Marie made her debut in episode #308 of the 1979–80 season alongside her mentor Rick James. She would become a regular, appearing four more times over the next five years and in a total of ten episodes during her productive career. Her ease with black folks came from growing up in Venice, California, in an area called Dogtown, best known as the home of a rebel group of skaters, Z-Boys, who’d become X Games legends.
While growing up in Venice, she had Mexican and black and surfer friends while obsessing over Smokey Robinson songs and watching Soul Train. “You know, I never really imagined that I would grow up to perform on the same stage with the Whispers or Al Green, and now I sing with Al Green,” she said. After showing vocal skills in a couple of bands, Marie met veteran Motown producer Hal Davis, who’d worked with the Jackson Five. Berry Gordy himself signed her, but it took several failed recording attempts before she and Rick James clicked. On her first Soul Train appearance, Marie performed the up-tempo “Sucker for Love” and the mid-tempo “Don’t Look Back.”
Teena Marie: I remember I had this pink butterfly costume on, and it had pink butterfly wings when I put my hands out. I was really, really excited to be on TV and have my people loving my music. [Performing on Soul Train] was really important because there wasn’t a lot of shows for us, you know? My skin is white, but I’m not looked at like that. I’m a black entertainer and always have been very, very proud of my history and who I am. I didn’t get played on a lot of white stations. I only had one crossover record in my whole career. It’s because of black people that I am who I am . . . Black people had always embraced me and supported me as their own. It was never looked at as a black or white thing. Black people love good music, right?
Her favorite Soul Train performance occurred in 1988 when she performed her classic ballad “Ooo La La La” with choreography by her best friend, Mickey Boyce-Ellis, and backing vocals by two of the Mary Jane Girls. Grooving around the stage in intensely teased blondish-brunette hair and a tight black dress with see-through sections, Marie displays her soaring vocals while singing one of her self-penned love songs. With “Ooo La La La,” as with so many of her compositions, Marie manages to be girlishly romantic yet wisely adult.
After her extraordinary debut, Marie would record several superb albums for Motown, including her masterful It Must Be Magic in 1981, which includes her biggest R&B hit, “Square Biz.” Her tenure with Motown ended badly with a contract dispute in 1982. She recorded for CBS’s Epic Records from 1983 to 1990 and had her biggest pop single, “Lovergirl,” but seemed pressured to abandon her soul roots and saw her sales falter. While hip-hop producers sampled her work throughout the 1990s and into the twenty-first century, Marie’s output of new music slowed, though there were gems on every album she released.
In November 2010, she suffered a grand mal epileptic seizure. Then, on December 26, 2010, she was found unconscious at her home. The LA county coroner concluded that Teena Marie died of natural causes.
DANCER PROFILE: Crystal McCarey
Crystal McCarey was one of the great beauties to grace the Soul Train dance floor, a woman who counted among her fans the Jackson Five and Marvin Gaye. These days she makes jewelry and sells it on her website, but from 1975 until the mid-1980s, she sparkled like a diamond herself. Yet life for this lean, lovely, fair-skinned lady was far from charmed. She grew up in Soul Train’s hometown of Chicago and lived her early years relatively privileged, but then her family “wound up having to live on the verge of poverty for quite a while,” McCarey said.
In the 1950s, Crystal’s mother, Barbara, was a showgirl and part of a revue of dancers selected to perform at Las Vegas’s Moulin Rouge Hotel, Sin City’s first black-owned entertainment establishment, which opened in 1955. That opening was an extremely noteworthy event: Life magazine documented it by putting a photograph of Barbara McCarey on its cover, and a Las Vegas Sun photo from May 1955 shows Barbara McCarey and six Moulin Rouge showgirls posed backstage in feathered tops, black skirts, and light-colored stockings. All are lovely, but Barbara’s large eyes, full lips, dark black hair, and thin, athletic build stand out and forecast her daughter’s future beauty. While the Moulin Rouge opened with great optimism, the enterprise was dogged by racism and never really took off. The casino hotel would burn down in 1957.
