The best of Soul Train
El Prez
NE Ohio 1,141 Posts
Umm excuse if I am late...I turned on my television this past Saturday night and realized that Soul Train was showing old 70's re-runs....this episode had Rufus and also Billy Preston.. if they are gonna keep doing this I am recording all this on my DVR...anyone else catch this? 
Comments
They've been doing that since late last year, lots of great stuff. The Wikipedia entry says the show might be close to being canceled, and that may be why the old stuff is being shown. Not sure how true that is.
Same here, although last week the show with Billy Preston and Rufus (1974) was nice. I would prefer to see the shows from that era, and they don't have a set schedule as to what shows will play when. It seems random.
the fashions and the dancing in that 1st season are
1971 - that's when they went national. (They had just begun as a local show in Chicago in 1970.)
I do have a DVD of a couple of complete 1972 eps...apart from the obvious (BETTER MUSIC!!), the kids seem to be a lot more enthusiastic, not posing as much as later.
I also found it funny when he asked them their names. I guess rap guys were really the first ones to make up their own names. So when he asked they all gave their government names. I couldn't picture that today.
But rap was still new, then, so how could he possibly know?
Cornelius' choke hold must not be that tight - I see more Soul Trains on the Youtube/bootleg video circuit than American Bandstands, which are relatively scarce.
Right that's what I'm saying. I didn't mean it like Don was a cornball. I meant it was interesting to see that because it's hard to imagine now rap being so new that he couldn't even get what it was. It was interesting to see the start of a new form of music and watching someone explain what it was.
It's so awkward when a band is jamming out and then the music fades and they are still playing. And some people are not so good at the lip/instrument syncing. Sometimes I can't tell if certain bands were really playing, but it seems like the majority of bands had to do the sync up.
What the deal Don?
That's just the way things were done back then. Not just Soul Train, but Bandstand, sometimes The!!!Beat and Upbeat - that was just a cost-cutting fact of life, this wasn't something you questioned.
Every now and then some act like Mandrill or Ike & Tina Turner would perform live, but these were natural exceptions.
Scramble board time:
Y O K O S N
S R B
M E I N O
"You better sound like what i heard on the radio!"
"Why is the bassline faster!"
"You cant hit that note?"
"How come the guitar solo is longer?"
"Sell the record, not the group!"
Allow me to unbutton my Lee denim:
I mean "official" stuff directly from Don Cornelious productions.... as an example didn't Queslove have to go to Japan in order to get copies of the old 70's show's... I may be wrong but I remember it being impossible to get licensed Soul Train footage.
Ah, who said they stopped? You know good and well they STILL do it in the videos.
Having grown up as a kid watching these kind of shows in the seventies, the procedure doesn't shock me.
If they showed a marathon of early-70s Soul Trains I would never leave the house.
Forget about it.
I know, that's why I said "if."
Actual eps of Soul Train I'd love to see:
- Chuck Berry/Maxayn (1973)
- Melvin Van Peebles (1974 - apparently he's doing songs from that What The...You Mean I Cant Sing? album)
- Chambers Brothers (1971)
- Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd St. Rhythm Band (1971)
- any ep with the Chairmen of the Board on it
- the one from 1973 with Don Cornelius dancing down the Soul Train line with one of the Supremes!!!
Damn!!! Im not old enuff to remember the 70-73 stuff. i wonder if that was when he was still kinda flying under the radar w/ sponsers and was able to feature a wider range of artists? Im from the 76 and up era.
Do you remember Jodi Whatley as a Soul Train dancer?
Well, Soul Train had it's sponsors nailed down tight from the gitgo (including Sears and Johnson cosmetics), and just the acts I just listed were all popular to an extent, so they weren't exactly "flying under the radar."
(Chuck Berry!!! I'll bet Cornelius gave the kids a serious pep talk beforehand, or they just did that one out of respect. I'm quite sure the black teens of 1972-73 weren't bumping "My Ding-A-Ling" on their 8-track tapes.)
I don't recall seeing her, but I think I remember seeing Jermaine Stewart dancing on the Chicago version. (NOTE: after Soul Train went national, the original Chicago Train kept running locally on UHF television for years, telecast in black & white, with a different host and B-list, midchart acts like the Escorts, the Majestic Arrows and a pre-fame Funkadelic. Any surviving clips? Ha ha ha ha ha!!!)