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The Soul Train Episode · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of My
0:03
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
0:12
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there,
0:16
Speaker 1: and this is stuff you should know. Not bad. Let's
0:23
Speaker 1: hear yours. I know you can do it. The Soul Train,
0:27
Speaker 1: it's so much higher than that. That was good though,
0:30
Speaker 1: but you you, you dropped it down into your range
0:33
Speaker 1: and it still was. You made it your own, I think,
0:35
Speaker 1: is what I'm trying to say. And I like it,
0:37
Speaker 1: which is old white guy version. So you're not old,
0:41
Speaker 1: You're just middle aged now, okay, sure, uh well let
0:45
Speaker 1: me ask you this, Chuck. Were you aware of Soul
0:47
Speaker 1: Train while it was on? Oh? Yeah, okay, then your
0:50
Speaker 1: super rowl. I love Soul Train. Sure. So I was
0:55
Speaker 1: a solid Gold man myself, but I can get on
0:58
Speaker 1: some Soul Train for sure, especially like vintage stuff these days. Yeah,
1:02
Speaker 1: I mean I've watched Solid Gold to be sure. Uh
1:05
Speaker 1: an American bandstand. But I was just a uh a
1:09
Speaker 1: rapid consumer of popular culture and television and music growing up,
1:15
Speaker 1: so before MTV came along and completely changed my life,
1:21
Speaker 1: because that's all I watched was shows like soul Train.
1:25
Speaker 1: We're where I could because you know, often I couldn't
1:28
Speaker 1: stay up to watch um late night te uh talk
1:32
Speaker 1: shows where you see performances like this is where I
1:34
Speaker 1: got to see live music before I could start go
1:37
Speaker 1: seeing live music. Right, Oh yeah, that was and that
1:39
Speaker 1: was a huge draw of it for sure. Like the
1:41
Speaker 1: idea of just being able to tune in on Saturday
1:44
Speaker 1: at eleven am, depending on where you were and and
1:47
Speaker 1: seeing like a somebody like Marvin Gay or Stevie Wonder
1:50
Speaker 1: perform like that was that was a big deal, especially
1:53
Speaker 1: like you're saying, if you're too young and fell asleep
1:55
Speaker 1: too early to go to a proper show. Um, but
1:58
Speaker 1: even more than that, and like that was a huge,
2:01
Speaker 1: huge mark that Soul Train left was was just presenting that.
2:04
Speaker 1: But that had been done before. There was American band
2:06
Speaker 1: stay and there are all sorts of like kind of
2:08
Speaker 1: dance party TV shows. UM. So it didn't exactly pioneer
2:12
Speaker 1: in that sense. But what it did pioneer and is
2:16
Speaker 1: that the people that was presenting African Americans teenagers um,
2:22
Speaker 1: who were hip and their own people and part of
2:25
Speaker 1: black culture and presenting it in a way that like
2:29
Speaker 1: was an apologetic that wasn't um critical, that didn't didn't
2:34
Speaker 1: portray it in some sort of negative light or in
2:37
Speaker 1: a way that you know, I was trying to get
2:39
Speaker 1: white people to understand it. Just presenting it as it
2:42
Speaker 1: was and celebrating it. That's where Soul Train like really
2:46
Speaker 1: broke through. And it's very very difficult to overstate how
2:51
Speaker 1: revolutionary and groundbreaking Soul Train was, especially for how simple
2:57
Speaker 1: the show format was. Basically, I mean, like you said,
3:00
Speaker 1: bandstand had been around since nineteen two and this uh
3:05
Speaker 1: you know kind of was known as the Black American Bandstand,
3:08
Speaker 1: and it followed that format. It was you know, people,
3:11
Speaker 1: a live music performance, UM, a host interviewing and talking
3:16
Speaker 1: to these people, uh, these musicians afterward briefly, and then
3:20
Speaker 1: beyond that just awesome music spinning on the turntable and
3:27
Speaker 1: amazing dancing, amazing outfits, amazing hairstyles, and just a celebration
3:33
Speaker 1: of black culture. It was really really cool, and um,
3:37
Speaker 1: the point is made in in this uh in this
3:39
Speaker 1: article that they put together for us, but um, it
3:43
Speaker 1: was it was definitely um by black people and four
3:47
Speaker 1: black people, but it was an introduction to black culture
3:50
Speaker 1: to white kids like me, a little eight year old
3:53
Speaker 1: Chuck in Stone Mountain, Georgia sitting around watching the Soul
3:56
Speaker 1: Train dance line. Yeah, I can't imagine it was mind blowing, Chuck, Like, um,
4:02
Speaker 1: I think it wasn't just you know, it wasn't like
4:04
Speaker 1: you were necessarily sheltered where you were growing up. Whether
4:07
Speaker 1: you were or not, it kind of doesn't matter. It
4:09
Speaker 1: was that there there was no place for you to
4:12
Speaker 1: be exposed to this prior to Soul Train, that if
4:16
Speaker 1: you saw a black guy on TV, it was say
4:19
Speaker 1: on the news and he was being arrested for something
4:22
Speaker 1: or they you know, he was involved in a protest
4:26
Speaker 1: and the protest was kind of presented in a particularly negative,
4:30
Speaker 1: agitated light um or he was a sidekick on on
4:35
Speaker 1: TV or a servant or in some kind of goofy
4:38
Speaker 1: comedy or something like that. Like the un soul Training
4:41
Speaker 1: into that, there was no there was no subscribing to
4:45
Speaker 1: all like the preconceived notions that there have been before.
4:48
Speaker 1: It was just its own thing. It was like, hey,
4:50
Speaker 1: by the way we've been you know, we have our
4:52
Speaker 1: own culture over here. You guys have ignored all this time.
4:55
Speaker 1: We're gonna put it on TV and show it off.
