The Hippest Trip in America (3 page)

But without a doubt the signature symbol of
Soul Train
was the human alley that dancers moved through every week. Known as the
Soul Train
line and inspired by showy dances at house parties and clubs nationwide, this was a showcase for creativity, sexuality, and fun. It would be on the
Soul Train
line that careers were born, stars were showcased, and dynamic new directions in dance emerged. Its roots were quite humble. Don saw it done all the time at parties he attended around Chicago in the fifties and sixties. So it was no great brainstorm but a fun midwestern social ritual that, via television, became a bit of a national obsession.

“It was overnight hot,” said Don about the show's impact in Chi-Town. “Overnight because of the fact that nothing was ever targeted at them. Nothing ever targeted us. When it came on it was like, almost in minutes, every black person in town knew about it, and not because it was a wonderful show but because it was theirs . . . They felt that was something on television that was designed to target our audience. Or my audience. The community has always been there for us and has always treated
Soul Train
like it belonged to them.”

As a teenager living in Gary, Indiana, Reggie Thornton would come up for Thursday tapings of the show, making the trip on the South Shore train that he says was subsidized by Cornelius. “Then all of a sudden Don Cornelius got an idea to make a pilot for
Soul Train
and to bring it out here to California, to make it a nationwide show,” says Thornton. “I didn't know what a pilot was, but Don Cornelius called my parents and asked could he get permission to use me in a pilot for
Soul Train
. I knew that I was going to be on national television once this pilot took off.”

The show was such an immediate local success that black hair-care giant Johnson Products reached out and expressed interest in syndicating it nationally. The Afro was in full bloom, and the company's Afro Sheen product was one of the most popular ways to keep your 'fro soft and round. Its owner and founder, George Johnson, inspired by the new opportunities for black business, was in an expansive mood. During this same year, he was in the process of founding the Independence Bank and getting his company on the American Stock Exchange, making Johnson Products the first African American–owned company to make the cut. According to some of Don's business associates, Johnson agreed to put up $600,000 to fund the show if it was national. Johnson was hoping for a slot on one of the three major networks, but CBS, NBC, and ABC all turned the show down.

So Cornelius and Johnson went the syndication route, looking to the many independent stations around the country that were constantly searching for ways to carve out a niche audience in competition with the networks. In cities like New York and Chicago, there was a lot of after-school programming aimed at schoolkids (cartoon shows hosted by genial, goofy adults and talking puppets) and late-night black-and-white movies. Not unlike the landscape during the early days of radio, many of the shows on local stations had a major advertiser who would underwrite the broadcast.

Johnson Products and Don initially hoped to expand the show to twenty-four cities, but the response was tepid, with only seven cities (Atlanta, Cleveland, Detroit, Houston, San Francisco, and, crucially, Philadelphia and Los Angeles) ordering episodes.

But could
Soul Train
stay in Chicago and succeed? “We had our experience in Chicago, and when we decided to grow the show into something more sophisticated, we realized very early on that the kind of production talent and experience that we would require was not in Chicago,” Don said. “At the same time, we realized that that kind of experience and skill in terms of personnel were falling all over themselves in Los Angeles looking for work . . . If you wanted to do
Soul Train
in a bigger way, you had to go to LA.”

Los Angeles had long been the promised land for anyone enamored of a show-business career. That's where all the movie studios and television networks were based, and a number of the major record labels had significant operations there. Los Angeles had already claimed another Chi-Town pop culture institution: Hugh Hefner's
Playboy
had shifted many of its operations to the West Coast for these same reasons.

But for black people, LA wouldn't have been as attractive without Motown's example. Berry Gordy's pioneering record company had made surprising inroads on network TV, coproducing a number-one-rated NBC special (1968's
TCB,
also known as
Taking Care of Business with Diana Ross & the Supremes and the Temptations
), making alliances with big talent agencies, and carefully moving the record company west between 1968 and 1971. The Jackson Five, though signed in Detroit, would be relocated to Los Angeles and would, in clothing style and positioning, reflect the sun-kissed Hollywood environment.

Motown's move to LA would ignite a historic shift in black entertainment. Starting in the 1970s, LA would become the de facto headquarters for popular black music. Motown moved to a building on Sunset Boulevard, and scores of artists, producers, and industry professionals from Detroit, Memphis, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago moved west as the major record labels were, influenced by Motown's success, investing heavily in black music. All the LA-based labels (MCA, Warner Bros., Capitol), as well as those in New York, inaugurated black music departments, expanding their rosters of artists and staff and raising the value of recording contracts and, increasingly, salaries in the field.

