Meeting Chante Moore (Pt. 4): You Can’t Script This Stuff

My “Call Waiting” alert chimed in, for what seemed to be the 12th or 13th time as I held the phone away from my ear to prevent going deaf.  It seemed that everyone within the past hour was after my hearing cells with all the excited screaming and yelling.  But that was a good thing, or in response to it.  Everybody was calling to either congratulate, ask “how” or share the “wow”.  The person on the call at the time was a friend who simply said, “I will never doubt your adventures again”.  This is funny because she’d experienced two or three unbelievable moments with me back in college and seems to have forgotten that I don’t look for madness. I create it. Or it finds me.

When we last last left off with this series, I was kicking myself for not feeling confident enough in my concert attendance attire to volunteer to go onstage with (altogether now) my baby: The Ms. Chante’ Moore.  I completely lost it when I later learned that she was hanging out, outside of the concert, enjoying some of the county fair food and night air, talking to fans (one lucky one in particular). 

I had already made a complete buffoon out of myself when I met her backstage, about 16 years prior.  And before THAT, I gave my wife justification to give me my walking papers, preparing for that very same show.  Click the preceding links to read about those episodes in “Meeting Chante’ Moore (Parts 1-3)”.

What’s happened since then? Well…

• She followed me back on Instagram (been following each other for over 10 years on Twitter)
• She admitted that we shared a mutual love for The Benny Hill Show, then told me, “You just became one of my favorites too!” (remember the pic of me blacking out and losing my wig on the floor?)
• She eventually showed me love after reading the blog posts about her (instead of calling security or filing a restraining order!)
• and so forth and so on…

And now, she’s started The Moore Chante Show weekly in-home concert and Ice-Cream Sunday. I’ve been an active participant since it debuted on Easter Sunday, always reminding everyone that #SundayIsChantday. Hell, her Facebook Fan Club even changed my membership classification to “Top Fan” and “Visual Storyteller”. Yeah, I’ve come a long way from being that guy at Starship Music store who was selling her debut CD to customers who were fans of other music genres. I told each person that if they bought it and could honestly say they didn’t LOVE it, I’d refund their money AND let them keep the CD.

Not ONE refund. In fact, many came back asking for more of her music. All I could sell them at the time was El DeBarge’s “In The Storm” CD, on which she appeared twice (Oh-My-GOD, her voice on “Love Me Tonight”).

So if you haven’t figured it out by now, she is my all-time favorite. I love her music – I love her voice – I love her style – I love her class.

So why am I writing this new edition to my/our saga? Well, if you didn’t witness it, things got crazy during her last show and several friends said, “You HAVE to write about this, Kenny.”

[In Living Color Calhoun Tubbs voice] Wrote a blog about it. Like ta HEAR it? Here it go!

Just recently, I submitted a song request on her show for her to sing, “Just When I Needed You” by Roberta Flack (the love theme from 1981’s “Bustin’ Loose” with Richard Pryor and Cicely Tyson). She answered (I love when she replies because for 30-60 seconds, she’s thinking of meeeeeee!) that Bustin’ Loose was one of her favorites too and she loved that song as well! She admitted that she didn’t know it, but would look into it. Happiness.

Let me interrupt this program with some useless trivia: My favorite R&B Group of all time is Earth, Wind & Fire. Maurice White is my musical father and idol. Luther Vandross is my all-time favorite male singer and I love performing his classic hit, “So Amazing”.

Useless Trivia Point #2: I have 5 goals when it comes to Chante’ –

1. See Chante’ Moore live, in concert. (CHECK!)
2. Meet Chante’ Moore someday. (CHECK!)
3. Find some way to get Chante’ to sing something, ANYTHING, to/for me.
4. Have one of my songs recorded by her (I’ve written four for her and her only).
5. Marry Chante’ Moore! Highly improbable, but the thought was there. Besides, she already married ONE “Kenny” and he ruined it for the rest of us…

We now return you to your blog reading, already in progress.

If you were watching last week, then you might remember the magic moment when Chante’ took a moment to mention me, referring to me as “her friend”. I was eating grapes at my desk and didn’t quite register her calling me “Zoot” (as prefers to call me). Then she said my name a SECOND time.

Word to the wise: Never eat grapes while listening to your idol and gasping in surprise.

And then she sang, of all things…

“So Amazing” by Luther Vandross!!!! (see how that trivia comes back around?)

…and that’s my story. All’s well that ends well. Move along. Nothing else to see here.

What’s that? You want to know how I reacted?

DAYUM! IF YOU MUST KNOW…

But I’m alright now.

Until next time.