The Hippest Trip in America

by Nelson George

  Cynthia Horner made them regular Right On! magazine pinups, with Jody emerging as a late-1970s style icon. She could rock silver lamé pants and red-glitter Converse sneakers, vintage 1940s-inspired dresses with pumps or her prom dress. Her hair was an ongoing adventure, sometimes filled with tons of ribbons, sometimes with a long ponytail or a 1940s hairdo. (When I produced Chris Rock’s documentary Good Hair, we used a Jody Watley video to illustrate the range of black hairstyles.)

  But soon Jody learned that this kind of celebrity did not come without its costs. Watley became a target—both at Soul Train and at school.

  Watley: I can think of some outfits that I wore on Soul Train, some of the dancers would say, “What’s she wearing? What does she think she’s doing?” Soul Train was very competitive, and there was a lot of what they’d call hateration now. You had a lot of that. That would go on at school, too. I could wear something to school that I thought was cool, and kids would laugh at me, run me home. You know, it never really dissuaded me from liking the things that I liked. I’m still the same way. So that sort of thing is just a part of you. You just kind of have to be fearless. Not really minding if you might be ridiculed for wearing something. You’re not afraid to be who you really are.

  By the time Jody Watley had been on the show for three years, she’d blossomed from a skinny fourteen-year-old to a stylish seventeen-year-old—and her dance partner, Jeffrey Daniel, was easily the most identifiable male dancer on Soul Train. They were primed to take their careers to the next level. So was a man named Dick Griffey.

  Griffey was a big, bold, sometimes intimidating man with a strong presence, a vision of the future, and a great eye for talent. Born in 1938 and raised in a Nashville housing project, Griffey developed an interest in drumming and built a rep as a musician by playing local clubs before briefly attending the black college Tennessee State University, then enlisting in the navy.

  Once out of the military service, Griffey moved to LA in the mid-1960s and resumed his interest in music, becoming part owner of the Guys and Dolls nightclub, where he developed a network of contacts in the music business and built a reputation as a solid citizen in the sometimes shifty business of booking and concert promotion. One of his partners in Guys and Dolls was basketball player Dick Barnett, a college star at Tennessee A&I in Nashville (now Tennessee State), who’d go on to play for the Los Angeles Lakers and, later, on two championship New York Knicks teams in 1970 and 1973. Another member of Griffey’s Guys and Dolls team was Chuck Johnson, who’d be a close business associate for some forty years. He’d later work on Soul Train as a talent scout who both found dancers and worked as a liaison between them and Cornelius.

  Dick Griffey’s production company became a force in the LA music business at a time when black music’s audiences were expanding and R&B shows were moving from midsize venues to arenas like Inglewood’s Great Western Forum. Looking for new challenges, Griffey became a talent coordinator for Soul Train and helped Cornelius press big-name acts to give the show a chance. By the mid-seventies, with Soul Train established, Cornelius and Griffey wanted to find ways to capitalize on their new power. In 1975 they founded Soul Train Records, which was distributed by RCA Records. They weren’t a power in R&B, but they were trying to build their presence in a deal brokered by Cornelius’s longtime benefactor Clarence Avant. To emphasize the brand connection, the first act they signed was called the Soul Train Gang.

  “They put out an audition for a Soul Train Gang singing group,” Daniel said. “And I did the audition. It must have been horrible, because I was playing the keyboard and trying to sing [Major Harris’s] ‘Love Won’t Let Me Wait’ at the same time, and they said get out of here . . . A lot of the dancers were disappointed because they felt that they had been Soul Train dancers for so long, and here comes an opportunity, and they just picked people who had nothing to do with the show. That was their choice.”

  The Soul Train Gang was a quintet consisting of Gerald Brown, Terry Brown, Patricia Williamson, Judy Jones, and Hollis Pippin, and their first album would be Don Cornelius Presents the Soul Train Gang. Produced by Griffey and Cornelius, the collection’s most memorable track was “Soul Train ’75,” which became the show’s new theme. With Williamson replaced by Denise Smith and MFSB guitarist Norman Harris handling production, a second LP was primarily recorded at Philadelphia’s hit-making Sigma Sound. But except for “Soul Train Theme ’76 (Get on Board),” which would replace “Soul Train ’75,” the album made no waves. That had to have been embarrassing for all involved.