4:57
Speaker 1: And if you like it awesome if you don't get lost. Yeah,
5:01
Speaker 1: And Dave um I thought it was kind of astute
5:03
Speaker 1: that he said it was kind of like a lifestyle
5:05
Speaker 1: brand before that was such a thing because these people
5:08
Speaker 1: were influencers, uh what you saw and on soul Train,
5:13
Speaker 1: you you wanted to dance like that, you wanted to
5:16
Speaker 1: wear those clothes. If someone debuted of sweet move, then
5:21
Speaker 1: you saw on Saturday morning, you would uh practice that
5:25
Speaker 1: move in your living room and then debut it at
5:27
Speaker 1: your club that night. And there were like some pretty
5:30
Speaker 1: sweet moves that were debuted on Unsoul Trained. The Sweetest
5:34
Speaker 1: We did an entire episode on the Moonwalk, if you
5:36
Speaker 1: remember correctly, and that was originally called the Backslide that
5:40
Speaker 1: was created on Soul Train. The Robot the rerun. Dam it, man,
5:44
Speaker 1: there's so much sweet robot ing. Yes, yeah, and that's
5:48
Speaker 1: where he came from. Apparently no one did the robot
5:50
Speaker 1: And like these were like basically club kids who who
5:54
Speaker 1: now had a place to do their club stuff on
5:57
Speaker 1: TV and then go out to the club's later that
6:00
Speaker 1: night and do some more and like come up with
6:02
Speaker 1: more stuff and they come bring it to Soul Train
6:04
Speaker 1: again and then kids would watch that kids, college kids,
6:09
Speaker 1: adults would watch this and be like, this is the
6:11
Speaker 1: coolest thing that's on TV right now, and I want
6:13
Speaker 1: to do those dance moves too. Yeah. Let's read a
6:16
Speaker 1: couple of these quotes that kind of encapsulate how important
6:20
Speaker 1: of a show this was. One is from philosopher, activists
6:24
Speaker 1: and Harvard professor Cornell West. He said, I never missed
6:27
Speaker 1: it Saturday morning as a graduate, as a student at Princeton,
6:31
Speaker 1: I would see it wherever I was. It made available
6:34
Speaker 1: to the world one of the great traditions in American history,
6:36
Speaker 1: which is a history of soul music. Soul music at
6:39
Speaker 1: its best, taught America, especially young Americans, about color, how
6:43
Speaker 1: to be free, and how to love in a deeper
6:45
Speaker 1: and better way. Uh. And this from common the actor
6:49
Speaker 1: and rapper. Watching my babysitter get the opportunity to go
6:53
Speaker 1: on Soul Train was like a dream come true for
6:55
Speaker 1: her because Soul Train was the biggest thing then for
6:58
Speaker 1: the black community. It gave ordinary, everyday people an opportunity
7:02
Speaker 1: to express themselves. It showed us that we two have
7:05
Speaker 1: a place on TV. Yeah, and I can't imagine what
7:10
Speaker 1: commons babysitter, how excited she must have been to get
7:13
Speaker 1: to be on Soul Train, like that must have been
7:16
Speaker 1: the biggest thing possible, Like they said it was the
7:18
Speaker 1: hippest trip on television, and like that was not much
7:22
Speaker 1: of an exaggeration, especially at the time, especially when you
7:25
Speaker 1: compared it to like American Bandstand at the time, which
7:28
Speaker 1: when when Soul Train came along, you said Bandstand had
7:30
Speaker 1: been on since nineteen fifty two, almost two decades by
7:34
Speaker 1: this time. Um Soul Train comes along, And there was
7:37
Speaker 1: a TV critic in nineteen seventy three who wrote, I
7:39
Speaker 1: believe for the New York Times that comparing Um Soul
7:43
Speaker 1: Train to the old American Bandstand is like comparing Champagne
7:47
Speaker 1: to seltzer Burns. That had to that had to hurt
7:50
Speaker 1: Dick Clark. Oh, he did fun well as far as
7:54
Speaker 1: I could tell. Everything I've ever heard about him. He
7:56
Speaker 1: was literate, so we very well could have read that,
7:58
Speaker 1: and if not, somebody may have read it to him
8:00
Speaker 1: and it hurt his feelings. There's no way it didn't.
8:03
Speaker 1: So we can't talk about Soul Train without talking about
8:06
Speaker 1: Don Cornelius. Uh. Don Cornelius was the host and creator
8:11
Speaker 1: of Soul Train and owner and Owner, which is huge,
8:15
Speaker 1: like this guy owned his own TV show, which was
8:19
Speaker 1: not a very common thing to happen, still a comment thing.
8:23
Speaker 1: They usually put him in league with Desi ar Nez,
8:26
Speaker 1: who owned I Love Lucy, and Mike Douglas who owned
8:29
Speaker 1: the Mike Douglas Show. Most of even like the creators
8:32
Speaker 1: of a show, you didn't own the show that you created,
8:35
Speaker 1: like you like have some sort of deal with somebody
8:38
Speaker 1: to help produce it, or a network has exclusive rights
8:40
Speaker 1: to it, or somebody else at least own some other
8:43
Speaker 1: piece of it. This was a hundred percent Don Cornelius's
8:47
Speaker 1: jam And there's a legend um that kind of goes
8:51
Speaker 1: along with that that James Brown came on very early
8:54
Speaker 1: on in like nineteen seventy two or three, and he
8:57
Speaker 1: was like, so, who's backing you on this? Man and
9:00
Speaker 1: dot thank you. I can't do a very good James
9:02
Speaker 1: Brown um, and Don Cornelius says, it's just me James.
9:06
Speaker 1: And apparently James Brown thought that he didn't fully understand
9:10
Speaker 1: the question, so he kind of asked it again, didn't
9:12
Speaker 1: think to rephrase it in different words, just asked the
9:14
Speaker 1: same question. Don Cornelius answers in the same way He says,
9:17
Speaker 1: it's just me. James, like he got what he's saying,
9:19
Speaker 1: and he was telling him this is mine, a percent mine.
9:23
Speaker 1: Nobody else owns it. It's totally my show. And I
9:26
Speaker 1: don't think anybody else could have done it like Don
9:29
Speaker 1: Cornelius did. He was perfect for Soul Train, and I
9:35
Speaker 1: think the reason why is because it came from him,
9:37
Speaker 1: like it was his creation and his baby. Should we
9:40
Speaker 1: take a break, I'm a little worked up, so yeah
9:43
Speaker 1: maybe so all right, Uh, you're gonna work on your
9:46
Speaker 1: rerun dance. We're gonna take a little break and we'll
9:49
Speaker 1: go back and uh talk about young Don Cornelius right
9:52
Speaker 1: after this. I want to learn about how to take
9:55
Speaker 1: a perfect but about kiscon murders that they kind of
10:00
Speaker 1: all runs on the plane every day. We should know
10:07
Speaker 1: warred up Jerry. Alright, So Young Don was born in
10:29
Speaker 1: Chicago on the South Side, in the neighborhood of Bronzeville,
10:32
Speaker 1: known as the Black Metropolis. He was the son of
10:36
Speaker 1: a postal worker and it was a marine. He joined
10:39
Speaker 1: the Marines after high school. Uh fought in South Korea.
10:43
Speaker 1: After that, comes home to Chicago, tells cars for a
10:45
Speaker 1: little while, sells insurance for a little while and then says,
10:49
Speaker 1: I want to be a cop. I want to be
10:51
Speaker 1: a popo. Yep, And he was a popo also in
10:54
Speaker 1: there somewhere. He married, I believe, his high school sweetheart
10:56
Speaker 1: and has two kids. So by the time he's a cop,
10:59
Speaker 1: he's he's married with with two kids at home, two
11:01
Speaker 1: sons and one day. Um, there's a story and urban legend,
11:05
Speaker 1: as far as I know, is true. Let me smell it. Well,
11:08
Speaker 1: then it's not an urban legend. It's just a story.
11:12
Speaker 1: It could be a true urban legend. We're gonna come
11:14
Speaker 1: up with an entirely different category right now, Chuck. So
11:18
Speaker 1: Don Cornelius, Officer Cornelius pulls the guy over, and that
11:21
Speaker 1: guy happened to be the news director, Roy Wood for
11:24
Speaker 1: a local UM a M radio station, w v O N.
11:28
Speaker 1: And as Roy Wood is getting this ticket written up
11:30
Speaker 1: by Officer Cornelius, he's like, hey man, your voice is astounding,
11:36
Speaker 1: because if you've never heard Don Cornelius's voice, press pause
11:40
Speaker 1: right now and go on to YouTube. Just listen to
11:42
Speaker 1: some soul train intros from him. He was an amazingly
11:44
Speaker 1: hip cat with one of the best voices of all time.
