The Hippest Trip in America (15 page)

While Don's words were strong, reflecting the concerns of so many involved with black music at the time, some in the business felt that Don was being a bit hypocritical, since
Soul Train
itself had employed its own “crossover” strategy from 1983 to 1985. These years were probably the most polarizing in
Soul Train
's history as Don and the show's production team struggled to adapt (and attempted to co-opt) the music-video-driven energy generated by MTV. Music videos were made part of the programming mix and white artists, most not soulful or connected to black traditions, found their way onto the
Soul Train
stage.

Some longtime fans of the show speculate that during his recovery from brain surgery, Don decided to revamp the show. Whether the changes occurred as fallout from his surgery or not, Don clearly rethought
Soul Train
's mission during the 1983–85 period. The MTV-ization of
Soul Train
went so far that at some point he even stopped the “love, peace, and
soul
” sign-off. For hard-core soul music fans, with the introduction of videos and so many white fans, the new show was difficult to take. Meanwhile, younger white pop viewers, many of whose localities were not yet wired for cable, were now attracted to the show. It was a calculated trade-off that started with episode #438 in the middle of the 1983–84 season and ran to episode #506 near the end of 1985–86. Twenty-one white performers appeared on the show either in cameos, videos, or studio performances during that stretch. That's the highest number for any period in
Soul Train
history. Some of these bookings made perfect sense: Teena Marie, Culture Club, Hall & Oates, the Tom Tom Club, and Sheena Easton either made overtly R&B music or compatible dance music. All of them also had a strong cultural identification with black culture, either because they'd been played regularly on black radio, had expressed their admiration for it in song or interviews, or had been “sponsored” by a black star (for instance, Easton had been produced by Prince).

Ex-Eagle (and county-rock icon) Don Henley, soap opera heartthrob Jack Wagner, and Weird Al (represented by his “Eat It” video) were curious enough bookings, but someone on the programming team had a real weakness for new-wave bands. The Romantics, Spandau Ballet, Howard Jones, Berlin, A-ha, the Thompson Twins, Animotion: even if you decide to give
Soul Train
's bookers the benefit of the doubt with the Pet Shop Boys, that's still a lineup more appropriate for a show hosted by Downtown Julie Brown than Don Cornelius.

While Duran Duran would appear on episode #531 in the 1986–87 season and ABC on episode #553 in 1987–88,
Soul Train
's new-wave fetish ended as quickly as it appeared. While a lot of viewers had problems with these bookings, some considering it a betrayal of
Soul Train
's commitment to black culture, the Roots' Amir Thompson argues that it opened up black viewers to a universe of music they'd have otherwise ignored.

 

Thompson:
You know, I know there was a lot of controversy over the sort of pop period of
Soul Train
. But I didn't know who the Police were. I saw them on
Soul Train
. That was one of the most controversial things. It was, like, on the Teena Marie episode of 1984. “And now for a video—here's the Police and ‘Wrapped Around Your Finger.' ” Everyone in the house is like, What the hell? The Police on
Soul Train
. Great. That was my first introduction to a lot of things I didn't get to see. Without that, I don't think I would be as obsessed with music as I am, or as immersed in music as I am.

 

DANCER PROFILE:
Louie “Ski” Carr

 

Louie “Ski” Carr had the slang, the style, and the steps to make him a significant fixture on the show in the 1980s. Like earlier
Soul Train
dancer stars, being on the show led him to a long career as a choreographer and style muse. Raised in Inglewood, California, not far from the Great Western Forum, home of the Los Angeles Lakers, Carr was a six-foot-five-inch Blaxican, or black Mexican, teen who spent a lot of his time on the local basketball courts at Rogers Park. Ballin' one afternoon in the 1980s, Carr ran into a group of young men who called themselves Cuttys. Since this was LA in the 1980s, you'd expect the Cuttys to be gang, but unlike the Bloods or Crips, they were a social group, not a criminal enterprise. “Cuttys,” Carr said, “means like brothers that stick together. They made me a Cutty, and I took that and just made it a whole Cutty vibe experience.”

For Carr, this identification with the Cutty mack ethos defined his life. “Everything is Cutty mack,” he said. “If you see one of your other Cuttys over there, and it's crowded, and he can't hear you, you just throw the Cutty finger, and he knows you're there. All our dances had names. There was the go dida. You had the Cutty finger. You had the ski slide. Everything was named. Everything had a movement.”

