basketball court. I felt love like I had never felt from anyone except my mother. This time, it was coming from 500 people in the auditorium, but it felt like a million people to me. I wanted to experience that feeling again and again. I had taken a chance, got my courage up, and earned those screams—I’d earned the audience’s love. That feeling of connection began to replace a lot of the darkness. It eased the shame I still felt inside. I went from feeling out of place to thinking that maybe, just maybe, this was the reason I graduated—maybe this school was exactly where I was supposed to be.

  Miss McLin saw me as a winner and did everything in her power to make sure I saw myself the same way. But I couldn’t. No matter how good it felt to make music, I couldn’t get away from the fact that I was at the very bottom of my class. In a school where hundreds of kids were reading their books and finding their way, I was lost. History, geography, science, and literature—they all require reading.

  I started to wear the sunglasses all the time at school, hiding behind them—hoping no one would see me, call on me, or realize I was even alive. I’d walk down the hallways, practically hugging the wall, dragging my head against it like I was crazy.

  I ran from the classes and started locking myself into a little room at the back of the music room. It was really just a storage closet no one used with a lot of junk in it, some broken-down chairs and an untuned upright piano. I went in there every day, basically just to hide, but while I was hiding, I figured I might as well try to play the piano. I wanted to show Miss McLin that I could play the piano, too, like Craig. I started messing around, making these little two-finger chords. It was slow, but they sounded good to me. Two fingers became two fingers and one bass finger on the other hand, that became three fingers, then four fingers, bass became one finger, then two fingers, and so on. I kept it simple, and I started figuring out melodies on the piano. I did this for a whole year. It was really how I started writing songs on the piano. By the end of that school year, I had so many songs I had learned and written on the piano. Miss McLin tried to figure out just how I was learning so quickly. She had no idea that I was practicing and teaching myself every day in that closet.

  On the negative side, I was ditching all my classes and hiding out in the storage room. When the bell rang, I’d put on my dark shades, leave th
e room, and walk down the hallway like I was going to class, but then turn around and go right back to the room. I never walked the hallways without my shades. I felt like they made me disappear. I kept my head down. I did this for a long time … and then I got caught.

  The school was about to kick me out, and rather than face my mother—who’d whip my butt when she found out how much school I’d skipped—I decided to run away from home.

  I was feeling a little nuts.

  Somehow Miss McLin found out what was happening and called me to her office. “You’ve got to stay in school,” she said. “You’ve got work to do.”

  “I can’t do my schoolwork,” I said. “I can’t stay in school.”

  “You’ll get help, Robert. I’ll see to it.”

  “The principal says I’m beyond help. She told me that with all my failing grades and all these classes I’ve skipped, she’s throwing me out. I don’t want to be there when my mother finds out. I want to be on a bus going to Alaska.”

  “I’ll see the principal myself.”

  Next thing I knew, Miss McLin took my hand and walked into the office of the principal, who was a take-no-prisoners kind of administrator. I felt like the Scarecrow brought for an audience with the Wizard of Oz.

  “I’m a little busy right now,” the principal said.

  “So am I,” said Miss McLin. “Busy training my best student to be an important musician whose influence will be felt the world over. My only problem, though, is that he says he’s being expelled.”

  “He is.”

  “That’s unacceptable. I cannot stand idly by. He needs an education. It’s not like he’s gangbanging or selling drugs. The boy’s doing his best.”

  “That’s not what my reports say.”

  “Your reports are wrong. I should know; I’m his teacher.”

  “His other teachers don’t agree with you. They share my view that Robert is not an acceptable student.”

  “Let me be direct,” said Ms. McLin.