The Hippest Trip in America

by Nelson George

  Cornelius: For as long as I can remember, there was always at least a few white dancers, all of whom [could] always hold their own with the black dancers. I’m not a believer in the myth that says white people cannot dance because it’s been proven to me over the years that they can. The difference is we, as black people, start dancing at age two. Our parents are saying, “Come on, baby, let’s do this.” You start dancing as a toddler, and you learn that you must keep time with the music or else your parents will challenge you to do so. A lot of white people don’t get that kind of coaching. We’ve experienced situations where a white dancer was not keeping time with the music, and we explained to them that this is a requirement: “You must keep time with the music.” They kept time just like anybody else, but if nobody ever told them to do it, then very often they couldn’t.

  Correcting a lack of rhythm may not be as easy as Don suggests, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. Any white kid who’d made it onto the floor at Soul Train must have been capable of keeping a beat. Truth is, no white dancer made an deep impact on the show, but the appearances of white musicians, particularly in Soul Train’s early years, live large in the show’s mythology.

  There is a trio of white performers on Soul Train that are usually regarded as “pioneers.” Gino Vannelli, Elton John, and David Bowie are not only white but non-American: Vannelli is Canadian, John and Bowie both British. Around 1975, the Average White Band, almost all Scots, also made a memorable appearance.

  The first white American acts on Soul Train were instrumentalists, not singers, which probably explains why they aren’t well remembered. Dennis Coffey, once a top session guitarist for Motown in Detroit, began recording R&B instrumental tracks and had a million-selling single, the driving “Scorpio,” in 1971. (The B-side, “Sad Angel,” is a personal favorite of mine.) Coffey performed “Scorpio” on episode #15.

  The second white collective on the show was the Bay Area jazz-rock collective Tower of Power, fronted by black vocalist Lenny Williams. Tower of Power taped episode #79 during the 1973–74 season, sharing the broadcast with two vocal groups, the Pointer Sisters and Tavares.

  Band leader and tenor saxophonist Emilio Castillo recalled that appearance with great affection.

  Castillo: We had hit a place in our career where we were on the charts and getting really popular. We had done Midnight Special, In Concert, and New Year’s Rockin’ Eve—all those kinds of shows. But to be on Soul Train was really the thing. Tower of Power was first and foremost a soul band. We come from the Oakland side of the Bay, where there are all kinds of people. We never thought about being a white soul band. We’re in front of the Soul Train Gang, and Don Cornelius is towering over us and asking these questions in that big, deep voice . . . But as soon as we hit that downbeat, man we were right in there . . . We hit a real hard groove, and I remember we did this one song called “To Say the Least, You’re the Most.” He came down off the stage, and my singer Lenny Williams was singing, and the horn section was following him, and we cut through the Soul Train Gang and walked right out of the studio. That’s how it faded to commercial. It was really cool.

  While Tower of Power’s appearance is now somewhat obscure, Gino Vannelli’s performance on episode #128 in February 1975 is a signature moment for so many viewers. The Canadian is kind of the Jackie Robinson of white singers when it comes to Soul Train. He arrived on the show from the unlikely soul music mecca of Montreal, Canada.

  Vannelli claimed that “the club scene in Montreal in the mid-sixties, you would think you were in Harlem. You know it was really deep R&B. They had the esoteric Isaac Hayes records when they weren’t out yet. All those seven-minute records. Everybody wanted to emulate that. Everyone was listening to Little Anthony, and all those groups you know in Montreal in the mid-sixties. I was lucky I was brought up with that, and I had that sense of rhythm and that sense of, well, American soul that you didn’t find anywhere else but America. It was a real strong influence on my life.”

  That influence was also reflected in Vannelli’s hair. Though he was Italian, Vannelli sported a circular Afro as recognizable as his resonant vocals.

  The handsome singer with the emotive tenor voice signed in 1973 with A&M Records, one of the classier boutique labels of the era, which was owned by Jerry Moss and trumpeter Herb Alpert, who himself had a number of hits on his own in the early 1960s (“The Lonely Bull,” “A Taste of Honey”). The Los Angeles–based label had a strong roster that included Billy Preston, the Carpenters, Cat Stevens, Quincy Jones, and later the Brothers Johnson and the Police.