11:49
Speaker 1: Ry white. He also pulled over the guy and said
11:52
Speaker 1: license and registration. Baby, Yeah, so that helped. Yeah, do
11:56
Speaker 1: it as Sammy Davis Jr. Pulling him over. Now, hey bad,
12:00
Speaker 1: give me your license and registration. That was that was
12:05
Speaker 1: so good? So um, anyway, the guy like is like,
12:08
Speaker 1: you have a really great voice. Have you ever considered
12:10
Speaker 1: going into radio? And Don Cornelius says, I haven't until now,
12:15
Speaker 1: but I'm going to give it some thought. And not
12:17
Speaker 1: only does he give it some thought, it's not clear
12:19
Speaker 1: whether he actually gave Roy Wood the ticket or not. Um,
12:24
Speaker 1: but he actually quits being a cop, goes and takes
12:28
Speaker 1: a three month broadcasting course with a wife and two
12:31
Speaker 1: sons at home, so this is a pretty big risk
12:33
Speaker 1: on his part, and tries out for a part as
12:37
Speaker 1: a radio announcer at w v WIN and gets hired
12:40
Speaker 1: after a three month course because his voice was that
12:43
Speaker 1: great and because his persona was that hip too. So yes,
12:48
Speaker 1: Don Cornelius, Uh, the voice of gold the Golden Tonsils?
12:54
Speaker 1: Is that what they called the velvet fog? That was melt?
12:57
Speaker 1: Or may? Okay? I always get this too confused and
13:01
Speaker 1: nol on movie Crush. His nickname is Smokey vellet. Oh
13:04
Speaker 1: that's nice. I'm not sure where that came from. Maybe
13:06
Speaker 1: I made it up. Smokey gullet, smokey velfit. I was
13:10
Speaker 1: smokey vell smokey gullet. That's really gross. So uh. He
13:16
Speaker 1: becomes a DJ at the radio station, like you said,
13:19
Speaker 1: and then as hired as a reporter, a news reporter
13:21
Speaker 1: on TV for w c i U t V. He
13:25
Speaker 1: covered sports, he covered covered civil rights stuff. He had
13:29
Speaker 1: a show for the news program called a Black's View
13:33
Speaker 1: of the News, which is, you know something you could
13:36
Speaker 1: only get away with in the nineteen sixties, I think
13:40
Speaker 1: early seventies. Plant. Oh, yeah, you're right, it would have
13:42
Speaker 1: been the sixties. Sorry, yeah, and he u. He interviewed
13:45
Speaker 1: Jesse Jackson, he interviewed Martin Luther King. Uh. Still djaying
13:49
Speaker 1: at night, and he hosted the series of house parties
13:53
Speaker 1: and club appearances all over Chicago. And he would take
13:56
Speaker 1: the train to get to these places. So he called
13:58
Speaker 1: these parties the soul Train. That's where the name came from. Yeah,
14:03
Speaker 1: so he's like a TV broadcaster by day, radio radio
14:07
Speaker 1: DJ and sock hop DJ by night comes up with
14:09
Speaker 1: this soul train idea. And again, so this is like
14:12
Speaker 1: in his first year after taking a three month broadcasting course,
14:17
Speaker 1: after pulling over a radio executive who told him he
14:19
Speaker 1: had a good voice, and he's like, you know what,
14:22
Speaker 1: I'm happy doing news and civil rights reporting and I'm
14:25
Speaker 1: part of you know, this group called the Good Guys,
14:27
Speaker 1: these black DJs out of Chicago that were kind of
14:30
Speaker 1: known as the arbiters of cool. But um, he he
14:35
Speaker 1: said that he had He later said he had this
14:36
Speaker 1: burning desire to um to see black people depicted on
14:40
Speaker 1: television in a positive light. And he decided that the
14:44
Speaker 1: best way to do that was to kind of take
14:46
Speaker 1: these parties, these sock hops and um just kind of
14:50
Speaker 1: cool Chicago house parties that he was djaying, and just
14:52
Speaker 1: put him on TV. That like that would basically be
14:55
Speaker 1: enough that if people just saw how cool these parties weren't,
14:59
Speaker 1: how fun they weren't, how much like how how what
15:01
Speaker 1: a celebration of like black culture they were just in
15:04
Speaker 1: and of themselves, that that could be a TV show
15:07
Speaker 1: by itself, And that was the original soul train. That's
15:10
Speaker 1: right and very key. He went to his TV station
15:14
Speaker 1: w c i U and said, I want to shoot
15:17
Speaker 1: a pilot for this thing, baby, and they said, Uh, sure,
15:21
Speaker 1: but we're not gonna be front the money, and he said,
15:23
Speaker 1: I'll pay for it. Little did he know what a
15:26
Speaker 1: fortuitous move that was, because I think had they funded it,
15:29
Speaker 1: they would have had a real claim to it legally.
15:32
Speaker 1: But he put up four hundred bucks of his own
15:33
Speaker 1: money shot a pilot. It didn't look that great, it
15:37
Speaker 1: was in black and white, but it was a big
15:39
Speaker 1: hit immediately. Uh, And he said, not because it was wonderful,
15:43
Speaker 1: but because it was theirs. It belonged to the black people.
15:47
Speaker 1: A year later, he moves to l a and said,
15:50
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do the show for real here. This is
15:52
Speaker 1: where it became nationally syndicated, which you know, I don't
15:56
Speaker 1: know when we talked about TV syndication, but that's basically
15:59
Speaker 1: when it's not owned and run on a major network,
16:03
Speaker 1: but you sell it to each local TV uh station
16:07
Speaker 1: in whatever city. Yeah. I don't know what we would
16:10
Speaker 1: have talked about that on either, but um I would.
16:13
Speaker 1: I think we should do an entire episode on TV syndication.
16:16
Speaker 1: I'll bet it was world changing. So um when he
16:21
Speaker 1: moved to Los Angeles, that Black and White Soul Train
16:25
Speaker 1: it used to be on every weekday. They continued that,
16:28
Speaker 1: so it was like it was two things. It was
16:30
Speaker 1: a full color, nationally syndicated television show out of l A.
16:35
Speaker 1: But it was also a black and white local weekly
16:39
Speaker 1: um or weekday television show out of Chicago at the
16:43
Speaker 1: same time. For like a good five years, they were
16:46
Speaker 1: both running at the same time, and so Don Cornelius
16:49
Speaker 1: was at the helm of both. So on Fridays he
16:51
Speaker 1: would fly out to l A shoot four episodes two
16:54
Speaker 1: on Saturday to on Sunday, and then fly back in
16:57
Speaker 1: time to be there for the afternoon black and white
17:00
Speaker 1: Monday episode of the Chicago local Soul Train Amazing, Working
17:05
Speaker 1: Hard was working Hard, Yeah, it's right. So uh. It
17:09
Speaker 1: was a very popular show right out of the gate,
17:11
Speaker 1: but advertising was always kind of a struggle because mainstream
17:15
Speaker 1: brands didn't quite know what to make of it. They
17:16
Speaker 1: didn't this was kind of the first show of its kind. Um.
17:20
Speaker 1: But that did open the door for Johnson Products, another
17:24
Speaker 1: black owned Chicago business from husband and wife team George
17:27
Speaker 1: and Joanne Johnson. Uh that they started nineteen fifty four,
17:31
Speaker 1: and these commercials are so great too. They sold beauty
17:35
Speaker 1: and hair care products to African Americans, so Afro Sheen
17:38
Speaker 1: and Ultra Sheen were the two big ones and the
17:41
Speaker 1: two big commercials you see, and they became as much
17:44
Speaker 1: as part of the fabric of the show almost as
17:47
Speaker 1: like the Soul Train line or the performers or anything else.
