The Hippest Trip in America

by Nelson George

  Oldham: His clothes kind of looked like drawings of clothes, because they were polyester at the time, and they almost looked like flat cutouts if you look closely—because they were kind of poured clothes. So he has a strange presence . . . Don Cornelius never looked like the dancers. He certainly had the same fibers on, but he definitely didn’t look like them. He kind of looked like the dad in the room. His suits, even though some of the dancers had on suits, weren’t moving in quite the same ways. He was a little bit, I don’t want to say stiff, but formal. There was a formality to him. He couldn’t always mask that he wasn’t a big fan of some of the guests on the show. I think every designer to some degree is influenced by what happened on Soul Train, even if you weren’t born or you knew it ambiently. That was such a cultural zeitgeist of change, of new ideas, new momentum, it was really important. So whether you can trace your lines back to Soul Train, the veins are back into Soul Train for sure.

  Lloyd Boston, who grew up in New Jersey and caught the show on the local New York station, noted that hair was an essential component of Soul Train style, especially the resplendent Afros of dancers and performers. “It was a leveling device that African Americans in the 1970s used to connect with each other,” said the former Tommy Hilfiger art director and The View show regular.

  Boston: Going back to the hair God gave you versus the hair that we’re trying to create to assimilate . . . Almost like a halo. A crown. Soul Train became almost this living gallery of Afros—short, huge. Some were perfectly shaped. Some were picky. Some were short and red. Some were dyed. Some were wigs. I think that moment was so important because it showed you that anybody could do this. But if you look at some of the earlier episodes, you have to remember that 1972 looked very different from 1979. So in the earlier couple of years, you saw the kind of struggle between traditional black hair or natural black hair crossing paths with folks who had processed hair. You would see a few girls and guys with huge naturals, and then you would see a few girls and guys with processed hair. They all kind of coexisted together. So you saw girls who were trying to look like Marcia Brady next to girls that were trying to look like Angela Davis, and they were right there, whether they were in miniskirts or dashikis.

  Like Oldham, Boston was taken by the boldness of the fashion choices, particularly by the male dancers. Boston suggested some of the dancers on the show were “embracing a slightly more effeminate style than you might see on the street . . . You would see guys on Soul Train wearing those skin-tight fishnet tank tops. You would see those spray-can-fit pants. You would say ‘spray can’ because you were proud to show your manhood at that time, and they would fit, and they would flair out at the bottom so you can move and groove and absolutely show the sexiness.”

  But, despite all the funky flair of the dancers, the show’s host maintained his own, more dignified style of dress.

  Boston: One thing you notice, though—Don Cornelius never touched that style. He was always respectable—almost an alderman, if you will. He looked like a community leader. His suits were always impeccable, though. When I think about his style, I remember his peaked lapels. Those hand-tied velvet bow ties. You know, it almost looked like prom pictures that we would see our parents or our older cousins wearing. His ’fro was always perfect. Those tinted glasses that would be like amber or mango. He would have some interesting shades.

  A few of the female dancers, particularly Fawn Quinones, devised a mash-up of 1970s glam with iconic 1940s touches, very similar to what the female family vocal group the Pointer Sisters were working with. “So they kind of did this blend, this melding of vintage style,” said Boston. “Shape cropped jackets with high-rolled shoulders. Back-seam stockings and platform Mary Janes. It was almost a take on the Andrews Sisters. Fawn would always carry an exotic fan, and her hair would be in rolls like an old switchboard operator in tight jackets and snug pencil skirts.”

  Classic eighties fashion and hair.

  Black style, whether zoot suits in the 1940s or Afrocentric colors in the 1980s, have always had an impact on fashion around the globe. But in Boston’s estimation, Soul Train has a special place as a style transmitter.

  Boston: Soul Train is the first time our unique style expression was televised. The same way MTV launched punk and rock style in the 1980s, Soul Train did for black style in the 1970s. It may not have been in as many homes around the nation or around the world, but those trends were just made bigger than the album cover, bigger than the eight-track cassette label . . . You could take your cues: “I would love to try that. I need to layer a leather jacket over that. Oh my God, a dashiki with some culottes would be fantastic.” It only takes one person to start a trend. The fact that these individuals who were expressing themselves, as teenagers do, could now reach millions of homes, they could inspire teenagers everywhere.

