The Hippest Trip in America (6 page)

Campbell and the Lockers would have a profound impact on an embryonic scene developing across the country, including in the most impoverished sections of New York City. A prime example of
Soul Train
's impact on the emerging hip-hop scene is provided by Curtis Walker, one day to be known as rapper Kurtis Blow, who was a regular
Soul Train
viewer as a child in Harlem. “You're nine years old,” said Walker, “and here comes this guy Don Campbellock [one of Campbell's nicknames, as well as the title of a 1972 single on Stanson Records] and the Campbellock Dancers, and they're dressed all wild with vibrant colors almost like clowns. They would do routines incredible to see.”

Years before he'd rock microphones with hits like the gold twelve-inch “The Breaks,” Walker was part of the city's break-dance scene. While the head spins and floor moves of hip-hop dancing were New York creations, the upper-body isolation moves of the Lockers were incorporated into what would become known as breakin'.

Walker:
We owe a lot to those Lockers and we owe a lot to
Soul Train
. . . They actually contributed to hip-hop and the formatting of break-dance routines. The Campbellock dancers would all come out and all do a routine, and when the routine was done, they would go out and do solos. Each member would get a chance to do a solo for ten or fifteen seconds. That format served as the basis of break-dance routines all the way here in New York. It was incredible to see how the connection and the vibe was there. Those dancers set the trend for the hip-hop dancers to come.

Chapter 3
It's Star Time

EIGHT YEARS
after riots ripped through the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley, a former policeman and city councilman, built a coalition of blacks, Hispanics, Jews, and white liberals to get elected as the city's first black mayor. Bradley, who had never been a marching, protesting street activist but rather a consummate political insider and consensus builder, would go on to be the city's longest-serving mayor in history.

But even with a black man's presence in City Hall, Los Angeles would never be a bastion of racial equality, as discriminatory real estate practices, intimidating policing, and income disparities created a very segregated metropolis. Blacks in LA who thrived did so through their own alliance building within the community. Don Cornelius would quickly build relationships with key local activists like Danny Bakewell. Bakewell, like a large percentage of black LA residents, migrated west from New Orleans and began a career in social activism in his twenties. He became president of the Brotherhood Crusade, one of the region's leading civil rights organizations, and would run it for more than thirty years. It was through Bakewell that Don met most of Los Angeles's black middle-class movers and shakers, while Don gave him access to black show business. In 1974 Bakewell founded the National Black United Fund, a national philanthropic organization that would grow to have twenty-two affiliates. Like
Soul Train,
the NBUF was very much the product of a collective desire to institutionalize the gains of the civil rights movement. Don's relationship with Bakewell would be similar to the one he'd had with Jesse Jackson in Chicago, an enduring friendship that had a strong political aspect.

Don's own political skills were in full effect as he focused on wooing the biggest names in soul music for
Soul Train
's crucial second season. He made phone calls and had meetings and used the show itself as his most persuasive tool. Still, landing the major stars was a challenge. It took Cornelius until episode #49, in the middle of the 1972–73 season, to land James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, the biggest personality in a genre defined by outsized egos. Having Brown on the show was seen as crucial to establishing the
Soul Train
brand. Brown was also a strong believer in black capitalism, and at the time he owned a number of radio stations and should have been a natural supporter of
Soul Train,
but, according to Don, the Godfather had a difficult time grasping that the broadcast was black owned. Brown agreed to appear on the show only at the urging of his kids, who loved the dancing in season one.

 

Cornelius:
I remember my first meeting with James Brown. He was so impressed as he looked around the studio, at the scenic studio with the set, that he asked me the same question three times. James Brown was from an era where you weren't anything big unless you had somebody, probably somebody white, backing you. Or giving you the green light, or a loan, or the funds, or who would take a piece of what you had in return for the backing. That was the era that he was from. He said, “Brother, who is backing you on this?” And I said, “Well, James, it's just, it's just me.” And then he'd go to the dressing room and come back with his makeup and pass by me again, and say, “Brother, who you with on this?” I wanted to say, “You just asked me that.” But out of respect I'd say, “James, it's just me.” And then I guess I saw him just one more time, and he came to me and he said, “Brother, who's really behind this?” And I said, “James, it's just me.”

 

Brown's appearance established
Soul Train
's pedigree and made it a crucial stop not just for emerging young acts but for established stars. In that second season, major vocal groups the Isley Brothers and the O'Jays appeared on the show twice. Major Motown talents with major pop credentials such as ex-Temptations David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks, Jermaine Jackson of the superhot teen-appeal group the Jackson Five, and Stevie Wonder, who was at the height of his creative powers, finally appeared on
Soul Train
. Aside from the O'Jays, other acts associated with the Philly sound of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff and their publishing partner, Thom Bell, became
Soul Train
staples: Billy Paul, Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, the Intruders, the Spinners.

Lip-synching was standard operating procedure on television. Singers came on shows and sang along to their record. That's how things were done in 1971, especially on syndicated programs like
American Bandstand
. That was Don's intention as well, and in the early days of
Soul Train
quite a few artists lip-synched because live performances were expensive and cumbersome. But ultimately Don gave in and allowed many stars to perform live, a willingness that would be a key element in separating
Soul Train
from the rest of what was on television.

 

Booking James Brown was a major coup for Don Cornelius, and it helped bolster
Soul Train'
s early success.