17:49
Speaker 1: Really yeah, and I mean, like I think in a
17:53
Speaker 1: large part because they were they were like our stamps
17:55
Speaker 1: dot com, like one of the earliest and longest running sponsors. Right,
17:59
Speaker 1: So when they came on, what they were promoting with
18:03
Speaker 1: like with Afro Sheen and Ultra Sheen was radical and
18:07
Speaker 1: that it's saying like just let your hair grow naturally.
18:10
Speaker 1: These are hair products for African Americans to use when
18:13
Speaker 1: they're growing their hair naturally, not following like white beauty standards. Right.
18:17
Speaker 1: So it was like a perfect sponsor for Soul Train,
18:20
Speaker 1: which is a celebration of black culture. Um for itself,
18:24
Speaker 1: the the um Johnson family of products were promoting black
18:28
Speaker 1: culture and it's in like natural state too, So it
18:32
Speaker 1: was like just perfect to go hand in hand. I
18:34
Speaker 1: think they kind of worked with each other, but also
18:38
Speaker 1: we're important independent of one another, but when you put
18:41
Speaker 1: them together, it was like greater than some of its
18:42
Speaker 1: parts even. Yeah, and it was um it was a
18:45
Speaker 1: big deal culturally. Uh. Not only was it a big hit,
18:48
Speaker 1: but like people like Jesse Jackson said, Don Cornelius is
18:52
Speaker 1: right up there with any civil rights leader of our generation.
18:54
Speaker 1: He gave people a chance to feel good about themselves.
18:57
Speaker 1: That's pretty great. Uh. And like I said, I was
18:59
Speaker 1: a little white kid watching it. There's this lady, Madeline Weeks,
19:02
Speaker 1: who was a fashion editor at g Q. She was
19:06
Speaker 1: a little white girl in Virginia, and she said, I
19:08
Speaker 1: watched Soul Train religiously every week. I loved it from
19:10
Speaker 1: beginning to end. Even the Afrochine and ultrachine ads were heaven.
19:14
Speaker 1: I had the funkiest, most stylish, sexiest dancers. Everybody looked
19:18
Speaker 1: like they were having the best time. All the girls
19:20
Speaker 1: look gorgeous. Who wouldn't want to look like that. I
19:23
Speaker 1: was just a little kid living in the countryside in
19:25
Speaker 1: Virginia and I live for it. Does something else, it's
19:30
Speaker 1: pretty great. Well, you want to take a break and
19:32
Speaker 1: then get back into what it was like to watch
19:34
Speaker 1: Soul Train and be on it. You know. I was
19:36
Speaker 1: a guest. Yes, I can't wait. We're gonna debut that
19:40
Speaker 1: clip live, all right, let's do it. I want to
19:42
Speaker 1: learn about a terris ortic college actol how to take
19:45
Speaker 1: a perfect moment, all about fractal An kiscon that the
19:48
Speaker 1: hun the Lizzie Border murders, that they kind of all
19:49
Speaker 1: runs on the plane, everything that we should know. Wear
19:57
Speaker 1: it up, Jerry, Okay, Chuck, So we're back. There was
20:17
Speaker 1: one little thing that I wanted to include about w
20:19
Speaker 1: c i U, the original Chicago home of Soul Train.
20:23
Speaker 1: Apparently it was like a ragtag UHF station, an independent station,
20:28
Speaker 1: and um, have you ever seen that that movie UHF
20:31
Speaker 1: with weird al Nope, it's so good, but it actually
20:35
Speaker 1: is not too far off from w c i U.
20:37
Speaker 1: They would play Lithuanian and Polish language talk shows Amos
20:42
Speaker 1: and Andy, um, bullfights from Mexico like these. They just
20:47
Speaker 1: had this weird assemblage of TV shows. But then they're
20:52
Speaker 1: they're in house. Programming was made by like this ragtag
20:56
Speaker 1: kind of group of inexperienced people. And there's I read
21:00
Speaker 1: in the Chicago Reader this kind of oral history of
21:02
Speaker 1: the local version of Soul Train. The head cameraman at
21:07
Speaker 1: w c i U had strabusmus and couldn't use the
21:10
Speaker 1: viewfinder in the camera. It was like that kind of
21:13
Speaker 1: rag tag group that just kind of got it done somehow.
21:16
Speaker 1: I just love that little tidbit. That's pretty cool. Alright.
21:20
Speaker 1: So if you watch Soul Train, the first thing that
21:22
Speaker 1: you would see when the show starts is that classic
21:25
Speaker 1: um animated intro of that freight train rolling into the city.
21:30
Speaker 1: So cool, so iconic. Then you see Don Cornelius, always
21:35
Speaker 1: dressed to the nines, the coolest cat maybe to ever
21:38
Speaker 1: be on television. Would make Billy d weep with jealousy.
21:43
Speaker 1: He was because he was a DJ previously he was.
21:47
Speaker 1: He just had that DJ lingo down, you know. Uh,
21:50
Speaker 1: day put in one of the things. It's going to
21:52
Speaker 1: be a stone gas honey, like all that seventies um
21:57
Speaker 1: sort of shaft like talk was is just who Don
22:01
Speaker 1: Cornelius was. Let me, let me try my hand at it.
22:03
Speaker 1: You ready, Okay, it's gonna be a stone gas honey. Okay,
22:09
Speaker 1: that sounded like a CB trucker from the seventies. Somehow,
22:14
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a stone gas honey. I don't know
22:18
Speaker 1: what my problem is. Hey, not bad, don't MIHI to
22:21
Speaker 1: meet Chuck Josh Cornelius. Uh, you had the ear musical guests,
22:26
Speaker 1: like we said, just like American band stand. Um, I
22:29
Speaker 1: think sometimes they lip lip SYNCD and sometimes they really sang.
22:33
Speaker 1: Early on they lip synced across the board. Yeah, it
22:35
Speaker 1: kind of depends on who the artist is too, Um,
22:39
Speaker 1: Patti LaBelle, Barry White, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, James Brown,
22:43
Speaker 1: Al Green, like just a murderers row of rhythm and
22:48
Speaker 1: blues and soul performers. I think Gladys Knight and the
22:51
Speaker 1: Pips was on the first syndicated episode. Yeah, and like
22:55
Speaker 1: that was a huge favor that he called in and
22:58
Speaker 1: Gladys totally delivered by being on that first nationally syndicated
23:01
Speaker 1: episode because it drew a lot of attention and apparently
23:04
Speaker 1: from that point on, uh, he was he was always
23:08
Speaker 1: very um deferential, saying, you know, if it weren't for Gladys,
23:12
Speaker 1: none of this would be here right now. That's nice. Yeah,
23:14
Speaker 1: it was pretty cool. Her. Have you ever eaten at
23:16
Speaker 1: Gladys Knight's House of Chicken and Waffles? What do you think?
23:20
Speaker 1: I'm thinking you probably have multiple times, but we've never
23:22
Speaker 1: discussed it. Yeah. I mean when I lived in l A,
23:25
Speaker 1: I was a regular at Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles. But um, yeah,
23:28
Speaker 1: Gladys Knight does it right as well, Yes she does.
23:30
Speaker 1: Have you ever had the smothered chicken there? I don't
23:34
Speaker 1: think so. Is it like gravy or something? Yes? And
23:37
Speaker 1: it is even better than the chicken and waffles. Yes.