Cuttys were flamboyant dressers, and Carr was well-known for his hats, glasses (actual glass optional), and a variety of flashy, flowing suits. The dancers Carr admired had a strong fashion sense: Elvis Presley, James Brown, and Michael Jackson. Some of Jackson's signature moves, such as pointing at his socks, were incorporated into Carr's dancing.

Carr was a
Soul Train
fan and, using the access of his friend George Chambers's girlfriend, a dancer on the show, Carr schemed to gain entry. “I used to say, ‘Hey, George, you got to get your girl on there. I got to get on the
Train.
I'll do anything, you know, to get on that show.' So she took me on. I had to make a first impression, so I went and bought a black tux.” Sadly, that tux was no magic ticket. Carr was turned down the first and second times he tried to get into a Saturday taping. “I'm saying to myself, I'm dressed, I got a tux on, you know, what's wrong?” On his third attempt, Carr was finally granted entry. “As soon as I went in, I went straight to the stage because there's like a riser that the good dancers get to dance on, and I figured I'm six five, I'm gonna dance right there and make it seem like I'm onstage with them.”

Carr:
So I'm doing all that, my crazy antics—sticking my finger up like I'm on top of the stage, et cetera. I see Don talking to the same guy that let me in, whispering something, and [he] pointed over there to me. I think, “Oh, I'm in trouble now. I'm about to be kicked out or something.” Boom. After the song he comes to me says, “Don wants you to dance on top of the riser like the other dancers.” So for me that was a start, and now I'm up there with the girl with the long hair. I'm up there doing my thing. They position you up there with a partner. The partner kind of got mad because I never stayed. I always had to keep moving and doing my Elvis moves, James Brown moves, and my whole style.

Carr's stature and style made him an immediate viewer favorite. “I have this, you know, certain Cutty mack style,” said Carr, “which is just doing whatever you can to the music, however it moves you. If it's whispering in the girl's ear—I'm really whispering. When the camera comes by, tell me so I could be ready with the move. Here comes the camera: boom, I'm pointing and nobody's even over there. I was, like, never formally trained in dance, but I think just that style.”

New Edition, a quintet of vocalists from Boston, brought a hip-hop energy to the traditional black vocal group, mixing street dance moves with old-fashioned vocal choreography. For folks being raised on hip-hop's emerging aesthetics in the early 1980s, Bobby Brown, Michael Bivins, Ricky DeVoe, Ralph Tresvant, and Ronnie Bell were the new Temptations. But to the quintet's members, Carr was the real star. When the group made their first
Soul Train
appearance (episode #451, at the start of the 1983–84 season), they were the ones looking for an introduction.

Carr:
This girl says these young cats, New Edition from Boston, want to meet you. I was like, Cool. I'm sitting with my Cutty macks. They roll with me. New Edition are all sitting in their chairs looking at me . . . They was like, “Man, we like your style. How you do all your things and, like, you jumping from one stage to the next like you was, like, skiing? So, you know, we want you to be onstage with us. We're going to sing this song, ‘Candy Girl.' Please just come on do your thing, point to your socks, do it with the finger and the shouting and the kicks.” I was like, “Okay, look, don't tell Don, because Don will not give it a go. Let's just do it. I got you. Don't worry about it.”

“Candy Girl,” like much of New Edition's first album, was a Jackson Five–influenced record that echoed the black pop past while feeling very contemporary. About midway through the song, Bobby Brown motioned with a Cutty finger, and Carr jumped on stage.

Carr:
I go to touch the
Soul Train
logo. Come in between them, throw a Mike kick, point to the argyles. They all point to the argyles. I'm still in that moment, but I'm still thinking nobody got permission from Don. I hope I don't get kicked off. First thing he says to New Edition is, “Big Lou, stay offstage with the singers.” But then he says facetiously, “You guys asked him, you like him?” They was like, “Yeah, we like his style.” And Don was like, “He can't pop or lock,” which means I can't dance. They was like, “Yeah, but he can George, though.” Somebody told them my name was George, and I used to wear suits. You know, the whole
Gentlemen's Quarterly
style with the suits, ties, shoes, the Gators, Stacy Adams too. And so when they would buy suits they would call them George, after me.