  Tower of Power was the first predominantly white act to play on Soul Train.

  Vannelli remembered: “Herb is one of the original guys who shot from the hip, because he just intuitively knew what he liked and what a lot of other people would like. He didn’t have to go through committees and put you through the hoops that a lot of record companies would today. He just sort of heard and said, Yeah.”

  At A&M, Vannelli was very much a small fish in a big pond. His first album, Crazy Life, didn’t do well, but the label gave him a second shot. While recording his Powerful People album, Vannelli was living at a hotel on Sunset Boulevard called the Hallmark. Sitting in his hotel room, he heard someone singing a familiar melody outside by the pool. It was a song from his debut album.

  Vannelli: So I went out into the pool area, and there was Stevie Wonder singing “Granny Goodbye,” from the Crazy Life album. His brother introduced me to him, and of course I was in awe, and we kind of struck up a relationship, and Stevie asked me to play on his tour. He just thought it would be right. I did seven or eight concerts with Stevie, and it really changed my life and changed my career. I thought all musics were valid, and I just so happened to love R&B. I didn’t want to be one of those white guys trying to have a black sound, because [then] I always sound so loungy and stupid. But I would always let that kind of music affect my music. Rhythmically, perhaps harmonically. I really wanted to mix a little R&B with an Italian bel canto style of singing. It took me a little while to develop, but that’s what came out. Your style is nothing more than your limitations. I remember having a conversation with Stevie: “Are you sure you really want me to do this? It could be my death, and maybe it’s not such a good thing for you.” He said, “I think the audience will like you.” So we opened in Cincinnati, and I was just scared. My knees knocking. But everywhere we went we were getting standing ovations. Stevie would come onstage and say wasn’t it great, and you can buy his record, and da-da-da. I was amazed with that. And within a few months, we did Soul Train, and that’s when I could go out on my own. So it was a life-turning, or at least a career-turning, event for me. And the fact that I could play to such an integrated audience at that time—I don’t think many people were doing that. Maybe the hair helped a little bit. The ’fro was a big thing in those days.

  It’s a little unclear how Vannelli was booked on the show. Don told VH1 that Vannelli’s folks asked for a shot, while the singer suggests that Soul Train invited him on. No matter who made the first move, opening for Stevie Wonder is probably what put the relatively obscure Vannelli on the show’s radar.

  Vannelli: For me it wasn’t a cultural phenomenon or anything like that until later. It was just a show, and they said you’ll be the first white guy on the show. I said, Okay, yeah, I’ll do it. Is it good for ratings? Is it good. Can I get further ahead? They said, Yeah, yeah, you can just do it. I didn’t want to lip-synch the record. It was almost a live performance. We went back into the studio and we tweaked things and left some things out so we could perform to [the track] live. The conversation with Don was very amicable, but for me it wasn’t this cultural revelation until maybe a couple years later when people started saying, “You know, you’re the first white person on Soul Train.” I said, “Really? Does it mean something?” Of course it meant something if I could cross those boundaries. Because in the coming years, right after Soul Train, my audiences were—I wouldn’t say predominantly,
but at least 50 percent black. Every time I went to play Atlanta and Dallas and Chicago and Pittsburgh, it was very—a very mixed audience, but I would say at least 40 or 50 percent black. I would say it had some impact.

  Vannelli, like many folks on first meeting Cornelius, was a little unsure how to relate to the imposing TV host. “You know at first, it was a little bit stiff relationship, because I think he wanted to say the right things,” said the singer, “and I wanted to say the right things. As time wore on, we kind of got a little closer, and I remember—this is a long time ago—I remember I asked him, ‘Why did you invite me on the show? I’m obviously not a black artist.’ He said, ‘Well, I consider you off-white.’ ”

  Unlike Vannelli, who was just starting his career, the next two white performers on Soul Train were already huge pop stars. By 1971 Elton John was a hit-making machine and the first artist since the Beatles to have four albums in the Billboard Top Ten simultaneously. John was in the middle of an incredible run of success in which he’d have seven consecutive No. 1 albums. He had an outrageous sense of visual humor, reflected in his hundreds of pairs of glasses (some with windshield wipers) and his pianos.