In the aftermath of that disappointment, Barbara McCarey “became a kept woman for a number of years, and we lived, like I said, very well,” her daughter said. “When that situation fizzled out, she did make some bad decisions, and she paid a very, very heavy price by having a stroke at the age of thirty-two . . . My mother was in a wheelchair. She lost complete control of the left side of her body. So she went from being a phenomenal dancer to being in a wheelchair.” Then her family ended up living in Chicago public housing, and it was during this sad period that Soul Train took on new meaning for Crystal.
McCarey: I would say that Soul Train impacted young people in poverty. For that hour, they weren’t getting into trouble. They weren’t stealing. They weren’t robbing people. After that one hour, they still felt positive and felt good about themselves. They kind of held that from week to week. When I was watching Soul Train in Chicago, I had no idea at all that I would ever come to California, that I would ever be on the show. But I think it had a strong impact on young urban women in terms of grooming and the way they took care of themselves.
Barbara—who became known to their neighbors in the projects as “Miss Bobby”—was determined that her oldest daughter not be trapped in poverty, so she began calling old friends in Los Angeles. “Even at that point, in her sorrow and feeling the pain she felt for her own self, she saved my life and got me out of the projects,” McCarey said.
A family friend sent the young woman a ticket to California and helped her find a place to stay. After growing up in the Chicago cold, Crystal immediately took to the Los Angeles sun. She landed a job as a receptionist at a law firm and was walking down an LA street on lunch break when her life changed again. A car pulled up next to her and began driving alongside her. A black man leaned out of his window checking her out. Unfortunately for a woman like McCarey, this was an unwanted but not unusual experience.
“I’m just looking at him, and I’m like, Okay, I know he doesn’t think I’m getting in that car,” she recalled. “Finally he pulled over and said, ‘Excuse me! Excuse me! Look, I’m not trying to pick you up. I don’t mean you any harm. Can you dance?’ ” The man handed her his card. It turned out to be Soul Train’s Chuck Johnson. To make this even more Hollywood, McCarey says this all happened across the street from Soul Train’s offices. So after work she went over to meet with Don Cornelius himself.
“He was sitting behind this huge, imposing desk. He didn’t have a lot to say, ’cause Don was just so cool. He looked at me and said, ‘Yeah, she’s cute.’ Then Chuck said, ‘Okay, so this is it. This is your shot now. Whatcha got.’ He put on some music, and I just started dancing, and that was it. He said, ‘Okay, you did all right, kid.’ They gave me the information for the taping, and I probably didn’t sleep a night between that audition and the two weeks I had to wait for the taping. I did the first taping, and they told me they wanted me back. What that did for my mother, in that wheelchair, living in the projects, to be able to see me dancing every week, I have no words.”
Chapter 9
Disco Fever
THE RISE of dance music called disco—named for its popularity at the growing number of discotheques around the nation—became the hottest musical fad starting in 1974 and peaking three years later. Musically, disco took liberally from the sophisticated soul sounds of Philly International Records and Barry White, styles that took the rough edges off R&B, maintaining funk underneath a rich, orchestral tapestry of strings and horns. From 1973 to 1975, the Soul Train theme song, “TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia),” was definitely one of the songs that inspired the disco movement. Over time the sound of disco would evolve, with lesser hands turning the innovations of the Philly Sound and White in
to bland formula, while keyboard-driven European dance music, or Euro disco, rhythmically flattened out the sound.
But disco was about more than music. It gave license for white people to couples-dance to pop music for the first time since the rock revolution of the late 1960s. Out went tie-dyed shirts, unruly hair, and shaking awkwardly to guitar solos. In were platform shoes, upscale fashions, and cocaine. The hustle, a touch dance with elements of Latin salsa and traditional ballroom, became the first dance associated with disco.