A kind of media civil rights movement, a delayed reaction to the real civil rights movement, was under way, which led previously reluctant mainstream businesses to distribute black content and banks to invest in products aimed at black consumers. The 1960s had been a time of marching and protests, political activities that opened doors for black advancement that had never before existed in the United States. For many, the 1970s would be a time to capitalize on these new opportunities. A popular phrase at the time was “black capitalism” (though President Richard Nixon's use of the term made many question its value). Publications aimed at upscale black audiences (
Essence
and
Black Enterprise
) were founded, and FM stations that featured soul and funk artists debuted in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, and other major markets—many of them black owned.

Blaxploitation movies, driven by dynamic soundtracks composed by Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, James Brown, Willie Hutch, and others made box-office noise while creating a stable of sepia movie stars. A new generation of black record labels, led by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff's prolific Philadelphia International Records, were having massive pop hits. Don Cornelius's weekly show would be part of this shift, but not while it was based out of a small studio in a Chicago business building.

Soul Train
's move to LA didn't mean abandoning Chi-Town. For a while Don traveled between the two cities, continuing to host the local Chicago version while launching the national show. Even after stopping that killer schedule, the Chicago show was broadcast throughout the seventies with Don's associate Clinton Ghent hosting. Don would, in manner and style, remain a Chicagoan the rest of his life. One of the subtexts of moving
Soul Train
to LA would be his own sometimes-humorous adjustment to life in the City of Angels.

One overarching theme of
Soul Train
in Chicago that set the stage for the show's future was Don's ability to build alliances. Just as the radio innovator Al Benson had formed strong ties between himself and the various radio stations and advertisers of postwar Chicago, Cornelius built partnerships with talent (the O'Jays, Jerry Butler) and business folks (George Johnson) at the tail end of the civil rights movement that would sustain him and his enterprise for years.

Chapter 2
Love, Peace, and Soul

ON AUGUST
11, 1965, Marquette Frye, a young black man in his twenties, was pulled over in the Watts section of Los Angeles by a California Highway Patrolman on suspicion of driving drunk. Marquette told the officer he wasn't intoxicated, and an argument began. Marquette's brother Ronald, who'd been in the car, ran to get his mother from their nearby home. The patrolman called for backup. As the Frye family argued with police, a growing crowd of the family's predominantly black neighbors gathered to protest what they deemed police harassment. Locals tossed bottles at the police. The entire Frye family was arrested. More police arrived on the scene. So did more angry Watts residents.

Years of tension between the police and the black population came to a head that August night in 1965. Led by Chief of Police William Parker, the LAPD had recruited southern-born whites and developed a militarized, confrontational philosophy toward young black men that was a motorized version of the twenty-first century's stop-and-frisk. Parker encouraged police authorities in Los Angeles, whether the LAPD, the CHP (California Highway Patrol), or members of the sheriff's department, to err on the side of suspicion and intimidation in any interaction with young black males.

Though segregation was not officially on the books in LA, the city's residency laws were full of “covenants” that restricted sales of homes in desirable areas to blacks, Hispanics, or Asians, forcing them to live primarily in East LA, Compton, South LA, and Watts. This is the backdrop for six days of fighting, shooting, and burning that would result in thirty-four deaths, the deployment of 3,900 national guardsmen, and $40 million in property damage. The 1960s would see race riots break out in many big cities around the United States, most triggered by a similarly combustible mix of aggressive policing and black resentment. But few were as brutal as the Watts riots in Los Angeles in 1965.

Many of the thousands who participated in the Watts rebellion shouted “Burn, baby, burn!”—a slogan used by local DJ the Magnificent Montague to hype a hot record he was spinning and, like much soul radio slang, also a sexual double entendre. However, in the riot's wake, Montague was accused by LA mayor Sam Yorty of inciting local blacks to riot with his phrase “Burn, baby, burn!” In the sixties there were many urban riots and many serious-minded official reports issued in their aftermath. Watts was no exception. A former CIA director was called in and would issue a report outlining all of the racial and institutional reasons for the riots. But as was typical of the time, the report's recommendations for change were resoundingly ignored by LA's city fathers: issues with the police were brushed aside (later igniting the 1992 riots), and restrictive real estate policies took decades to loosen. However, a few positive things came out of the immediate official reaction. Just two years after the Watts riots, Alain Leroy Locke High School, named after the Harlem Renaissance poet, was opened at 325 East 111th Street in Watts. The school was clearly a peace offering to a community that was overpoliced and underserved. While the school did not make the neighborhood any safer or the policing any less intrusive, it did become a magnet for talented young people seeking a career in music. Locke High School would go on to nurture several generations of top musicians, including smooth jazz saxophonist Gerald Albright, drummer Leon “Ndugu” Chancler (who'd play on Michael Jackson's “Billie Jean”), vocalist-actor Tyrese Gibson (a staple of the
Fast & Furious
franchise), and pianist-vocalist Patrice Rushen.