23:41
Speaker 1: I can't not get the chicken and waffles. So get both, Okay,
23:45
Speaker 1: just get both. There's no reason to hold back at
23:48
Speaker 1: Gladys Knight's house of chicken and waffles and eat a
23:50
Speaker 1: little bit of both and take the rest of them sure,
23:53
Speaker 1: or eat it all? Yes, um so Soul Train. Of course,
23:58
Speaker 1: the musical performances were great and classic and iconic, but
24:02
Speaker 1: it's the dancing that is what it's really known for.
24:06
Speaker 1: They got they scouted out some of these dancers. They
24:08
Speaker 1: would go to the clubs and they did this on
24:10
Speaker 1: American Bandstand and other shows too that had that had dancers.
24:14
Speaker 1: They would go find like the flies dancers in the clubs,
24:18
Speaker 1: invite them to be on the show, and everyone else
24:21
Speaker 1: had to audition, Like thousands of people would line up
24:24
Speaker 1: an audition with their dance moves to be a Soul
24:26
Speaker 1: trained dancer. Yeah and um like again, like commons babysitter
24:31
Speaker 1: was saying, like that was a big deal to be picked,
24:34
Speaker 1: and some were recruited, like you're saying, from the clubs um,
24:38
Speaker 1: and those those particular dancers were usually so good that
24:43
Speaker 1: they would rise to like national prominence, like the camera
24:45
Speaker 1: just couldn't avoid them. They also were no slouches that
24:49
Speaker 1: learning how to play to the camera to um when
24:52
Speaker 1: the camera was on them or anywhere near them. Um.
24:54
Speaker 1: But one of the ways that everybody shine to whether
24:57
Speaker 1: you've got a lot of camera time or not, was
24:59
Speaker 1: in the the the Soul Train Line, which became a
25:02
Speaker 1: really regular feature of each episode where everybody just kind
25:06
Speaker 1: of be clapping and standing on two sides, and then
25:09
Speaker 1: a couple would come down, usually a couple, sometimes it
25:11
Speaker 1: was solo would come down and do some crazy dance moves,
25:15
Speaker 1: um and really get a chance to like show off
25:17
Speaker 1: and and kind of capture the attention of the of
25:20
Speaker 1: the viewing audience. Yeah, if you've never gone on YouTube
25:24
Speaker 1: and looked at Soul Train Line videos, um, first of all,
25:29
Speaker 1: I'm surprised that you you exist as a human. And secondly,
25:34
Speaker 1: just do it and then look up at the clock
25:37
Speaker 1: two hours later, because you will be able to do
25:41
Speaker 1: nothing but watch those video clips. It's amazing and what's
25:45
Speaker 1: cool about it too, is you can put it to
25:47
Speaker 1: any kind of super cool music and it sounds really great.
25:50
Speaker 1: It looks really great. What you like and mute it
25:53
Speaker 1: and put on different music. No, no, but other people
25:55
Speaker 1: have like put their own tracks or other people's tracks.
25:59
Speaker 1: Video of soul Train. It works really well. Interesting. Yeah,
26:03
Speaker 1: I like the real music. Sure, real music isn't bad either.
26:07
Speaker 1: The jungle boogie one is really good. In particular, that
26:10
Speaker 1: is a good one. So they filmed four episodes in
26:13
Speaker 1: a weekend. Um. Apparently the dancers were worked pretty hard,
26:17
Speaker 1: and Cornelius was pretty demanding of them. You couldn't choot, gum,
26:21
Speaker 1: you couldn't curse. His mantra was beyond time, be tactful,
26:25
Speaker 1: be creative, be funky, and be yourself. Yeah, they were
26:32
Speaker 1: unpaid too, typically, Um, I guess you would be paid
26:35
Speaker 1: if you were dancing to a performer. Um, but if
26:40
Speaker 1: you were part of the segments that that it was
26:43
Speaker 1: just them playing music and people were dancing, you were unpaid. Um.
26:47
Speaker 1: I think they'd feed you because again, you're doing two
26:50
Speaker 1: episodes over two days, so for total, like you were saying, um,
26:56
Speaker 1: and I mean you're dancing like the whole time, and
26:58
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that these things probably took longer than an hour.
27:02
Speaker 1: They didn't just do an hour and that was it,
27:04
Speaker 1: with no retakes or edits or anything like that. So
27:06
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how long it actually took to film
27:09
Speaker 1: an actual episode, but you were basically dancing the entire time,
27:13
Speaker 1: two episodes back to back, twice over a weekend. I
27:17
Speaker 1: bet it was fun too, though I'm sure it was
27:19
Speaker 1: fun too. I was thinking the impression that it was
27:21
Speaker 1: a little competitive. Although there's a guy who um frequently
27:26
Speaker 1: gets overshadowed by Don Cornelius, but was known as his
27:29
Speaker 1: right hand man. His name was Clinton Ghent, and he
27:32
Speaker 1: was one of the uh the kind of co creators
27:36
Speaker 1: of soul Train, or he was there from the beginning
27:38
Speaker 1: in Chicago, and he had a real eye for finding
27:42
Speaker 1: those dancers in the clubs. He was one of the
27:44
Speaker 1: ones who would go scout dancers, um but not only
27:47
Speaker 1: of finding people who had like really crazy good moves
27:49
Speaker 1: and getting them to come on to soul Train, but
27:51
Speaker 1: of putting all sorts of different dancers who would normally
27:54
Speaker 1: be pretty competitive with one another, finding groups that would
27:57
Speaker 1: kind of jell together like a family. So that when
27:59
Speaker 1: you go back and watch Soul Train episodes or when
28:01
Speaker 1: you were watching it when they were coming on the
28:03
Speaker 1: first time, you you you weren't like sitting there seeing
28:07
Speaker 1: like dancers like kind of sniping one another, backbiting or
28:10
Speaker 1: pushing each other out the way. It did kind of
28:12
Speaker 1: have this really family vibe every episode, And apparently that
28:17
Speaker 1: was the work of Clinton Gent guy who who just
28:20
Speaker 1: really knew how to put people together. Yeah, that g
28:22
Speaker 1: Q uh editor really nailed it. Like it It just
28:26
Speaker 1: looked like every it looked like a party you wanted
28:28
Speaker 1: to be at, like everyone was having a good time. Yeah,
28:30
Speaker 1: for sure. So some of the um, some of these
28:33
Speaker 1: dancers went on to be famous. Um, we're kind of
28:36
Speaker 1: discovered there. Jody Whatley, the singer, She started out as
28:40
Speaker 1: a teenager on Soul Train, and Don Cornelius was like,
28:44
Speaker 1: you're super talented. I'm a businessman. Um, I'm gonna pair
28:48
Speaker 1: you with this other guy, Jeffrey Daniel, and you guys
28:50
Speaker 1: should record music together. And that little group went on
28:54
Speaker 1: to be Shalimar of course. Uh in nineteen seventy seven
28:58
Speaker 1: they got together and then after Shalimar, Jody Watley went
29:02
Speaker 1: on to become Jody Watley. That's right. Ah, you mentioned
29:07
Speaker 1: rerun from What's Happening, Um, Nick Cannon Carmen Electra, which
29:12
Speaker 1: I didn't know that she started out there that that
29:13
Speaker 1: kind of surprised me. I didn't either. Her real name
29:16
Speaker 1: is Tera Lee Patrick. Did you know that. I don't
29:19
Speaker 1: know if I did or not. I know it wasn't
29:21
Speaker 1: Carmen Electra. Yeah, it's not that, although she looks way
29:26
Speaker 1: more like a Carmen Electra than a Terry Lee Patrick. Yeah, agreed,
29:31
Speaker 1: didn't look at all Irish or Southern. Rosie Perez was
29:35
Speaker 1: maybe one of the biggest names to come out of
29:37
Speaker 1: a Soul Train. This was in the eighties, because you know,
29:40
Speaker 1: you think about the salad days of Soul Train and
29:43
Speaker 1: you'd probably think of the seventies, but the eighties were
29:46
Speaker 1: pretty big and it went all the way to two
29:47
Speaker 1: thousand six. But um, in the eighties is when the
29:50
Speaker 1: hip hop influence came on, and Rosie Perez brought that
29:54
Speaker 1: that Brooklyn, New York City hip hop flavor. And if
29:57
Speaker 1: you go back and watch some of her stuff fun
30:00
Speaker 1: Soul Train, it's like the Dancing School. It's much it's
30:03
Speaker 1: much different than that sort of seventies groove that was.