  Daniel had a brief stint with the Soul Train Gang when Pippin left the group during a promotional tour. With his showmanship and popularity on the show, Daniel shined during the tour. Back in Los Angeles, he was rehearsing with Watley at her house when Cornelius called and asked to speak to him. Don told Daniel that the Soul Train Gang was “ ‘over. It’s finished. I have a new project I want you to do,’ ” Daniel recalled. “He asked me immediately, ‘Do you know a girl who can sing?’ ” Daniel wasn’t sure how good a singer Watley was. Her mother, Rose, sang in the church choir, but he really hadn’t heard his dance partner croon. Initially he called Grand Rapids, reaching out to a cousin of the DeBarge singing clan, but the young lady was pregnant. So together he and Watley practiced vocals, singing along to records by favorites Barbra Streisand and Diana Ross.

  While Daniel and Watley were practicing, a producer named Simon Soussan created a track called “Uptown Festival,” a disco-flavored medley of classic Motown hits. Two studio singers, Gary Mumford and Cleo Kennedy, sang on the record. Coincidentally, Kennedy was a singer in the same choir as Watley’s mother. The principals of Soul Train Records purchased the track, feeling it was a commercial record they could use to rebrand the label with another act. It’s not clear who came up with the name Shalamar, but that’s what they called the group. Though not a huge hit, “Uptown Festival” made a mark, reaching No. 22 on the R&B chart and making some noise in the United Kingdom.

  They kept Mumford, who was a vocal teacher in the Bay Area, and added Daniel and Watley to fill out the trio. “Jeffrey and I were chosen to be in Shalamar because we were the most popular dancers on the show,” Watley said. “We had been in magazines . . . It was another dream come true for me, because singing was always what I wanted to do. Funny thing was they assumed I couldn’t sing, though. Once we came off this promotional tour promoting ‘Uptown Festival’ and it was time to record the album, there was talk that they were going to get another girl. You know I’m hearing rumors. I’m going, ‘You don’t need another girl. I can sing.’ ”

  So she auditioned by singing Streisand’s “Evergreen,” and that sealed the deal. Watley can be heard on most of the seven tracks on 1977’s “Uptown Festival” album, which included a couple of straightforward covers of Motown classics (“Ooo Baby Baby,” “Forever Came Today”) and one song penned by Don Cornelius (“High on Life”).

  When it was time to record Shalamar’s second album, Disco Gardens, Mumford was no longer in the group, replaced by Gerald Brown, who’d been the original lead singer of the Soul Train Gang. But there were bigger changes occurring around the group. At some point between 1977 and 1978, the Cornelius-Griffey recording partnership was dissolved and the surviving label was renamed SOLAR (Sound of Los Angeles) Records.

  Both men were publicly vague on why they split, but there was no obvious acrimony. Soul Train would, in fact, loyally promote SOLAR acts during the label’s incredibly successful run from its founding in 1978 into the late 1980s. Much like the mistake Cornelius made by not keeping the Soul Train name on the “TSOP” track, he was ending his partnership with Griffey just as he was on the verge of becoming the most successful R&B mogul of the early 1980s. Chuck Johnson, who’d work at Soul Train for more than a decade and would later join SOLAR Records, gives some insight into the differences between Cornelius and Griffey.

  “As a marketing man, Don was always ahead of his time,” Johnson said. “He had an eye for talent an
d great vision. Don was tightly wrapped and controlling, but Dick was very outgoing and open to trying any idea and take a risk.” People say that opposites attract in love, but in business opposites can sometimes irritate the hell out of each other. Perhaps, over time, the two men’s contrasting personalities and desire to be in charge pushed them apart. Cornelius would reign successfully over his Soul Train fiefdom for decades, while Griffey would go on to build a formidable musical empire.