 

Patrice Rushen danced on the show as a teen and returned years later as a performer.

 

Rushen was a petite, precocious talent who'd become one of Locke's most beloved musicians, evolving from a teenage keyboard prodigy into a singer and recording artist with the signature eighties hits “Remind Me” and “Forget Me Nots” (both of which would be widely sampled on rap records in the nineties). It was during her tenure at Locke that she became part of the first class of
Soul Train
dancers.

 

Rushen:
The community that surrounded Locke was right in the thick of where the riots had been, and there was a concerted effort to build that community back. It had always been close-knit, and the riots blew it apart. So in bringing it back together, the music department kept the kids busy and involving us in activities that would allow us to see beyond just where we lived. I think it was very important. So being a member of the largest gang going, when you're in the band, there's 250 of you. Carrying an instrument case was a big deal. People didn't mess with us. They really were proud of the fact that we worked hard and we learned a lot, and between Locke's band and the drill team, we became nationally known.

 

In 1971 Don Cornelius came over to Locke and visited the school's summer program to talk about “this special show that they were gonna start, and it was a dance show, and it was going to feature R&B artists primarily,” Rushen said. “They wanted kids from the community to participate, to come out. Sounded good to me. I was already into music, very, very heavily, music of all kinds, and an opportunity to be on television was right up my alley, and so I decided to tell a few friends and said, Let's go down there. They brought a bus. We loaded into a bus and they took us over to KTTV and we went into the studio and we said, ‘Well, what do we do?' He said, ‘Just enjoy yourselves. Dance to the music and have a great time.' And that's what we did.” Rushen and her friends participated in the recording of eight
Soul Train
s that first year in LA.

 

Cornelius:
I was just looking for people who look well. Who look good on camera and who could dance well. That's all I was looking for, and once we got out here we realized that the LA youth, the Los Angeles population, was much more than that. They were exciting to look at. Just plain exciting to look at . . . They had the bodies, the facial features, the hair, the movement. They had stuff you just didn't find much. Where I came from, people who looked that good, they didn't want to be on TV. It was people who probably shouldn't be on TV wanted to be on TV, but when we hit LA it was all those people that should be on TV, had wanted to be on TV. There was just so much glamour. So much invention, so much creativity.

 

What's interesting about this effusive praise for California dancers is that this is very much hindsight talking. As we'll see, Don's initial feelings about dancing out West were very different.

Locke High would be one of the three local institutions that would feed dancers to
Soul Train
in the key first two seasons after the show had relocated to Los Angeles. The other two were Denker Park in South Central and Maverick's Flat nightclub on Crenshaw Boulevard were also crucial, playing different, though parallel, roles. Locke brought Don into contact with a new important educational institution and blossoming talent like Rushen, who would not only dance on early shows but would come back years later to perform on it. The future hit maker has strong memories of the fifth
Soul Train
episode, during which she was able to ask questions of singer-songwriters Bill Withers and Al Green. Reflecting on her career, Rushen thinks that early music-business exposure definitely “filtered into my musicianship.”

 

Rushen:
Because we were taping the shows, there were stops and starts, and for me that was golden time, because during the stops is when I could really keep my eyes on the artists, and, you know, go up to them. There were no barriers. Nobody would say, Don't speak to them, don't do this, don't do that. We were all there together taping. So you could actually talk to people, and you would get some good feedback sometimes. And bits and pieces of information that as a musician—even though I was on the show dancing—as a musician were very helpful, and then watching people perform. Watching that moment that happens when they're not on, and that split second of immediate change that comes together when then they're on. That was like a golden opportunity for me to be up close and see that.