This combination of music and dance, which awakened a generation of white Americans to the pleasures of the dance floor, generated scores of dance shows—both on local television and in syndication—but Soul Train survived in large part because it was already way ahead of the dance-music curve. Though crafty white groups like the Bee Gees prospered by exploiting discomania, many of the musical acts featured on Soul Train were already making tracks being played at discos. While disco definitely sucked a lot of soul out of popular black music, it didn’t diminish Soul Train. In some ways, it helped the show.
Cornelius: Well, the key ingredient for the success of Soul Train was that it’s very solidly based on black music. These were the best dance records made for our beginning period, our second decade, our third decade, and any future decades. The best dance records made during those periods were black records. Made by black artists, black singers, black musicians. The best dance music was our folks, okay? And it took us to a point of decision when disco evolved. We didn’t know whether to join the bandwagon and say this is a Soul Train disco show. We didn’t know what to do, because disco came in strong. It was intimidating. And we came to realize that the best disco records, the very best, invariably—almost invariably—were black records. And so we made a commitment to just play the best black records we could find, during the disco era or not, and we remained okay. We just played the best dance records possible. You want to call it disco, fine. I’m playing the best dance records I can find, and most of the best disco records, if not all of them, were actually black records.
Disco would have a variety of impacts on black music. While rawer-sounding records never went away (with bands like Parliament-Funkadelic, Slave, the Bar-Kays, and Cameo staying true to the funk), the sophisticated sounds of disco were viewed by many record-industry executives as an easier way to reach white audiences. Some R&B stars found success adapting to disco flavor (Johnnie Taylor’s “Disco Lady” in 1976 was the biggest hit of his long career), while many great talents made their worst records chasing the trend. (Aretha Franklin’s 1979 album La Diva was her poorest-selling record ever.)
Disco also introduced a number of new acts to Soul Train. A few, like the New York–based band Chic, would have staying power. But most were one- or two-hit wonders (the Trammps, South Shore Commission, First Choice) who never sold many records outside the East Coast. More enduring was the impact disco would have on dancing on the show, as the hustle began sharing the dance floor with popping and locking. The long-legged individuality that dancers like Damita Jo Freeman had introduced to the show wouldn’t go away, but less funky, more self-conscious sophistication in movement and dress became part of the weekly mix. Soul Train was never overrun by the faux glitz of Saturday Night Fever, but dance culture was changing, and the show reflected that evolution.
But Don Cornelius would do more than accommodate disco acts on his show. He’d use disco as a springboard into his own label by plucking a couple of stars off his dance floor.
Chapter 10
Jody and Jeffrey (and O’Bryan)
THERE IS no question that Don Cornelius is the most important figure to emerge from Soul Train. It was his idea, and his on-camera personality and off-camera decisions shaped the show. But the next three most important people in the show’s history are two dancers and a businessman, folks who actually made their biggest mark after they left the show. And all three of them did it together, capitalizing on an opportunity that eluded Don.
Jeffrey Daniel and Jody Watley were the coolest kids to grace Soul Train’s soundstage, while Dick Griffey was a behind-the-scenes force who would become one of the most important music moguls of the 1970s and 1980s. All would make their marks with a label called SOLAR Records, a company Cornelius helped found.
Back in 1971, Daniel and his family lived close to Denker Playground, where Soul Train was holding auditions, but Daniel was an adolescent then and knew nothing about the show. His real introduction to Soul Train happened after his mother relocated with him to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where on Saturdays, while munching on his morning cereal, he watched it religiously.
“I was a dancer, and I always did love dancing and music,” Daniel said. “Just to see these young black kids giving fun and just grooving. It was amazing. I’m watching Soul Train every week, and I was wondering, ‘Wait a minute. If Soul Train is in LA, why am I here?’ ”
Daniel wasn’t doing well in high school, so he borrowed money and hopped a plane back to Cali. As discussed in Tyrone Proctor’s dancer profile, Daniel began hanging out at Maverick’s Flat, where he became part of Tyrone Proctor’s crew and also witnessed Don Campbell’s locking innovations. Initially his dance partner was his older sister Joyce. Then he began dancing with a young woman he knew from church named Jody Watley.
