handofdave
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Don Cornelius RIP
Feb 01, 2012, 16:39
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Host of the 'Soul Train'....
http://music.yahoo.com/blogs/stop-the-presses/soul-train-don-cornelius-dead-75-apparent-suicide-152756913.html
Used to love watching the dancing on that show, especially when they'd line up for the 'Train' and show off with lots of silly, agreeably hammy moves with all the big hair and clothes. It was playful, and even innocent in a way, unlike the grimmer and more aggressive scene that replaced it.
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Lawrence
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Re: Don Cornelius RIP
Feb 01, 2012, 18:33
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It's terrible that he killed himself. I wonder why he did?
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Dog 3000
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Edited Feb 01, 2012, 18:45
Re: Don Cornelius RIP
Feb 01, 2012, 18:44
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The "Soul Train Line" is what he will always be remembered for. People still do it at parties and weddings etc. all the time, if anything it just gets more popular (probably has something to do with youtube).
This is probably the most famous video example, because Don himself goes down the Line! (And nearly falls over attempting to do James Brown splits!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ5iuWotw3M
Note his super-suave interview style too. Cornelius may have been the only person cooler than Billy Dee Williams back in the 1970's.
Several of the Soul Train Dancers became celebrities on their own -- especially portly, beret-wearing Fred "Rerun" Berry. Here's his dance group doing a sort of breakdancing several years before anyone had ever heard of "breakdancing":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX5HcB4cCzU
Ahh the seventies! Everyone MUST have been on drugs to think those outfits were cool, right?!
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handofdave
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Re: Don Cornelius RIP
Feb 02, 2012, 01:14
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Yeah! Thanks for those clips.
Notice how much freer the expression is in these clips, and more joyful and playful? The dance moves aren't based around weight training or kickboxing or pole dancing... These people are having inventive fun rather than buying some brand. What counted wasn't your material status, it was your imagination- what sorts of fresh play you could bring to the party.
It was a time of trying different things... a lot of it didn't stick, but then again a whole lot of interesting cultural directions were born then, too.
The clothes make us laugh now, but there's something refreshing about seeing people drop the need to look societally impressive, or sexually powerful, or or whatever the mask is, and just play. Daring to be the fool is the last hurdle of the ego for some people and some cultures.
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Dog 3000
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Edited Feb 02, 2012, 06:55
Re: Don Cornelius RIP
Feb 02, 2012, 06:09
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The Lockers' outfits remind me of the "mime/clown" look from the movie "Godspell". I confess I am enthralled by that look -- perhaps just due to nostalgia (I was a 70's tyke!)
Their pastel colors sort of prefigure that 80's "Cosby Show" look too.
All this rapping & breakdancing has actually been around longer than most people realize . . . (on a related note just before coming to this site I was read an interview with Jimmy Castor where he goes on about how materialistic the rap world has become; another funky legend we just lost.)
And the more I think of it, Don Cornelius may have been the most important figure in American Dance in the past 50 years. He brought "street dancing" into everyone's living rooms (starting during a time when "mellow/heavy" were the directions pop was headed in, and "no one" was dancing anymore.)
Could the Disco craze have ever happened without him? (And where would Michael Jackson have learned his "street" moves?)
PS - I got Soul Train on the brain now!
Came across this 1973 clip of James Brown on Soul Train -- is that girl not doing "The Robot" dance? (Years before Kraftwerk even!! Plus Kung fu moves and black power fists!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU_UG10ok1g
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