  The peak of Soul Train’s fashion impact was those golden years of the seventies. With the rise of hip-hop and music videos in the eighties, a more casual, streetwise aesthetic would replace LA glitz, while videos would become the way new fashions would be communicated to young people. Still, today you can’t think back to the seventies without visions of bell-bottoms and bushy Afros filling your mind.

  DANCER PROFILE: Sam Solomon

  Growing up in Fresno, California, a young man named Sam Solomon was a fan of 1960s dances like the jerk, the twist, and the flowing moves called the boogaloo. Sam also was a great observer of how people moved, be it a wino on the corner or a handicapped man with a distinctive walk. Giving himself the handle Boogaloo Sam, he moved down to Long Beach, California, in 1978. Along with his younger brother Popin’ Pete Solomon, he formed a dance crew that included colorfully named Creepin’ Sid, Puppet Boozer, Electric Boogaloo, and the Robot Dane. They called themselves the Electric Boogaloos.

  What Sam created was a move he called popping. “Popping is flexing of the muscles in rhythm to the beat,” Popin’ Pete explained. “It’s been given wrong names like pop locking, electric boogie, flexing, but it’s just called poppin’ because the original guys, they would do the moves, and they would just say ‘Pop, Pop, Pop.’ Just make that sound that they thought that this would be making if they could put sound effects on it. The boogaloo is more fluid. Poppin’ is this hard-core move, where boogaloo is this groove dance.”

  The Electric Boogaloos began building a rep out in Long Beach at a recreation center known as the Hutch and a teen party called Noah’s Ark. “Prior to poppin’, everybody was just locking,” Dane recalled. “When Sam came to Long Beach with his new style, it was almost like a gunfighter coming into town, and one by one he started turning out all the dancers. They would do their little thing and Sam would watch them. Sam would just—‘Bam, bam, bam.’ It was just like you’re out of there. Quite a few of them totally just stopped dancing, period.”

  The crew, being naive and young (sixteen, seventeen years old), figured the best way to get discovered was to go dance on street corners on Hollywood Boulevard. The old Hollywood legend that movie siren Lana Turner was discovered at a lunch counter was very much alive in the imaginations of these young men. Today they’d post a YouTube video. Back in the 1970s, you had to find a way to catch someone’s eye.

  So the Electric Boogaloos hopped on a bus from Long Beach to downtown and then transferred to another bus, expecting to end up on the corner of Hollywood and Vine but ending up way across town in East LA. Instead of risking another bus mishap, they walked halfway across the city to Sunset and Doheny, and all along the way, “every time we saw a limo—it could have been a limo coming from a funeral or going to a prom—we would get on the corner and we would just start dancing,” said Pete.

  They were hanging by the bus stop at Sunset when a female dancer spotted them, came over, and asked them to explain some of their moves. Impressed, she passed their number to someone hiring dancers for shows at casino hotels in Lake Tahoe. The Electric Boogaloos got an audition and, like most LA street dancers of the era, were wearing gear that resembled that of
the Lockers. The casting director’s attitude was, according to Pete, “Oh, more lockers. I don’t need more lockers for the show.” But after watching them pop and boogaloo, the guys were hired to perform in Nevada for two months.

  Everyone who spotted the Electric Boogaloos was immediately taken by their moves and either wanted to watch them or learn them. Quickly the popping style started to be adopted. New adherents added their own variations. An Electric Boogaloo member, Creepin’ Sid, developed a move called the backslide. It looked like a man walking slowly backwards, defying physics and common sense. It was much admired and imitated by other dancers, though its mainstream debut as the moonwalk was years away.

  Although their show-business career was off to an auspicious start, one form of validation the Electric Boogaloos sought was a chance to dance on Soul Train. “When we became a group, we said we haven’t made it yet until we perform on Soul Train,” said Pete. “That was true of any dancer coming up.” Various members of the crew had auditioned for the show before and had been turned down.

