Fly Jock Blog

I love success stories, I root for the underdog, and I’m all about doing what it takes to get ahead.   Most of my mentors have had humble beginnings and have worked hard to achieve great things. They were committed to uplifting and making a change for the better for the people and communities that have […]

Gubernatorial candidates Andrew Gillum (Florida) and Stacey Abrams (Georgia) have given the November mid-term elections just the spark it needed.   It’s not easy to get voters fired up for non-presidential elections so the national attention these two candidates are getting is inspiring voters in those states.  But what about the rest of the country […]

The Queen and I go way back. I have been a fan of hers from the beginning. How could I not be? She literally took R&B music to another stratosphere and since I play the hits, you know the Queen was in heavy rotation. I met her face to face for the first time when […]

Every one who’s been on this ride with the Tom Joyner Morning Show for the last close to 25 years knows I like to do things Big. We started big from day one with a live in-house band (Uncle Butchie and the Live House) led by the late Morris “Butch” Stewart and our inaugural guest […]

I hope you’ve had a chance to see the Procter & Gamble video called “The Talk.” It reminds us that African-Americans have to have discussions that some families don’t necessarily need to have – like talks about being judged by their skin color by white people and sadly, by Black people, too. In fact, colorism, […]

It’s been 12 years this week since Hurricane Katrina brought death, devastation, and destruction to New Orleans and other parts of coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.  The majority of survivors evacuated to Texas,  but they also moved to other parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, and Arkansas. led to  But we […]

Fly Jock Blog

  Have you ever had a time where everything fell into place at the right time? Well, that happened to me this past weekend. The setup of the best weekend ever started a few weeks ago, when my Clark Atlanta buddy, Kamilah Smith, asked me to join her for the Earth, Wind, & Fire  with […]

I am so happy to be here in Flint to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of the Hamilton Community Health Network. I want to thank Clarence Pierce for his commitment to the city, the community, the health centers…and ultimately, the people of Flint. Before I go any further, I’d to bring greetings from the Tom Joyner […]

When was the last time you left a movie theater thinking about the songs you heard throughout out the film? For me, it’s been a long time. Back in the day movie sound tracks were as exciting as the movies themselves.  Movies like Shaft in the 70s, Purple Rain in the 80s and Boomerang in […]

It’s African-American Appreciation Month and sometimes even we get stumped by a musical question. Last week on “Arsenio Hall Monday,” we became consumed by Childish Gambino’s hit “RedBone” because it doesn’t include the word redbone in the lyrics. Given the actual lyrics, a more fitting name obviously would have been “Stay Woke.” Arsenio thought that […]

It started with my mom, Buddy, and later my Aunt Nettie…the two most influential women in my early life. Decades later, I still depend on women to make my life better. That’s immediately evident should you drop by the Red Velvet Cake Studio or our Reach Media offices, where 80 percent of the people who […]

It’s been eight years since the Tom Joyner Morning Show, family members and I were in Chicago at Grant Park for one of the most significant events in history. We were surrounded by politicians, media and civil rights icons, and even though we were hoping and praying for a victory that night, we were almost […]