 

Because of Don's flexibility,
Soul Train
became a prime live showcase for some of the greatest talents in black music, particularly during the 1970s. For example, a 1975 performance by Barry White and his Love Unlimited Orchestra on which the maestro did three solo hits, including “Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe” and several instrumentals. Neon signs behind the stage read
BARRY WHITE
and
LOVE UNLIMITED
instead of
SOUL TRAIN
. A Barry White–sponsored Little League baseball team, the Maestro Players, even appeared in the show.

 

Cornelius:
So we did Barry White with a forty-piece orchestra. We didn't really want to, but that's what Barry White wanted, and Barry White was so hot at the time we were like, We're not gonna lose this booking. We gotta do what we have to do; we ended up doing Al Green with his band, and we did James Brown and the JB's, and James Brown with his whole band. We did Sly and the Family Stone, whole band. We did Tower of Power, who we hope people will remember with that, you know, superb horn section that they had. God, we did . . . and these were the most—as far as the economics were concerned, as an owner, I kind of hated it. But these were the most exciting times of my whole life. These were the most exciting experiences I had in my entire—not just my experience with the show, but in my entire life.

 

Don's son Tony, who would eventually spend fifteen years working on
Soul Train
, remembers the tension of the live tapings well. “The difficulty of putting together a live show as well as the excitement is you're trying to put something together mistake-free, and when you're trying to put something together mistake-free, when there's money being spent, if you can get through it, you've accomplished a whole lot. My father is thinking of the fact that people were working so hard to make sure that this live element worked. The live experience is an experience that you can't forget because you're trying to get all this done without a mistake, and with mistakes comes money lost.”

White, an ex-gang member from South Central turned R&B producer-arranger turned disco love man, was one of Don's closest friends in the music industry, so it's not surprising he bit the financial bullet for him. Watching them banter during his numerous appearances throughout the seventies and early eighties was to hear a basso profundo wrestling match, wondering which man's bass voice would wrestle the other's to the ground. With White, as with so many of the soul era artists Don interviewed, you can sense the host reveling in the music and friendship.

 

Barry White's lush disco sound made him a
Soul Train
staple.

 

Al Green, who was the hottest young singer of the early seventies, introduced an updated Memphis soul sound that was spare and clean, driving on up-tempo numbers and haunting on ballads. He appeared regularly on
Soul Train,
displaying a sexy midrange tenor and an ability to sing softly with amazing vulnerability and passion. His seven-minute performance of “Jesus Is Waiting,” from his
Call Me
album, on the show in 1973 is masterful. He starts by reciting the Lord's Prayer before flowing into the gospel song with the nuance of a love song. Though people didn't turn to
Soul Train
for religious music, you can hear the crowd enjoying the testimony, especially when Green has the band bring it down low so he can sing with his trademark quiet intensity. His left arm is in a red bandanna sling, which only adds to the performance's devotional fervor.

On episode #38, Sly Stewart, of Sly & the Family Stone fame, made an equally flamboyant impression on the
Soul Train
audience. While Al Green was an ascendant star during his initial appearances, Sly was widely thought to have peaked by 1974. He was chronically late to shows, sometimes even missing them altogether. Many of the original members of his fantastic Family Stone had left the band in various disputes with its mercurial leader. But his performance of “I Want to Take You Higher,” one of several of his standards performed during that taping, was a triumph of energy and musicianship.

Wearing a white hat and boots, a hot-pink, silver-sequined jumpsuit unzipped to the waist, revealing a bare chest except for a Star of David medallion, Sly plays organ, sings, and incites the crowd to sing along as he ventures among the dancers to prance and be adored. On top of all that, Sly's smile blares like the sun. The female
Soul Train
dancers giggle girlishly during a Q&A when Fawn Quinones boldly, with a lush gleam in her eye, asks if he's married. The musical chops and personal charisma that made Sly a transcendent star are incredibly evident in this performance.

 

Sly Stone, the front man of the influential funk and soul group Sly and the Family Stone, pictured here in all his early-seventies finery.

 

The sensual Marvin Gaye made his
Soul Train
debut in episode #89 in 1974. He was a notoriously reluctant performer and he especially disliked lip-synching. At that time, he was at the height of his erotic powers with his single “Let's Get It On,” which had gone to No. 1 on the pop charts. During the interview he admitted, “I enjoyed doing the two numbers [“Come Get to This” and “Distant Lover”] previously—I didn't lip-synch them too well, but . . . ” He then playfully answered questions from Don and the dancers before launching into “Let's Get It On,” which he sang from the main floor while hugging and being hugged by various adoring women. It wasn't technically a “live” performance, since a vocal backing track is playing, but Gaye is also singing with some vigor, resulting in as interactive a performance as you'll ever see between a singer and audience. Whatever
Soul Train
rules there were about interactions between dancers and stars were wiped away by the sexual chemistry apparent that day. One of Gaye's most famous later performances on
Soul Train
had nothing to do with singing at all. Gaye, who was an avid sports fan (Detroit Lion football players Lem Barney and Mel Farr's voices had been heard on the intro to “What's Going On”), was one of Don's hangout buddies. On
Soul Train
episode #222 in 1977, Don and Gaye played a game of one-on-one with mutual friend and soul legend Smokey Robinson as referee. It was not the most gracefully played game (Gaye was winning three baskets to two when it broke for a commercial), but it was a peek into the Los Angeles black celebrity world.