  The Electric Boogaloos’ invitation to appear on the show resulted from the influence of popping. It had spread from the Bay Area to Long Beach and throughout Southern California. Two of Soul Train’s most popular dancers, Cash Cool and the Pop Along Kid—also known as Jeffrey Daniel—did a featured dance performance on the show that gave their interpretation of popping. Electric Boogaloo members Popin’ Pete and Robot Dane were home watching the performance. When Cornelius asked the dancers about their moves, Cash Cool and Daniel told Cornelius this new style of movement was created by the Electric Boogaloos. Cornelius then turned to the camera and announced he’d soon be having the dance crew on the show.

  Electric Boogaloo member Dane immediately got on the phone to Soul Train’s production office. “They were like, ‘Oh my God, so happy you guys called.’ They didn’t really have a contact on us, and then no one had ever really asked us about trying to be on Soul Train. They had us come in and it was, like, wild.”

  Electric Boogaloo member Boozer said of the first show, “You have to remember when we performed on Soul Train the first time, Don was just going off word of mouth. He had never seen us perform. He had never seen a tape of us. Nothing. He had just seen what Jeff and Cash Cool did, and he had heard our name, but he had never seen us perform. So he pretty much booked us sight unseen.”

  The Electric Boogaloos would appear two times on Soul Train. In that first appearance, they each wore matching bright-colored suits (they called them skittle suits). Moreover, Cornelius would tell them something they’d later consider prophetic. Dane recalled, “Don said, ‘You know what, I’m gonna give these guys credit for what they’re doing before someone else comes along and tries to take credit for it and make a lot of money off it.’ ”

  Cornelius spoke again about the group’s impact years later, though he got some of the details wrong.

  Cornelius: Well, the first time we saw the moonwalk were some kids who called themselves Electric Boogaloo. And we got a tip that this was something very hot and very beautiful to see, and that we should try to get them on Soul Train, and we did. That is the first time that America—not just us, not just Soul Train—that America got exposed to the moonwalk. Now, anybody else who does the moonwalk, they learned most of it from Electric Boogaloo.

  In 1983 Michael Jackson made a historic appearance on NBC’s broadcast of Motown 25, a prime-time celebration of Berry Gordy’s legendary record label. Though the show was packed with stars, it was Michael Jackson’s performance of a dance the media labeled “the moonwalk” that was easily the evening’s highlight. What few people know is the dance was created not by the musical superstar but out of the Electric Boogaloos. “What they call the moonwalk is not the moonwalk,” Dane said. “It’s the backslide. You know it’s erroneous. The moonwalk actually looks like you’re walking on the moon, like Marcel Marceau . . . Backsliding is you’re going backwards. But we debuted that on Soul Train in 1979. When Michael does it on Motown 25, all of the sudden it was the moonwalk. So again, it was so important for us to do Soul Train because when you look at that and the Internet now, no one can say, ‘Okay, you didn’t do this.’ That Soul Train performance sealed our fate in history.”

  The moves that the Electric Boogaloos introduced on Soul Train and elsewhere would inform the culture known as hip-hop, fuel several more quaint-looking eighties dance movies starring members of the crew, and allow the group to continue performing globally to this day.

  DANCER PROFILE: Reggie Thornton

  Reggie Thornton had two very different Soul Train tenures, separated by a decade and two cities. Raised in Gary, Indiana, during the early 1970s, Reggie was part of that original group that danced on the show during its early days in Chicago. Once Soul Train moved west, Thornton watched enviously from Indiana as the once-local show became a national phenomenon.

  Thornton: I used to watch [the LA show], seeing all the beautiful Afros, the beautiful people doing the beautiful dances, and the women and everyone looking great. I couldn’t wait to come out here. I was hoping that Don Cornelius would send for us. But it never did happen. I just longed to get here. But it wasn’t that easy. When I got out to California on July 15, 1980, I found out they were doing a taping of Soul Train. I heard they brought extra clothes, and you had to stand in line. So I found out they were taping at Metromedia studio in Hollywood. I had my suitcase in my hand as the gates opened, and I walked through the gates. I noticed everyone was telling this gentleman, “Hey, how are you, Chuck?” Everybody’s speaking to Chuck. So as I got in line, and I spoke to Chuck. I said, “Hey, how are you, Chuck?” And Chuck said, “Hey, who are you? Stand over here.” So I stood over to the side. After a while everybody got in, and the gates closed, and I said, “Wait a minute! I’m supposed to be in there.” Chuck said, “Well, this is a closed set.” And I said, “I’m a Soul Trainer. I’m from Chicago!”