30:07
Speaker 1: It was that sort of New York City hip hop style. Yeah,
30:10
Speaker 1: but she does it like the beginning of um, what
30:14
Speaker 1: does it, uh, do the right thing? Yeah, that's her
30:16
Speaker 1: dancing at the beginning of her right. Yeah. That was
30:19
Speaker 1: like straight up soul train. That's what she did on
30:20
Speaker 1: soul Train um, which is very much not like what
30:24
Speaker 1: they were doing in l A too. So she kind
30:26
Speaker 1: of rose to prominence as a soul train dancer very quickly,
30:30
Speaker 1: and Don Cornelius apparently was like, hey, I want to
30:33
Speaker 1: lock you into a contract, and Rosie Perez, being smart, streetwise,
30:37
Speaker 1: Rosie Perez said that's great, I'll show it to my lawyer.
30:40
Speaker 1: And apparently Don Cornelius didn't like this, and as the
30:43
Speaker 1: story goes, he grabbed Rosie Perez, which is not what
30:47
Speaker 1: you do when somebody says that they want their lawyer
30:49
Speaker 1: to look at a contract, you want them to lock
30:51
Speaker 1: into um or for any reason really um And to
30:56
Speaker 1: get him all of her she threw um a piece
30:59
Speaker 1: of the fried chicken she was eating at the time,
31:00
Speaker 1: right at his head and hit him in the face.
31:02
Speaker 1: That's how the story goes. That's how Rosie Perez tells
31:06
Speaker 1: it for sure. Yeah, and you know we should mention
31:08
Speaker 1: too that that is not cool at all. And while
31:11
Speaker 1: we're praising Don Cornelius for his talents as a host,
31:13
Speaker 1: he uh he did later in life when he was
31:16
Speaker 1: a bit older. Um was what was he arrested or
31:19
Speaker 1: was he just charged? I think he was charged with
31:23
Speaker 1: um domestic violence against his Russian Ukrainian wife. Yes, he
31:28
Speaker 1: was at least charged. Um. I don't know if he
31:32
Speaker 1: was convicted, but there was a Yeah, he got into
31:36
Speaker 1: an entailment because of that, at least accusation that he
31:40
Speaker 1: had um abused her and then also apparently intimidated a
31:45
Speaker 1: witness into changing their story. He was charged with that
31:47
Speaker 1: as well. It was from what I understand though, this
31:50
Speaker 1: all took place over a single night and possibly within
31:53
Speaker 1: a very short period of time, over single night. Not
31:56
Speaker 1: at all trying to justify or excuse it, but um,
32:00
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't know the story behind it at all, um,
32:04
Speaker 1: but I think it's worth pointing out like Don Cornelius
32:07
Speaker 1: was not just as straight up like nothing but a smooth,
32:10
Speaker 1: cool cat. He was a complex human being who had
32:13
Speaker 1: faults as well too, and flaws and all that. I
32:16
Speaker 1: mean grabbing Rosie Perez is bad enough alone. Sure you
32:20
Speaker 1: know what you get, You get the old chicken wing
32:21
Speaker 1: to the forehead. Yeah you do. I you would think,
32:25
Speaker 1: like even before she was a star, you'd know, just
32:28
Speaker 1: hanging out with her a little bit, not to mess
32:29
Speaker 1: with Rosie Perez. I would never mess with Rosie Perez.
32:32
Speaker 1: And he didn't know that his signature sign off was
32:36
Speaker 1: on Don Cornelius and as always imparting, we wish you love,
32:39
Speaker 1: peace and soul. Yeah. There are a couple of other
32:43
Speaker 1: people who kind of rose to prominence to Cheryl Song.
32:46
Speaker 1: She was the first Asian dancer on Soul Train, and
32:48
Speaker 1: she said she had to really kind of prove herself
32:50
Speaker 1: that she wasn't just like the token non African American dancer, UM,
32:55
Speaker 1: that she was actually a really good dancer, and she
32:56
Speaker 1: did um. And then Jermaine Stewart, who you might recognize
33:01
Speaker 1: as the singer of We Don't Have to Take Our
33:03
Speaker 1: Clothes Off. And that's pretty cute because he came back
33:06
Speaker 1: home and performed it on Soul Train in and when
33:10
Speaker 1: Don Cornelius was introducing him, he was saying, he made
33:13
Speaker 1: good and we're all very proud of him, and like
33:15
Speaker 1: you mentioned the Irish Carmon Electra, who I guess stood
33:19
Speaker 1: out because she was river dancing on Soul Train, and
33:22
Speaker 1: everyone was like, what is that? What is that? But
33:25
Speaker 1: then everybody wanted to do it because it was Carmon
33:27
Speaker 1: Electra doing it. So Soul Train was so popular, and
33:32
Speaker 1: Dick Clark, I guess, didn't feel like he had enough
33:36
Speaker 1: money as a TV mogul and an icon on American Bandstand,
33:42
Speaker 1: so he went, Hey, I'm gonna start my own Soul
33:45
Speaker 1: Train and try and bury Don Cornelius all right, and
33:49
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call it Soul Unlimited. M gonna put it
33:52
Speaker 1: on ABC. And it was. You can see clips of
33:54
Speaker 1: it on YouTube. It didn't last long, but it was
33:57
Speaker 1: a literal rip off of Soul Train. And you might
34:01
Speaker 1: say Soul Train was a rip off of American band
34:03
Speaker 1: Stand fair enough, but for him to go after, uh,
34:07
Speaker 1: the African American market like that, I don't think it
34:10
Speaker 1: was very cool. No, it isn't very cool. I could
34:14
Speaker 1: see Dick Clark being a little blind to the larger
34:18
Speaker 1: implications of it. And you know, I don't know if
34:21
Speaker 1: if he was involved in it's canceling or not, but
34:24
Speaker 1: you know, some some black leaders did get it canceled.
34:28
Speaker 1: They started a campaign to say, like, no, just leave
34:30
Speaker 1: this one alone. I don't know if how easily Dick
34:33
Speaker 1: Clark went along with it or not. I like to
34:35
Speaker 1: think he was like, okay, I see the air of
34:37
Speaker 1: my ways now and dropped it. But yeah, only a
34:39
Speaker 1: few episodes came out either way. Soul Train was left
34:42
Speaker 1: to like stand on its own, you know which? And
34:45
Speaker 1: I think rightfully so too. Yeah yeah, uh. There were
34:48
Speaker 1: other performers later on, they would have white performers. David
34:51
Speaker 1: Bowie very famously was on there. Did you watch that? Did? It?