That first onstage collaboration began an enduring friendship between Carr and the various members of New Edition, a band that would form and re-form many times over the years. When three members split off to form the trio Bell Biv DeVoe, Carr was part of their team, appearing at shows and in videos, including a memorable night at the Forum. “There's footage of me and Bel Biv DeVoe onstage at the Forum where the Lakers won the championship in the eighties,” he recalled fondly. “[Laker guard] Norm Nixon's right there with two Honey Dips and Debbie Allen [his future wife]. Magic Johnson's over here dancing. He's looking at me and giving the Cutty finger.”

Even with all of his non–
Soul Train
notoriety, Carr is still best remembered for his jaunts down the
Soul Train
line. “I would just come up with these most ridiculous skits and scenes in my mind, like movie things,” he said. “I remember one time I came down and my boy Tom Tom pretending like he was talking and kissing my girl. Then I come on stage, and I come with a gun and I shoot him with a fake gun, and he falls. My boy TV comes out with stun guns. Now we going down the line shooting people and stun-gunning people, right? After that, Don says, ‘Ski, don't be pulling guns out on the
Soul Train
line. Come on.' I was like, ‘It was a fake gun,' and Don's like, ‘I know, but it's a family show.' ”

Chapter 12
Hip-Hop vs.
Soul Train

IN THE SPRING OF
1980 Curtis Walker—also known as Kurtis Blow, Harlem native, City College of New York attendee, and all of nineteen years old—stepped onto the
Soul Train
set for episode #336 and became the first hip-hop figure to appear on the show. The headliner was the self-contained band L.T.D., featuring deep-voiced vocalist Jeffrey Osborne, but Blow's appearance was the highlight of the taping. Overjoyed to be on the show, the young MC performed “The Breaks” live to a track for an excited group of dancers. Then Don Cornelius walked on stage to do the customary interview. For Blow, this was to be the high point of an extraordinary day. He'd flown in that morning from New York on his first trip to the City of Angels. On the heels of his first single, “Christmas Rappin',” and the gold “The Breaks,” Blow had already performed in Amsterdam, London, and Paris.

But for a ghetto kid from Harlem, being on
Soul Train
was a new pinnacle. Moreover, Blow had started his career in hip-hop as a break-dancer and had idolized Don Campbell and the Lockers. Blow had checked into his hotel that morning and then sped over to the
Soul Train
set, geeking out that his dressing room was right next to
Fame
star Irene Cara's.

Don had been cordial when greeting Blow backstage and gave in when the rapper requested that he be allowed to perform live to track, rather than lip-synch “The Breaks,” since (a) he'd never lip-synched in his young career and (b) he needed the crowd interplay that was essential to hip-hop. When Cornelius walked on the stage, Blow expected the standard
Soul Train
treatment. “We know
Soul Train
, after the performances, and you're standing onstage, and Don Cornelius comes out. He gives a couple of accolades: ‘How about another round of applause for this great artist.' I've seen this all my life. I'm anticipating this, and I'm ready for this . . . So he comes out, you know he has the microphone, he comes up and stands next to me, and he says, ‘I don't really know what everyone is making so much fuss about all this hip-hop, but nonetheless you heard him here, Mr. Kurtis Blow.”

The MC recalled that moment with sad clarity. “I was heartbroken. My heart actually left and traveled south to my feet, and I was stunned and shocked. And I don't know what I said. I don't think I said anything. I don't know what I said, but whatever it was, believe me . . . It's not really what I wanted to say.”

Don's ambivalence toward hip-hop was shared by most of the black music gatekeepers of his generation, be they major-label executives, radio programmers, or R&B musicians. Hip-hop seemed to challenge the essentials of black music: the stars didn't sing, a DJ playing records served as the band, and “songs” weren't structured in the verse-verse-chorus-verse-bridge-verse structure of standard pop songs. Moreover, the mainstream black popular music that Cornelius—and everyone in the black music biz—was heavily invested in had been trending toward an upscale, clean-sounding, self-conscious sophistication that was reflected in clothing as well as sound. Male artists were wearing lots of eyeliner and sporting jelled hair (either Jheri curl or California curls, depending on the product's purveyor). It was a very LA look, one the dancers on
Soul Train
proudly displayed.