  David Bowie was a rock icon who’d built his reputation with hooky rock singles and an ever-shifting stage persona. He’d been a star of the glitter rock movement that emphasized sexual ambiguity, rocking guitar riffs, and flamboyant stage shows. Way before rappers adopted personas who donned different identities, he led the way by being first Ziggy Stardust and later the Thin White Duke. Each time, he also altered his musical direction.

  Both Elton John and David Bowie were huge figures in the very white world of pop and rock radio, and both asked to be on Soul Train.

  “This wasn’t salesmanship on our part with Elton John or David Bowie. We didn’t pursue that,” Don said. “They just called up one day, and it was like, Elton John wants to do Soul Train, and we were like, Fine! It just worked out where they were admiring something about what we were doing and decided that, being the free spirits that they were, there’s no reason why we’re not doing this. It ushered in another kind of growth period when major white recording stars elected themselves to do Soul Train.”

  Elton John was very much a pop artist. He, along with his lyricist and writing partner Bernie Taupin, wrote tunes in any style (hard rock, English music hall, folk, country, honky-tonk) while also anchoring them with vibrant melodies. R&B was not their strong suit, although they would compose a fun tribute to the Philly sound, “Philadelphia Freedom,” that John performed on Soul Train.

  Pop superstar Elton John made a landmark performance of “Bennie and the Jets“ on Soul Train

  But the song that put John on the black audience’s radar is perhaps the oddest hit of his career. “Bennie and the Jets,” a song from the hugely successful Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album. If John had had his way, it shouldn’t have even been a single. The song, written from the point of view of a fan watching a concert by a band called Bennie and the Jets, was not a typical subject for a big single. To buttress the lyric, crowd noises, taken from John’s live shows and a bit of Jimi Hendrix’s at the Isle of Wight festival, were laid over the vocals. The rhythm was kind of a stiff strut built around a choppy piano riff. John sings with a lot of energy and some falsetto, but very few people actually understand the words other than the chorus of “Bennie! Bennie! Bennie and the Jets!”

  Still, this odd assortment of elements came together and had real appeal to black listeners. My sister Andrea, a huge soul music fan who had no interest in (and often contempt for) pop music, spent the summer of 1974 singing Taupin’s hook, symbolic of the fact that “Bennie” would go to No. 1—not just on the pop chart but on the R&B chart too—and sell 2.8 million 45s. The fact that Andrea didn’t really know the rest of the lyrics, save a word or two, spoke to the appealing power of its musical elements—Elton’s piano and the jerky, funky rhythm.

  Watching the performance now, with John wearing a bedazzled green bowler hat with matching green suit and one of his many glittering, customized pairs of glasses, pounding away at a clear plastic piano, you can tell he’s totally jazzed to be there. Near the fade of “Bennie,” he freestyles a bit, egging on the dancers to join in. John, always a dynamic entertainer, seems electrified by the vibe in the room, resulting in a truly fun musical moment.

  Theoretically, David Bowie’s appearance on episode #165 should be discussed next, but before Bowie another group from the United Kingdom broke the Soul Train color line. The Average White Band from Scotland, students of Motown, Stax, and soul music of all kinds, would develop into an above-average funk collective. The original members met while attending university in Dundee, Scotland’s fourth-largest city, where they were part of a soul-music-loving scene not dissimilar to the one captured in Roddy Doyle’s novel (and the movie) The Commitments, about a similar soul scene in Dublin. Formed in 1972 by bassist Alan Gorrie and rhythm guitarist Onnie McIntyre, this tight six-piece band would eventually get signed to the classic soul label Atlantic Records, where, under the guidance of producer Arif Mardin, they’d cut a series of excellent 1970s albums.