34:56
Speaker 1: Was awful? Did a pretty bad lip sync job, which
34:58
Speaker 1: Cornelius gave him, uh, kind of teased him about. Uh.
35:02
Speaker 1: And then Elton John who was who has always had
35:04
Speaker 1: a pretty big following in the African American community. I
35:07
Speaker 1: don't know that, did you? Yeah? Yeah? He wrote. He
35:10
Speaker 1: wrote about it in his autobiography that I read last year.
35:13
Speaker 1: I think it started when um Aretha Franklin covered Burned
35:19
Speaker 1: Down the Mission If I'm not mistaken, Okay, is that
35:22
Speaker 1: the one she recorded? I think that's the way it
35:24
Speaker 1: went down. I've never heard of that song before. What
35:28
Speaker 1: is wrong with you? You've never heard burned Down the Mission?
35:31
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I'm not the biggest Elton John fan.
35:34
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm fine with him, but I really don't
35:36
Speaker 1: like a lot of his seventies stuff, like a lot.
35:39
Speaker 1: I really don't like it. Wow, But I like is
35:42
Speaker 1: any stuff like the whole I'm Still Standing thing? It
35:46
Speaker 1: was burned down the mission before that? Yeah? Yeah, that
35:49
Speaker 1: was That was my follow up question is what what
35:52
Speaker 1: what problem did he have with the mission? He didn't
35:55
Speaker 1: write it? Okay, Bernie taup and wrote all his lyrics.
35:59
Speaker 1: Oh I now I am a Bernie toppin You're a
36:06
Speaker 1: National treasure. Thank you. So Elton John was on a
36:09
Speaker 1: couple of times, and um, it's pretty sweet if you
36:11
Speaker 1: look at the one. I'm not sure if it was
36:14
Speaker 1: the Philadelphia Freedom one or I hate that song or
36:18
Speaker 1: the other one that's such a good song, but he
36:20
Speaker 1: would they you know, he takes questions and you can
36:22
Speaker 1: tell he's kind of shy and a little nervous, and
36:25
Speaker 1: he takes some questions from the from the people, from
36:28
Speaker 1: the dancers and stuff, which was kind of cool. But
36:31
Speaker 1: it's just very sweet to see how nervous he was. Yeah,
36:34
Speaker 1: because he's he's known for being a humble, humble spirit,
36:40
Speaker 1: is he. No, have you ever seen that the documentary
36:44
Speaker 1: they made or he self made, or no, his partner made.
36:47
Speaker 1: His partner was the only one he would, let you know,
36:50
Speaker 1: fallo him around with the camera, which is pretty understandable.
36:52
Speaker 1: But he came out in the last like I don't know,
36:54
Speaker 1: decade or less. Yeah, the tantrums and tiarros. I think, yes, yeah, yeah, Yeah,
36:59
Speaker 1: it was great man. I loved it. Yeah, he's good.
37:01
Speaker 1: I like that Rocketman movie a lot too. I have
37:03
Speaker 1: not seen that. I saw it. I saw it over
37:07
Speaker 1: someone else's shoulders on a plane. You wouldn't like it,
37:10
Speaker 1: I didn't. I know. It didn't look like anything I
37:12
Speaker 1: would like. No, if you don't like Elton John, you
37:14
Speaker 1: wouldn't like the movie about Elton John. No. And again,
37:17
Speaker 1: sir Elton, I have no problem with you personally. It's
37:20
Speaker 1: just that that period through seventies, the seventies like Crocodile Rock, Um,
37:25
Speaker 1: the one about like Philadelphia Freedom, Um. You know all
37:29
Speaker 1: those bad seventies albums Madman Across the Water and Captain
37:32
Speaker 1: Fantastic and Goodbye ell Bick Road. Those are all terrible,
37:35
Speaker 1: exactly I feel understood. Check think you. Uh So, the
37:40
Speaker 1: eighties come along and Don Cornelius has brain surgery, takes
37:46
Speaker 1: a little time off, he comes back, Soul Train is
37:49
Speaker 1: has changed their look a little bit to try and
37:51
Speaker 1: fit with um kind of what's going on at the
37:54
Speaker 1: time with like Whitney Houston and people like that. And
37:58
Speaker 1: then hip hop and rap come along and apparently Don
38:02
Speaker 1: Cornelia Cornelius was not a big fan. Uh yeah, And
38:06
Speaker 1: I think I read I can't remember. I read a
38:08
Speaker 1: really great article and dazed about it. Or there's another
38:12
Speaker 1: pretty good one that was a review of the recent
38:15
Speaker 1: TV biopic about him and Soul Train on The Guardian,
38:19
Speaker 1: and it basically explained it like that Don Cornelius was
38:23
Speaker 1: like a mid century integration minded black businessman and that
38:30
Speaker 1: he and his ilk in generation they had been working
38:35
Speaker 1: towards like, you know, getting a piece of the pie
38:38
Speaker 1: that didn't necessarily it wasn't the white pie. It was
38:41
Speaker 1: the pie that white people controlled. And if you were
38:45
Speaker 1: you know, if you if you made your way to
38:47
Speaker 1: get a piece of this that like you could you
38:49
Speaker 1: could be black and still enjoy the good life. And
38:52
Speaker 1: that hip hop reminded him of everything that he and
38:55
Speaker 1: his generation had kind of tried to work beyond and
38:59
Speaker 1: past and integrate um and that to him it was
39:02
Speaker 1: a step backwards. So he wasn't vibing on it at all.
39:05
Speaker 1: My own personal take is that he was a smooth
39:09
Speaker 1: customer and he appreciated smoothness, and hip hop, especially eighties
39:15
Speaker 1: hip hop, was the opposite of smooth, and so he
39:19
Speaker 1: was not vibing on it at all. And he even
39:21
Speaker 1: referred to himself as an old guy sometimes when he
39:23
Speaker 1: was interviewing, Um, you know some of the hip hop
39:26
Speaker 1: artists who came on Soul Train in the eighties. Yeah,
39:29
Speaker 1: I watched one of the Public Enemy clips and um,
39:32
Speaker 1: it was weird. Afterwards he like, he basically ignores Chuck
39:36
Speaker 1: D and like talks only to Flavor Flavor and then
39:42
Speaker 1: finally turns to Chuck. It was like, and now, Chuck D.
39:46
Speaker 1: He said, you must feel so blessed to have have
39:50
Speaker 1: someone as talented as Flavor as your partner. What really,
39:53
Speaker 1: it was really weird, and Chuck D was like, yeah,
39:56
Speaker 1: you know, he's quite a character, as you can see.