The stripped-down (but no less codified) look coming out of New York's hip-hop scene represented a contrast to (or perhaps an attack on) the black mainstream and the assumptions about acceptable black maleness behind them. It wasn't simply a generation gap that separated Don from rap—though clearly that was part of it—but a disagreement about how to be “black.” In the 1970s
Soul Train
had promoted a liberated funkiness that took cutting-edge style into homes across the country. But from the time Blow took the
Soul Train
onward, Cornelius's soulful train would be running a little behind the sonic vehicles transporting hip-hop.

Years later, Cornelius talked about
Soul Train
's sometimes uneasy relationship with this new musical movement.

 

Cornelius:
Hip-hop kind of took
Soul Train
by surprise because we thought it was something that might not stick, and we didn't jump in with both feet. But apparently we had to put both feet in the pot, because young people became so committed to hip-hop, and it became the culture it is today. People look at you funny if you act like you don't know what it is. The younger demographics will simply turn away from you because you're making it clear to them that you don't know what you're doing. What's made it beautiful in an overall sense, and why no other genre has accomplished what it has, is that hip-hop/rap are so inclusive. It's inclusive in the sense that you don't have to be Quincy Jones to succeed in hip-hop. There are people who have carved successful careers in the hip-hop/rap media who, thirty years ago, would not have been able to participate in the music biz. It's part of the black culture, and if you learn to understand it, you can actually make a good living out of it.

 

With this pragmatic view as Don's guide, rap artists would slowly become part of the
Soul Train
mix. The first performers with a huge rap hit were the Sugar Hill Gang, a trio of inexperienced MCs from the New York–New Jersey area cobbled together by Sugar Hill Records co-owner Sylvia Robinson (a former R&B crooner who'd appeared on
Soul Train
in 1973 with the erotic hit “Pillow Talk”). Robinson and the three MCs put together “Rapper's Delight,” a Top Ten hit all over the globe and a massive hit in the United States. Although this landmark recording was released in 1979, the Sugar Hill Gang didn't appear on
Soul Train
until a year after its debut. I believe one reason Blow was booked on the show before the Sugar Hill Gang is that he was signed to Mercury Records, a major label with a strong, ongoing relationship with Cornelius—who needed the label's cooperation if he wanted to book its more mainstream R&B acts. Sugar Hill Records, born out of the ruins of R&B All Platinum Records, out of Englewood, New Jersey, was an independent label with no such leverage.

“I guess he was hesitant with bringing [hip-hop] on,” recalled Sugar Hill Gang member Big Bank Hank. “But you can't stop a hit . . . If you can't stop it, you might as well get out of the way, because here it comes. It was like you were riding the perfect wave.”

A reflection of Sugar Hill's absence of clout was that neither the group's three members nor its management were able to persuade Cornelius to drop his lip-synch policy. Where Blow was able to perform live, the trio was forced to lip-synch its performance. “Hip-hop is about being able to flow and rhythmically go in and out of the music and change it whenever you want to. Now you're stuck because you have to go with what the track is. You can't play with the music.” Still, the performance went well. “Oh, they lost their mind,” Hank recalled. “They just loved it.”

As the eighties unfolded and rap began its long progression from New York underground culture to mainstream brand machine,
Soul Train
would showcase top MCs overwhelmingly from New York and elsewhere on the East Coast: everyone from Run-D.M.C. to LL Cool J to Whodini to the Beastie Boys. But several of the artists felt a chill from Cornelius and some of the
Soul Train
staffers. Members of Run-D.M.C. would, incredibly, tell reporters that they felt more welcome at their initial visit to
American Bandstand
than they did on
Soul Train
.

Ahmir Thompson, an ardent
Soul Train
viewer and future hip-hop icon himself, remembers these appearances well. “I'm glad that it was included, but I more or less felt that maybe it was tokenism. Maybe it's kind of hard to see change.” He felt that a lot of the tone of Cornelius's interaction with rappers during the 1980s was “standoffish” and along the lines of “How long do you think this is gonna last?” Thompson knew this attitude well, since “that's how my father was: ‘That's not music.' He would always cover his ears. I'm glad it was included because, again, my first view of the Sugar Hill Gang or Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five was on
Soul Train
. . . I could tell that Don was a little uncomfortable in embracing it, but as a businessman, I'm glad he was smart enough to give in.”