  Don Cornelius had given us these cards that said “Soul Train Gang—Permanent Member of the Soul Train Gang.” I showed Chuck this card, and he said, “What’s that?” I said, “That’s from Don Cornelius. He gave me this card and said I was a permanent Soul Train dancer.” He said, “I’ve never seen that before,” and went in the studio, and he closed the door. So maybe like a half hour went by, and I was so desperate to get in there I climbed the fence and I went inside the studio.

  In the studio I saw all these people that I admired on television for all these years. I just thought it was the greatest thing. So I sat down for a while, and some song came on and the music got to me and I started dancing. All of a sudden Chuck Johnson noticed me out there. He said, “Excuse me. Can you come over here? What are you doing here?” I said, “I’m a Soul Train dancer from Chicago. I showed you my card.” He told me to take a seat. I sat down and just watched everybody dance. I was excited and so full of anguish because I couldn’t dance. I was just frustrated.

  Toward the end of the day, Chuck let me come on the floor and start dancing. The next day, which was a Sunday, he let me in and I went to the back. I started dancing and they started doing the Soul Train line. That’s the last thing they do at the end of the day. So when everyone lined up to be picked for the Soul Train line, Chuck saw me in the line, and he said, “No, you can’t go down the Soul Train line.” All the dancers, they were saying, “Oh, Chuck! He can dance. He can dance. Let him go down the line.” Finally he let me have a shot. So I went down the Soul Train line, and they loved it. After that I came running down the Soul Train line every week.

  While Thornton was a capable dancer, his greatest contribution to Soul Train lore involved a nondancing encounter with a pop diva. Episode #382 of the 1981–82 season was a tribute to Diana Ross timed to the release of her debut album on RCA Records, Why Do Fools Fall in Love, her first release after leaving Motown.

  Thornton: I always thought that Diana Ross was very sexy. I don’t know whether she was a cougar or not, whether she was into young men or not. I always thought she was sexy
as a young child. So they did a segment where they had a question-and-answer period. And I had a question for Diana, and my question was, “Diana, everybody who knows me knows that you’re my favorite star, and there’s one thing I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve always wanted to kiss you on nationwide television, can I have that opportunity?” And she said, “Oh, yes, you can do it.” So I went up to Diana and I kissed her, and she said, “Oh, yeah,” and she hugs real tight too. That was her response. And when all my friends back home saw that, they said, I can’t believe you kissed Diana Ross!

  Chapter 8

  Whites on Soul Train

  DON CORNELIUS was at a posh private party in Los Angeles in the 1970s when he ran into Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Namath. Broadway Joe, who’d won a Super Bowl with the New York Jets, was ending his career as a gimpy-kneed veteran with the then Los Angeles Rams.

  When Namath was introduced to Cornelius, the quarterback said, “Yeah, I know Don Cornelius. He does the Soul Train show”—which is a testament to how well-known the show was among white Americans.

  But then the conversation took a turn. “How come you don’t let white people on that show?” he asked Don, who replied, “Well, Joe, we’ve always had white people on the show.”

  Namath was not convinced. “No, I’ve seen your show, you don’t allow white people to be on the show.”

  By this time, the quarterback was getting a little aggressive with Don and, weak-kneed or not, Namath was still a six-foot-three pro athlete whom Don didn’t want any trouble with. So Don asked, “Well, Joe, do you watch Soul Train every week?” Namath told him he didn’t. Now Don had him.

  “Well,” Don replied, “the week you don’t watch it, that’s when the white people are there.” Before Namath could reply, Don had moved on. This comical exchange reflected the perception that many people, mostly white, thought that Soul Train consciously excluded whites from the premises. While white dancers were never excluded from the show, none became as famous as Asian dancer Cheryl Song. Don could be very expansive on white dancers and the stereotype about their absence of rhythm.