During Soul Train’s early years, Jody and her family were living in Chicago and were dedicated viewers. “The dancers were really the stars of the show,” Watley said. “I had favorite dancers—Pat Davis, Tyrone Proctor, Sharon Hill, Little Joe Chism. I remember writing fan letters to them, asking, ‘How do you get on the show?’ So it was definitely very impactful for me. I had no idea that at some point my parents would end up moving to Los Angeles. It ended up being a twist of fate.”
Reverend John Watley had been a very popular DJ in Chicago, broadcasting gospel music on Sundays on WVON. Apparently he and Cornelius knew each other, but according to Jody, neither man was fond of the other. Through his radio contacts, John Watley made a slew of show-business friends: R&B star Jackie Wilson would be named his daughter’s godfather, Johnnie Taylor was a close friend, and Sam Cooke an occasional employer. At some point, however, John Watley lost his church, which instigated the family’s move west.
The minute adolescent Jody Watley arrived in LA, she was obsessed with getting on Soul Train. But she had no contacts in Los Angeles and was living in the Jungle, a notorious ghetto housing complex off Crenshaw Boulevard, miles from Hollywood geographically and centuries away mentally. (The Jungle was featured prominently in the film Training Day.)
One day, while riding in the car with her mother, Watley spotted Tyrone Proctor walking on Stocker Avenue. Suddenly the fourteen-year-old shouted, “Stop the car!,” bolted out onto the sidewalk, and ran up to the famous dancer. She introduced herself and tried to get him to tell her where Soul Train was, how to get on the show. Proctor was polite and wary, slipping away from the excited girl before he really told her anything useful.
The next weekend in church, a young man named Bobby Washington approached Watley and asked, “Would you be interested in being my partner on Soul Train?” Washington’s regular partner was out of town, and he (rightly) thought Watley had a great look. “So he ended up being my way in,” Watley said.
For her first show, she wore a crocheted hat and high-waisted yellow pants, but she doesn’t remember much about that first time on set other than being told to take off the hat. There was a no-hats-on-the-show rule.
What she does recall is wanting to get back on Soul Train.
Watley: This can’t be the Cinderella, and my-carriage-turns-into-a-pumpkin moment. So then my journey on Soul Train got really interesting. It took me many months of taking the bus up to the tapings and trying to weave my way in the line. There would be a security guard. He would check off the names. So I would ride the bus back home, and I would cry and come back the next month and try again.
Daniel knew other members of Watley’s family before they’d met, but once they’d
been introduced he immediately took a liking to this lean, large-eyed young woman.
Daniel: At one point I started coming to Jody’s place after school. She was still in high school. We would practice dance routines either at her place or at the choir director’s house. We had chemistry because we skated well together.
Daniel and Watley used to skate at the Hollywood Roller Bowl, developing a rhythm and moves that would be reflected on Soul Train. “It wasn’t contrived. It just happened. It was very natural.”
Watley, along with Daniel, Cleveland Moses Jr., Sharon Hill, and others, would become part of the waacking dancers crew that was centered around Proctor. “I think we all just had a common love for what we were doing,” Daniel said. “We would sometimes dress alike, all four of us. Or just Tyrone would be with Sharon, and I would be with Jody.”
Very quickly, Jody and Jeffrey became their own entity. Whether they were on a riser, in the middle of the dance floor, or grooving down the Soul Train line, the camera loved them both. For one show, they incorporated a fake fight into their dance. Watley said, “That was inspired from an actual real fight that had happened on the show between a couple of dancers who were very popular but didn’t care for each other.” Recalling their days at the roller rink, the duo once skated down the line. Jeffrey even brought two unicycles to the set. At another taping, they used balloons as props. “We were very theatrical with it,” said Watley. Charlie Chaplin, Danny K, and mimes Shields and Yarnell were all influences on Daniel and Watley.
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