If Cornelius tolerated the New York MCs for whom boasting about their rhyme skills was the essential topic, he was actively hostile toward the crack-era narratives that gained popularity around 1989 and, ironically, came out of some of the same South Central Los Angeles communities (Compton, Long Beach, Inglewood) as the majority of his dancers. Led by Ice-T, N.W.A, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Warren G, and Tupac Shakur and built primarily on samples from funk bands, this genre became a cultural-commercial phenomenon that initially didn't need radio play to sell records, but by 1994 it found its obscenity-free singles and party-hardy videos landing in heavy rotation—not just on black radio and BET, but on MTV as well.

Moreover, the charisma of the star gangsta rappers, plus the tabloid violence of the crack era, led many of them to star in Hollywood features (
New Jack City, Boyz N the Hood, Menace II Society, Trespass, Juice
) that generated platinum-selling soundtracks. By 1994 the ubiquity of these performers, as well as their drug-referenced, blood-splattered, sexually raw (and often sexist) records, outraged many.

Spurred by activist C. Delores Tucker and other elders in the black community, on February 11, 1994, the Subcommittee on Commerce, Consumer Protection, and Competitiveness of the Committee on Energy and Commerce in the House of Representatives held the first of two hearings on whether there should be a ratings system for recorded music. While lip service was given to sexism and violence in rock, hip-hop was the clear target of the hearings. I was there that day to give historical context on the music and to support free speech in music.

Don Cornelius was there, too. We spoke briefly at the hearings, but it was a strained conversation because he was there to attack gangsta rap and support a mandatory ratings system for all music. I'm reprinting Cornelius's testimony in full because I think it perfectly captures the ambivalence of the R&B establishment's feelings about hip-hop in general and gangsta rap in particular during the nineties.

In order to understand the ever-growing popularity of the music form known as Gangsta Rap, it is necessary to briefly explore rap music in general and some of the reasons why rap has become the musical entertainment preference of many millions of youth and young adults throughout the free world. Originally intended as a purely entertaining form of street and night club or dance club rhyming or poetry spoken over prerecorded music tracks, rap music has evolved into a legitimate, popular music art form through which many young musicians, publicists and recorded music producers who are connected, often sociologically to America's underclass (particularly that segment which is African-American), are able to express various kinds of commentary on some of the harder realities of life as it exists in many of America's African-American ghettos.

The preponderance of recorded rap music which deals with ghetto life is likely to include extremely profane lyrics which tend to glorify violence or illegal firearms or drug use. The lyrics which are degrading or disrespectful to women, or sexually explicit lyrics. This kind of rap has become widely known as “hard core” rap. Rap artists who specialize in hard core are well aware going in that hard core records, for obvious reasons, get no radio station airplay whatsoever, which would literally be the kiss of death for any other recording artist. This is usually not the fate, however, in the case of hard core rappers, thanks to what is known as the “underground” retailing market, a random array of small, independent record stores located usually in urban areas of the United States and specializing (at least partly) in hard core rap records which are sold mostly through word of mouth.

It was eventually determined that the harder the core of an underground rap record, the bigger the unit sales and the more income the artist and the record label would earn. The underground record market established the fact that there exists an enormous audience (comprised mostly of youthful record buyers) which apparently enjoys hard core rap. Moreover, this consumer group is not limited to African-American youth who live in America's African-American ghettos. Record industry sales research indicates that roughly sixty percent of all rap records sold are bought by whites. The form known as Gangsta Rap is a relatively recent spin-off of basic hard core. Gangsta Rap lyrics tend to glorify or glamorize rebelliousness, defiance of the law or various forms of street “hustling” in the minds of the listeners, much the same way as being “hard” and “tough” has historically been and still is being glamorized in the movies and often times on television.

As to the question: “Why would African-American youth be so receptive to the marketing of hard core and Gangsta Rap and the messages within?” I would ask: “Why wouldn't African-American youth pay attention to artists who seem to fully understand the lifestyle problems that African-American youth face. And why wouldn't African-American youth be anxious to listen to recording artists who are willing to openly discuss and dramatize many of these dire problems within the context of their records?” Please keep in mind that, for the most part, these are African-American youth for whom America has shown no real concern—at least during the past decade or more. These are African-American youth in whom our country has invested very little over the past decade in terms of channeling economic assistance and better training and education.