The Hippest Trip in America, Nelson George

My Saturday afternoons growing up was based around playing on sport teams, watching kung fu movies on WDC channel 20 and Soul Train. Damn, those dancers were good. Centered around the coolest of cool, Don Cornelius, his Soul Train show, which after only a year in Chicago, went Hollywood and the syndication route. Don wrote all the scripts from 1971 to 2006. Soul Train was revolutionary when it came to market - this was black dance by black dancers presented by a black producer via a mass-media platform that had never been done before. What viewers saw on Soul Train wasn’t just style but a polyglot of approaches, some street dance, some individual flamboyance, and just plain style. Their acts were incredible, the dancing original beyond what anyone had ever seen… the scramble board, the soul train line, the beautiful people… nothing but a good time… it made you smile and want to get up and dance. The best feature are the extensive side-bars on the profiles of the Soul Train dancers… the real stars of the show. My favorite was Cheryl Song (the Asian girl with the long hair). Okay, who am I kidding, I loved them all.