Source: VH1 Rock Docs. Season 1, episode 26, “Soul Train: Soul Train—The Hippest Trip in America.” VH1, February 6, 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8sJobVw5vc
Cornelius also found ways to include other subjects of interest to his audience. He gave over an entire 1977 episode to Marvin Gaye much of which was devoted to watching Gaye playing basketball, for example. Often, the discussions were more topical. As Christine Acham points out, Soul Train was imbued with the spirit of Black Nationalism, developing a symbiotic relationship with musicians such as Curtis Mayfield and Stevie Wonder, as well as iconic figures such as Rev. Jesse Jackson, Richard Pryor, and Melvin Van Peebles with inescapably political and counter-cultural associations. This symbiosis was clearly manifested in 1973 when James Brown did a live performance (most songs on the show were lip-synced) of his 1968 anthem, “Say it Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud,” engaging the dancers in call-and-response. Acham describes this is “a clear moment of black self-affirmation and self-pride, helping to transition national television into a highly visible black communal space” (64).21
By 1973, Soul Train was in direct competition with American Bandstand for Saturday afternoon viewers. Dick Clark responded by creating Soul Unlimited (ABC 1973) to replace Bandstand every fourth Saturday, with Black Los Angeles DJ Buster Brown serving as host. Cornelius countered by enlisting the Rev.←43 | 44→ Jesse Jackson and influential Black producer Clarence Avant to convey the message to ABC-TV management that Soul Unlimited was viewed as an existential threat to Soul Train and its supporters. Clark felt that he was the aggrieved party, telling Rolling Stone, “that’s my time period…[if ABC] wants to put on a black Bandstand, then I’ll do it” (Fong-Torres 10). But by the summer, Clark had been convinced to drop the show. Soul Train and American Bandstand continued to compete with one another for many years. In addition to driving airplay and sales of R&B records, the show also featured gospel groups such as The Mighty Clouds of Joy, and Cornelius was the first TV host to provide an outlet for rap and hip hop artists. There are many factors that contributed to the increasing influence of Black music and fashion in the 1980s, but Soul Train deserves credit for bringing a lot of people on board.
Soul Train remained in syndication until 2006, making it one of the longest-running TV shows of all time. Peerless dancing enabled the show to better withstand competition from MTV and music videos than American Bandstand. But Cornelius never got his due in terms of recognition for his achievement as a musical trend-setter and entrepreneur. As he put it to Vice magazine in 2006, “Most of what we get credit for is people saying ‘I learned how to dance from watching Soul Train’ but what I take credit for is that there were no Black television commercials to speak of before Soul Train” (Davis 123). Over the years, several offers to buy Soul Train fell through because of Cornelius’s insistence that control of the brand remain in Black hands. Financial stresses were cited as a contributing factor when Cornelius committed suicide in early 2012.22
American Bandstand remained the mainstream prototype, promulgating a limper, Whiter version of rock, turning the likes of Paul Anka, Frankie Avalon and Connie Francis into teen idols while progenitors such as Little Richard, Ruth Brown, and Bo Diddley received scant air time. Even when Bandstand promoted a Black artist, Chubby Checker (nee Ernest Evans), it bypassed a more authentic Black rocker, Hank Ballard, the author and performer of the original version of “The Twist.” In addition to being considered more telegenic than Ballard, Dick Clark’s preference for Checker was no doubt influenced by his close relationship with Checker’s label, Cameo-Parkway. In fact, it was Clark’s wife Barbara who had suggested the name Chubby Checker to echo Fats Domino.
Similarly, The Coasters, a Black vocal group with a theatrical bent, made regular appearances on Bandstand, delivering their classic pop culture vignettes (often written and produced by the White songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller), with great humor and spirit. But their stage antics were considered demeaning by some, redolent of minstrelsy. African American artists who were not recognized as safe, sanitized, and submissive seldom appeared on Bandstand, and←44 | 45→ once this national model was established, other possibilities for presenting Black rock ‘n’ roll on television were closed off, at least until Soul Train came on the national scene in 1971.
Some television producers recognized the folly of excluding African American performers, but for several years artists such as Chuck Berry, LaVern Baker, and The Coasters had the surreal experience of being featured performers on afternoon dance programs on which theirs were the only Black faces. American Bandstand was merely the best known of many teen dance shows that showcased African American artists but maintained discriminatory policies that prevented Black teens from dancing on air. Even though Dick Clark credited American Bandstand with “charting new territory” in terms of integrating its audience, Matthew Delmont documents how the show used dress codes and unwritten admission policies to severely limit the participation of Black kids from the West Philadelphia neighborhood where the program was broadcast (Nicest). Moreover, the few Black teenagers who were allowed in the studio were seldom seen on camera.
If what American Bandstand practiced was quite different from what it preached, the fear of a backlash if they were to show Black and White teenagers dancing together was hardly paranoid. Rock ‘n’ roll became a surrogate target for racist attacks, part of a broader divide-and-conquer strategy to keep Whites and Blacks at a distance. Several incidents in the career of the disc jockey and impresario Alan Freed, who is often credited with coining the term rock ‘n’ roll, are revealing. Freed was among the first to play rhythm ‘n’ blues records alongside pop fare on his Moondog’s Rock and Roll Party radio show on WJW in Cleveland (1951–54). Sensing a growing audience, he tried his hand at producing a live concert, Moondog’s Coronation Ball, at the 10,000-seat Cleveland Arena in March, 1952, featuring The Dominoes, Paul “Hucklebuck” Williams, and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. When approximately 25,000 kids showed up, a riot ensued and fire marshals shut down the event. The scene scared the daylights out of municipal officials, who brought fraud charges against Freed, the first of many legal obstacles thrown in his path by detractors who saw him as a catalyst for juvenile delinquency. Undeterred, the event confirmed to Freed that he was the driving force of a new cultural movement. “What really upset the establishment,” say Martin and Segrave, “was not the sheer numbers who had shown up but that the group was roughly half White and half Black at a time when Cleveland was largely a segregated city” (95). Rock ‘n’ roll music was the personification of integration.
Freed moved from Cleveland to New York in 1954 to do a radio show called Rock ‘n’ Roll Party on WINS and started promoting live shows at the Brooklyn and New York Paramount Theaters. By the end of 1955 he had established himself—and the new music—to the extent that his ambitious 12-day “Rock ‘n’ Roll←45 | 46→ Holiday Jubilee” at the NY Academy of Music in downtown Manhattan broke box office records. Along with doo-wop groups such as The Wrens, The Cadillacs, and The Valentines, performers included LaVern Baker and Count Basie’s Orchestra with Joe Williams. Freed became a national figure in 1956, playing a pivotal role in the production of the first rock ‘n’ roll movies, beginning with Rock Around the Clock, starring Bill Haley and His Comets. The follow-up, Don’t Knock the Rock (1956) has Freed playing himself and ardently defending “the new sound.” Outshining Bill Haley, Little Richard wows the film audience with performances of “Tutti Frutti” and “Long Tall Sally.” Both films were directed by Sam Katzman. A third movie, also starring Freed, Rock, Rock, Rock had a skimpier plot but more music, including performances by Chuck Berry, Frankie Lymon, and Johnny Burnette. All three films were big winners at the box office, in the U.S. and overseas.
After doing two half-hour specials for ABC-TV in March, Freed’s Friday night prime-time show, The Big Beat, debuted in July, featuring more White artists (The Everly Brothers, Ferlin Husky and Connie Francis) than in his live shows. The next show featured Chuck Berry and Frankie Lymon, alongside Andy Williams and