40:00
Speaker 1: I just I don't know. It really came off as
40:02
Speaker 1: like Don Cornelius, it doesn't understand this I'm not dissing
40:06
Speaker 1: flav but like Chuck D was like the he was
40:10
Speaker 1: the leader of that band, you know, Yeah, he was
40:13
Speaker 1: the brains behind the outfit for sure. And I mean, like, yeah,
40:17
Speaker 1: Flavor Flavors just like he's he's like fills in the
40:23
Speaker 1: kind of hardness of Chuck D. Yeah, I I don't. Yeah,
40:26
Speaker 1: if you think public Enemy, it's definitely Flavor Flavor and
40:29
Speaker 1: Chuck T. But it's Chuck T. Yeah, you know what
40:31
Speaker 1: I mean, and then Flavor flav. Yeah. It was definitely
40:34
Speaker 1: a strange interview because I thought, finally he's going to
40:36
Speaker 1: talk to Chuck T. And he's like, you must feel
40:38
Speaker 1: so good about having this guy as your partner, which
40:41
Speaker 1: which one was that after? Because they were on at
40:43
Speaker 1: least twice on the regular show by my account, and
40:46
Speaker 1: then once on the Soul Train Awards at least, So
40:49
Speaker 1: it's not like he wasn't smart enough to know that
40:52
Speaker 1: they were big and should be on anyway, whether he
40:55
Speaker 1: liked him or not. But they did. They did Can't
40:58
Speaker 1: Trust It In and they did Bubble without a pause
41:01
Speaker 1: in seven and I could not find the interview segment.
41:05
Speaker 1: I just saw like the performance and we both like
41:08
Speaker 1: really great. Well, it was very sweet and actually, um,
41:12
Speaker 1: it would have had to be in the nineties one
41:14
Speaker 1: because afterward Flavor Flav asked for a a moment of
41:19
Speaker 1: silence for the passing of Miles Davison Red Fox, and
41:24
Speaker 1: they took a moment of silence. That's awesome. So um
41:28
Speaker 1: and that's actually just um, in case we haven't gotten
41:31
Speaker 1: this across enough yet, Soul Train again, was it never
41:36
Speaker 1: got away from like it's black roots, like it never
41:38
Speaker 1: sold out or anything like that. Like it was like,
41:41
Speaker 1: that makes perfect sense that they would include that part.
41:44
Speaker 1: They wouldn't just edit that out in the episode that
41:47
Speaker 1: they were published. Um, that was just part of it.
41:50
Speaker 1: Even as they're as late as the early nineties. Yeah,
41:53
Speaker 1: and the early nineties is when done Cornelius finally had
41:56
Speaker 1: to step down. Was his final episode Old. He passed
42:00
Speaker 1: it on to the younger generation. It went all the
42:04
Speaker 1: way to two thousand six and became the longest running
42:07
Speaker 1: syndicated show in TV history. Yeah, thirty five season amazing
42:12
Speaker 1: and it's that those younger that younger generation that he
42:15
Speaker 1: handed the reins over to. Some of the temporary hosts
42:19
Speaker 1: included Jamie Fox got his start, Tira Banks and Shamar
42:24
Speaker 1: More from Criminal Minds. He was a long time stand
42:27
Speaker 1: in host. Yeah, he's a big time now. I don't
42:30
Speaker 1: know who that is. Um. I I don't watch Criminal
42:33
Speaker 1: Minds either, but you've seen enough like ads for Criminal
42:36
Speaker 1: Minds that you would recognize. I'm sure very sadly done.
42:39
Speaker 1: Cornelius took his own life. He was suffering from Alzheimer's
42:44
Speaker 1: and apparently was having a lot of seizures and just
42:47
Speaker 1: in a pretty bad way, um physically, and his son
42:51
Speaker 1: said that that was that was the reason why he
42:53
Speaker 1: took his own life. Yeah. Well Pussy had also sold
42:57
Speaker 1: the rights I think too Soul two, and it seems
43:01
Speaker 1: like things kind of started to go downhill for him
43:03
Speaker 1: around then, I think in two thousand eight. Um. But yeah,
43:08
Speaker 1: apparently it was a really big surprise to everybody who
43:10
Speaker 1: knew him that he um, he died by suicide, that
43:15
Speaker 1: that was not the perceived outcome for him, I think, Um,
43:20
Speaker 1: But his legacy lives on. Like you said, I mean,
43:23
Speaker 1: the thirty five seasons the longest running syndicated television show
43:26
Speaker 1: of all time. In and of itself, it's an incredible achievement,
43:30
Speaker 1: but also to be like a cornerstone of like introducing
43:34
Speaker 1: black culture as black culture to the larger culture as
43:37
Speaker 1: a whole and white culture is yeah. I mean that's
43:41
Speaker 1: that's about as big an accomplishment as as you can make.
43:45
Speaker 1: It's like Jesse Jackson said he was as important as
43:47
Speaker 1: any civil rights leader, you know. So that's Don Cornelius
43:52
Speaker 1: and so trained. That's if you want to know more
43:59
Speaker 1: about you don't need to know anything else. Just start
44:02
Speaker 1: go watching clips of Soul Train and you will be
44:05
Speaker 1: a happier person than you were before you started. Get
44:08
Speaker 1: ready for some sick robot action. It's so great. And
44:12
Speaker 1: rerun too. You can't forget about re run fred Berry. No,
44:15
Speaker 1: that's sweet. Um, well, since we talked about fred Berry,
44:18
Speaker 1: that means everybody obviously it's time for a listener mail. Uh,
44:23
Speaker 1: this is about Iron Maiden. Hey, guys, listen to your
44:25
Speaker 1: short stuff on six six six and loved it more
44:29
Speaker 1: so for Josh's thoughts on Iron Maiden, hardest working band
44:32
Speaker 1: in business seeing them twice. I've been a Maiden fan
44:35
Speaker 1: for about fifteen years, and I gotta say Josh was
44:38
Speaker 1: right on the money when he said Power Slave was
44:39
Speaker 1: the album to listen to if you've never really given
44:42
Speaker 1: them a chance, So chuck, whip out that old bean bag,
44:47
Speaker 1: roll up a fatty, crack open a cold one, and
44:50
Speaker 1: crank up some Maiden. You'll be glad you did. Also,
44:54
Speaker 1: just want to say thank you both for the awesome
44:56
Speaker 1: work you do. I'm spewing, which must be Australian for angry.
45:02
Speaker 1: He says, I'm spewing because I couldn't get to your
45:04
Speaker 1: show when you came to Perth. I think so, Yeah, yeah,
45:08
Speaker 1: you missed a good show. That was I was thinking
45:09
Speaker 1: about how cool that town was the other day. Yeah,
45:12
Speaker 1: Perth was school. Your discussion and delivery of interesting, exciting
45:15
Speaker 1: topics week after week, transmute information and understanding into very
45:19
Speaker 1: enjoyable entertainment into my ear holes, bringing much joy not
45:23
Speaker 1: just in my commute but to my work life. Lots
45:25
Speaker 1: of love from Mandura, Western Australia. And that is from
45:29
Speaker 1: thy Ty. I like this person. Yeah. First of all,
45:33
Speaker 1: Ty says that I'm right, which I love. Like's Iron
45:37
Speaker 1: Maiden loves Iron Maiden, you could say, and as upset
45:40
Speaker 1: that we that that they missed our show, we'll be back.
45:44
Speaker 1: Sure we will be Hey, you know where like number
45:46
Speaker 1: one in Australia as far as podcast go. Right now,
45:49
Speaker 1: I heard that. Man, They're they're practically begging for us
45:51
Speaker 1: to come back. Well, we'll come back and we'll definitely
45:53
Speaker 1: go to Perth again. So don't worry, ty, We'll we'll
45:56
Speaker 1: be there. Just keep any or out, keep your ear
45:57
Speaker 1: holes out, that's right. If you I'm gonna be cool
46:00
Speaker 1: like tie and get in touch with us, um, you
46:03
Speaker 1: can do that. You can send us an email to
46:05
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff You Should
46:12
Speaker 1: Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works.
46:15
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart
46:17
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
46:20
Speaker 1: favorite shows. H