Who is Herman Calloway?
by Catrina Earnshaw

Herman Calloway is a grumpy musician who is famous across the Grand Rapids in Michigan for playing the bass fiddle. He is very stubborn and not always the nicest.  Bud says "But isn't it just my luck to come clean across the state to find my daddy and he turns out to be a mean old coot?" (78) which shows how Mr. Calloway comes off as cranky. He doesn’t like people wasting his time, especially not Bud. We figure out in the end of the novel that the reason why he is so cranky is because his daughter left him and he was upset about that. In the beginning, Bud believes that Mr. Calloway is his father, but in the end it turns out that Mr. Calloway is his grandfather and Bud’s mother is the one who left him Mr. Calloway. In the end, Mr. Calloway opens up more and becomes nicer after he finds out that Bud is his grandson.