  The roots of SOLAR’s ascendance could be found in the production and songwriting credits of Disco Gardens. Three of the seven songs on the album were written or cowritten by Leon Sylvers III; he also produced the entire album. To most folks, the twenty-four-year-old was just one of the older members of the family group the Sylvers, who’d been recording since 1971 on the heels of the Jackson Five’s success. But as early as 1973, when Leon was just twenty, he was already composing songs for his siblings and building a reputation in music-business circles as a promising hit maker. Griffey recruited Sylvers heavily, convincing him to leave his family group and become SOLAR’s in-house producer. A deft bassist as well as a talented songwriter, Sylvers would cowrite the vibrant “Take That to the Bank,” the percolating dance track that established the dynamic, propulsive sound that would become the label’s trademark. Watley’s voice was well showcased by Sylvers, setting an approach that would become a signature of the Shalamar sound.

  The song wasn’t a huge hit, but it gave Shalamar and SOLAR a trademark sound and made Watley a genuine recording artist. But her start wasn’t as glamorous as she’d have liked. “It wasn’t a fairy tale,” she said. “It was a lot of hard work. It was before music videos, pretty much, so we toured all the time and not in the best conditions. Terrible bus with no heat in the winter. No bunk beds—just seats. Sometimes I would feel like I was in a fifties movie where you see the artists schlepping their equipment and they’re on the bus. A learning experience.”

  Watley didn’t feel she received the warmest reception during Shalamar’s first performance on Soul Train.

  Watley: Probably a few months before, we had still been on the show and on the Soul Train line. “Why did they pick her and why did they pick him” was the kind of vibe [I] felt. There was kind of a bitter intensity, because a lot of those same dancers were there, and they were giving the evil eye . . . I appreciated it, but I didn’t really savor it, because it was a lot of negative energy at that time. It wasn’t until I went back later on my own that I could really let it sink in. Again, it was being in a survival-of-the-fittest mode the first time I did it.

  Daniel, who would regularly stop by tapings even after Shalamar had hit records, often felt in the middle of a gentle tug-of-war between Don and Griffey.

  Daniel: I’m a dancer, and I’ve always been a dancer, and so when Shalamar is not on the road, I would sneak back into Soul Train, and Don would egg me on. “You know Dick Griffey doesn’t want you to dance here. You better not dance.” What? He knew he was using reverse psychology. Then Dick Griffey would watch it. “Jeffrey, I see you dancing down there on Soul Train. You’re a star now. You don’t need to be dancing on no TV show.” So I was caught between Don and Dick, and it was hard because both were like my fathers.

  Well, if Watley had haters and Daniel was torn, the band’s third popular album surely eased any tension. With Howard Hewett, a smooth crooner with a silky tenor handling lead vocals, Shalamar’s Big Fun would begin a four-year run of danceable hits for the trio.

  Other regular Soul Train performers (the Whispers, Lakeside, Carrie Lucas) would populate the SOLAR Records lineup in its early years. It makes you wonder what would have happened if Don had stayed in the record business.

  While he never had another label, Don did manage another act, one that got tremendous exposure on Soul Train but never sold many records. O’Bryan McCoy Burnette II, professionally known as O’Bryan, was born in North Carolina, where he began playing piano at six years old and then performing at talent shows. His family moved to Santa Ana, California, in 1974, where he became active in his local Baptist church. He had a sweet voice with a high-pitched falsetto that was noticed by Melanee Kersey, the wife of Ron “Have Mercy” Kersey, once a fixture in the vibrant Philadelphia music scene, who’d moved to the West Coast.

  Kersey, who’d been part of the disco band the Trammps, initially recruited O’Bryan to be part of a vocal group. When that deal fell through, Kersey introduced O’Bryan to Don, who was impressed. Together the two music vets formed Friendship Productions and successfully shopped O’Bryan to Capitol Records in the early 1980s. Marketed with a Jheri curl, eyeliner, shirts with the top three buttons open, and occasionally a red leather jacket—all echoes of Michael Jackson—O’Bryan would release four albums between 1982 and 1986 and have nine charting singles including “The Gigolo,” which went to No. 5 on the R&B singles chart. Don certainly supported him, having his artist on Soul Train numerous times during his recording career.