  Then there was David Bowie. Todd Oldham recalls that Bowie’s appearance “was really a shock. Because, well, first of all, he didn’t look too much like the other performers in any world, but certainly not on Soul Train . . . Well, he was so genuinely unusual, I think there was no reference point to assimilate David Bowie. It was kind of like you’re going eighty miles an hour in a convertible. You didn’t know what you were seeing.”

  While Bowie had recorded his first eight albums as an androgynous glam rocker, on his ninth album he was inspired to create “plastic soul,” his take on the Sound of Philadelphia that was dominating dance floors in Europe as well as the United States. In the fall of 1974, Bowie camped out at Sigma Sound Studios in the City of Brotherly Love to record the bulk of his Young Americans album. The title cut was clearly influenced by watching Cornelius’s show, with punning lyrical references to “Afro-Shelias” and “blacks got respect and whites got his soul train.” During the sessions, the British singer became impressed with the voice and songwriting of Luther Vandross, a young New Yorker singing background vocals. Later they would take a song Vandross had previously recorded on one of his Atlantic solo albums and rewrite it, calling the new version “Fascination” and including it on Young Americans.

  “Fame,” a No. 1 single that was the last track on Young Americans, was actually recorded in New York’s Electric Ladyland Studio, which had been opened by the late guitarist Jimi Hendrix. That record, which featured a fuzzy guitar riff and a down-tempo, oddly syncopated rhythm track, was cowritten by ex-Beatle John Lennon and displayed Lennon’s usual quality of experimentation and pop success. And it was this track that would be Bowie’s natural gateway onto Soul Train. Gone was the glitter. In its place was a pale blue suit and yellow shirt with a large collar. Bowie was entering the Thin White Duke phase of his career, when a more elegant and dressy soul aesthetic would define him. This appearance on Soul Train would be his introduction of this new direction.

  As noted earlier, Don’s interviews could often be awkward. But his chat with Bowie was unusually stiff, as the singer seemed a bit intimidated to be on the show. Cornelius may have unnerved Bowie, and that may have caused the dancers asking the singer questions to seem uncomfortable as well. Usually there was a giddy, excited quality to the interaction between the dancers and singers, but this felt strained. An interview Bowie did in 2000 with the BBC about his poor performances of “Fame” and “Golden Years” on Soul Train explains his behavior.

  Bowie: I do remember not knowing the . . . the words. I wasn’t even buoyant enough to feel apologetic or . . . I mean, I really was a little shit in that way! I hadn’t bothered to learn it. And the MC of the show, who is a really charming guy, took me on one side after the third or fourth take where I just had no idea what the lyrics were, and he said, “Do you know there are kids lined up to do this show, who have fought their
whole lives to try and get a record and come on here?” And—and it made no . . . I know now, looking back, but at the time, it made no impression. His little speech to me, which was absolutely necessary . . . and I just screwed up the lyrics. I mean, I haven’t even seen the show for years, so I can’t even remember if it looked like I screwed it up . . . But I think maybe I wrote them out in the end and read them off a card or something . . . which I must say I now do all the time!

  Though lackluster, Bowie’s appearance was still a landmark for the show and, likely, whetted the appetite of a slew of 1980s British pop rockers to come on the show, something that would become unexpectedly and increasingly commonplace.

  For all the fascination with white pop stars deciding to cross over to black television, there is one Caucasian singer for whom appearing on Soul Train was never a big deal. Mary Christine Brockert, known professionally as Teena Marie, released her debut album, Wild and Peaceful, on Motown Records in 1979 with the production and writing assistance of funk master Rick James. Her debut album didn’t have the petite brunette’s picture on the cover. It had a seascape, a Motown precaution to prevent the white singer from being prejudged by black audiences.

  Once black folks heard Marie’s music, her color didn’t matter. “Teena Marie was, for many people, an honorary black person,” said scholar-author Tricia Rose, “you know, a black person trapped in a white girl’s body. Nobody saw Teena Marie in my circles as a white woman somehow interloping or trying to act like she was soulful. She’s not performing in a fake way. She is just an extraordinary singer, and her personal integrity comes through, so Teena Marie makes perfect sense. There was no sense of ‘Who is this white girl on Soul Train?’ ”