April 20, 1940

Calvin Leavy was born in Scott (Pulaski County), the youngest son of fifteen children born to a musical family. Leavy, a vocalist and guitarist, recorded “Cummins Prison Farm,” a blues song that debuted on Billboard’s rhythm and blues chart on May 2, 1970, and stayed for five weeks, reaching No. 40. It was also the No. 1 song on the Memphis, Tennessee, station WDIA. Leavy was the first person charged under a 1989 Arkansas “drug kingpin law” targeting crime rings. His last performance before his incarceration was with the gospel group the Zion Five. Leavy died on June 6, 2010, in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County); he had been due to be eligible for parole in 2011. He was survived by sixteen children of his eighteen children.