  Despite this prime exposure, the singer never earned a gold single or album, and after he was dropped by Capitol, O’Bryan didn’t make another record until 2007. His only truly memorable contribution to Soul Train lore was recording “Soul Train’s A-Comin’,” which became the show’s theme in 1983. So while Soul Train was absolutely a great platform for black talent, regular exposure did not guarantee record sales or genuine celebrity.

  One more note on Don’s adventures in recording: Cheryl Song says that Don tried to put together another Shalamar-styled group, using a singer and some of the Soul Train dancers. A vocalist named Terry Stanton would have been the front man, with two of the most charismatic dancers to ever appear on Soul Train—Song and the fiery New Yorker Rosie Perez—adding multiculti showmanship. “I thought this was it!” Song said. “This was my one chance to be a serious artist . . . We met a couple of times with Don, and we met with a record company.” But this multicultural dream group never happened.

  Chapter 11

  1980s

  IN THE early 1980s, Don Cornelius began having migraine headaches. When he finally went in for tests, the TV producer was diagnosed with a congenital malformation of the blood vessels in his brain. On November 12, 1982, he underwent a twenty-one-hour operation to save his life. Despite the near-death experience, Don quipped after the surgery that “you choose your brain surgeons for their stamina.” The procedure would have long-term repercussions. In the years to come, Don would say he was never “what I used to be as a manager or an entrepreneur” due to the lingering effects of that operation. Nevertheless, a determined Don was back to work on the Soul Train set just six months after the operation.

  As personally challenging as this recovery had to have been for Don, outwardly he didn’t appear slowed down to either the young people who danced on the show or his music-industry peers. Soul Train, along with the music industry, would go through profound changes in the new decade, much of it driven by technology that would alter the kinds of acts who’d appear on the show and what they’d look and sound like. Moreover, the competition for the eyeballs of music fans would escalate in ways Soul Train could not compete with.

  The sound of R&B would evolve from the raw funk and elegant disco associated with Soul Train’s early years to records driven by drum machines and keyboard-created bass and horn lines. Bands would shrink from nine- and ten-piece aggregations to two- and three-member groups and, in a few special cases, influential one-man bands. In the most unlikely development, soul singing, which had been the pride and joy of black artistic expression since the early sixties, would be challenged as the chief vehicle for black self-expression by a generation of nonsingers from New York. In addition, the turntable, devised as a tool for playing music, would become an instrument in itself.

  And just as technology would alter the sound of music, new ways to consume it would present new competition for Don’s enterprise.

  THE MUSIC video channel MTV premiered in August 1981, but it didn’t really have an immediate effect on Soul Train. In it
s early years, MTV failed to include R&B artists in its regular playlist, sticking to the kind of rock-centric programming philosophy that had created musical apartheid on American radio, where it had been very difficult (and sometimes impossible) for black performers to get programmed on many of the nation’s biggest radio stations. Network executives said they were utilizing the then-popular album-oriented rock (AOR) format to decide who did and didn’t appear on MTV. If they’d been true to that, maybe few would have protested.

  But when white artists who played in an R&B or “black” style—such as Culture Club and Hall & Oates—were put in MTV rotation and black R&B artists were not, it was clear MTV’s decisions had more to do with skin color than sound. Moreover, MTV was breaking bands with good videos but no durability, while gifted, charismatic musicians like Rick James, whose music did fit the format, found it hard to get on the network’s play list and aggressively protested that exclusion.

  Even after MTV embraced Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” video in 1983 and began allowing a few other black crossover performers, such as Prince and Whitney Houston, on its airwaves, there was still a bounty of great black acts and musicians who were denied the exposure to millions of potential young buyers because MTV wouldn’t touch them. One legitimate explanation the MTV programmers had was that the few videos that were made for black acts were often of poor quality. But if MTV wouldn’t play them, why would record labels finance a $125,000 video? During the early to mid-1980s, the average budget for most black performers’ music videos was about $35,000, which kept the production quality poor and the ambition low in comparison to videos for white artists.