 

The next venue for recruitment was the Denker Recreation Center, located at 1550 West Thirty-fifth Place between two major avenues, Western and Normandie. It was a multipurpose facility with a baseball field and an indoor gym, but Denker's biggest asset wasn't the facility itself—it was city recreation director Pam Brown, who'd been with the city since 1964 and had shifted to Denker in '69. Brown had a previous brush with show business when she helped recruit kids for a taping of Ralph Edwards's popular
This Is Your Life
TV series. It was through this connection that she met Don Cornelius.

“When I first met Don and he came to one of the parks where the young people were to audition, he said, ‘California kids. These LA kids don't know how to dance.' He was real cool with it, and I said, ‘Well, you don't know. You've got something in store when you watch them dance, because they can be very creative.' ” That audition, actually held at nearby Queens Park, attracted about seventy-five kids. “Don said, ‘Okay. They're all right.' It was hard to get something constructive out of Don. You always had to work a little harder.”

Brown traveled to predominantly black schools all over LA, including Locke, Dorsey, Freemont, and Bret Harte Junior High. Another audition at Denker was incredibly well attended, drawing more than four hundred wannabes. “There wasn't any room in the gymnasium because so many had come. Don says ‘Okay, we're on it now. We're on it.' ” Still, the initial taping of
Soul Train
, headlined by Gladys Knight & the Pips and ex-Temptation Eddie Kendricks, had, by Brown's account, only about thirty dancers.

The third and, ultimately, most important feeder of dancers to the show was Maverick's Flat, located at 4225 Crenshaw Boulevard, which was the alpha and omega of the city's black entertainment world. Owned by local businessman, musician, and actor John Daniels, Maverick's Flat opened in 1966, in the wake of the Watts riots, with the purpose of providing an entertainment center for folks who didn't want to travel up to Hollywood for fun. The club, just down the hill from middle- and upper-class black home owners in Baldwin Hills, View Park, and Ladera Heights, was by 1971 billing itself as “the Apollo Theater of Los Angeles,” and for a long time it lived up to that billing, attracting everyone who was anyone in the world of R&B/funk, black comedy, and movies. Testament to its popularity is that the Temptations'
Psychedelic Shack
LP cover was influenced by the Playboy Club by way of the drug-den decor of Maverick's Flat. Daniels was quite a flamboyant character, a muscular, big-Afroed man who starred in
Black Shampoo,
a bad 1976 remake of the critically acclaimed Warren Beatty vehicle about a sex-machine LA hairdresser.

Earth, Wind & Fire, the Commodores, the Whispers, and Lakeside were among the bands to perform there regularly. Howard Hewett, future lead singer of Shalamar, was in Maverick's Flat's house band. Richard Pryor often worked out his routines there, and all of black Hollywood's newly minted movie stars (Jim Brown, Pam Grier, Fred Williamson) came through. Its slogan “Where it's at? Maverick's Flat” was LA seventies slang for the club being an in-crowd destination.

Almost every one of the Los Angeles–based dancers who starred on
Soul Train
in its 1970s peak went there to dance. Dancer-performer Jeffrey Daniel recalls his early trips to Maverick's Flat. “You have to understand,” he said, “as great as the show was and as great as the dancing was, what you see on
Soul Train
is about a quarter of what they do if you see them in clubs.
Soul Train
is very controlled. It's like, ‘Okay, sit down. Okay, now dance.' . . . When you're in the club, it's freestyle.”

So as Don settled into LA, seeing teenagers from Locke and Denker and older movers from Maverick's Flat, he had to adjust his taste in dancing.

 

Cornelius:
When I first saw how the kids in LA danced, it was a little wild and crazy for me because I was from the cool school in Chicago. The kids in LA were like throwing it at you . . . When I got here, I couldn't feel it. I couldn't feel it. I couldn't handle it. It was only after the show became successful that I realized what a great thing these kids brought to television. If you had given me a choice, I would have said to all of them, Please don't dance like that. It's nasty, okay? It's not cool. That's what I would have said. But the television audience disagreed.

 

During
Soul Train
's first season in LA, only twenty-eight shows were taped (as opposed to thirty-nine and thirty-seven in the following seasons). The show had to prove itself—to TV stations, major acts, and the record industry. The dancing would be essential because a look at the talent during that 1971–72 season shows an overabundance of acts from Chicago. Ten of that season's shows featured Chicago-based or -born talent, with singer Lou Rawls appearing twice. Clearly Don was leaning on his hometown contacts.