The Hippest Trip in America

by Nelson George

  Most major distributors of such entertainment do, however, exercise a reasonable degree of social responsibility through the almost universal use of a well designed rating system. Rap music does not need to be censored. Rap music and all other recordings do need to be rated just as movies are. Records by recording artists which are violently or sexually explicit or which promote illegal (drug or firearm use or and other anti-social behavior) should be clearly marked and identified “X-rated.” The “parental guidance” sticker system presently being used in the recording industry is simply not enough. The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) rating system allowed the movie industry to separate exploiters and panderers from legitimately creative filmmakers. The same result can occur with regard to the music industry with the support and participation of the RIAA (Record Industry Association of America).

  As the situation now stands, there is no real stigma attached to the creation, marketing or advertising of a profane or anti-social record or LP. Individuals and companies which now openly pander to youth consumers who are attracted to anti-social recorded product would market such product with far less pride of accomplishment in the face of a strong rating system. A strong rating system will also place somewhat of a stigma on consumer ownership of such product regardless of the consumer’s age. While a rating system may not completely solve all of the problems concerning hard core or Gangsta Rap recordings, such a process may be well worth considering as a place to begin. Thank you.

  A blowup of the sexually suggestive cartoon album cover to Snoop’s 1993 album Doggystyle was on a stand, an illustration of the nastiness that gangsta rap represented. Despite Cornelius’s harsh words for gangsta rap, Snoop Dogg never lost his love for Soul Train. When asked about the show’s impact on him growing up in Long Beach, Snoop had a unique perspective. He said, “A lot of my homies, when we go to jail, we measure our time by how many Soul Trains you got left. I got my five Soul Trains. That means you’re getting out in five weeks. I got seven Soul Trains left—I’m getting out in seven weeks. As sad as it is, it was a good feeling because when you in jail, you had to have something to keep you up, and Soul Train kept a lot of brothers up. That was the main effect they had on Long Beach that I remember.”

  It was just this kind of jailhouse perspective that made gangsta rap popular and everyone in the black music mainstream uncomfortable. But Cornelius, being a businessman, would have Snoop on episode #743 in 1993 to perform “What’s My Name” from that same Doggystyle album, which won best album at the 1994 Soul Train Awards. Snoop made a very heartfelt tribute to the show: “I ain’t mad ’cause I didn’t win no Grammy. This is the black folks’ Grammys!”

  Throughout the late 1980s and beyond, those clean versions of rap songs by Snoop and others made it possible for Soul Train, as well as radio stations, to play some of the hooky but hard-core rap hits of the day. But true hip-hop fans knew that what they heard on TV was the watered-down version, and that the lip-synched performances on the show were inferior to the kinetic music videos in rotation on MTV, BET, and elsewhere. Don’s discomfort with gangsta rap haunted the show, so despite its commercial viability, its graphic content really made it inappropriate daytime-TV fare. This wasn’t the O’Jays or Al Green. The times had changed. Hip-hop wasn’t Cornelius’s music and never would be.

  DANCER PROFILE: Rosie Perez

  Rosie Perez came out to sun-kissed California from Bushwick, Brooklyn, a burnt-out, impoverished neighborhood in a tattered borough, bringing a fierce warrior attitude that was reflected in her take-no-prisoners dancing. Short and curvy with reddish hair, pouty lips, and a high-pitched voice with a thick Nuyorican accent, Perez was a unique and, to some, disquieting presence on the Soul Train set.

  “Rosie came on the show, and she was just so hot and so sexy,” Crystal McCarey said. “That girl could dance. She could move. You know, females will be females. They’re catty. When Rosie came, I think that some of the other dancers were a bit intimidated, and they weren’t friendly or kind to her.”

  McCarey befriended the new girl and advised her not to worry about what the other dancers thought of her. “Rosie was a very sweet lady, but she was one hell of a dancer. I would have to say that I thought I was hot stuff, too, but when I saw Rosie, I was like, Oh, my goodness. She got that fire.”

  It wasn’t only women who had complicated feelings about the Brooklynite. The Cutty mack himself, Louie “Ski” Carr, would sometimes let Rosie and some other dancers stay at his apartment on weekends Soul Train was taped. “Her girls and her used to change, sleep over, and go to the next show,” Carr said. That sense of fellowship didn’t always translate to the studio. “We was cool, but on the Train it was a chance to just be yourself and do your thing. She was doing her thing, and I was doing my thing. There’s actual footage of us boogying and having that friendly competitiveness. Rosie was aggressive and sexy and a little street, like a machine gun. Just do her move strong. Men love strong women, plus she’s beautiful.”

  Rosie Perez’s fierce New York–styled dancing made her an immediate fan favorite.

  Perez’s Soul Train career began, like so many others, at a Los Angeles nightclub. The nineteen-year-old had initially come west to help a struggling cousin with her two young children. When that arrangement proved too stressful, Rosie began working part-time jobs while attending classes in three different LA-area universities as a biochemistry major. She got some stability when she landed a job working as secretary and babysitter for the family behind Golden Bird fried chicken.

  Along with some girlfriends, Rosie was at a club called Florentine Gardens when Chuck Johnson inquired if she’d like to be on the show. Skeptical New Yorker to her core, Rosie replied, “Yeah, right.” Johnson said, “No, really,” and handed her his card. She remembers standing on the floor at Florentine Gardens “screaming my head off. I was like, Ahhh! To be so young and being a teenager, being asked to go on Soul Train, it was just—it was mind-blowing. He said, Will you come, will you show up on Saturday? I said, Can my girlfriends come? And he said, What do they look like? I thought that was so rude. Thank God they were hot. So we all got to go, and that’s how I got on Soul Train.”

  “The first time I went on,” she continued, “it was bittersweet because I did not know that we were going to be waiting outside of the gates of the studio and jockeying for position. I was like, ‘Oh, we’re outta here.’ We were about to leave. The talent scout from Soul Train was like, ‘No, no, no, you, short one. Come in.’ I said, ‘Well, I’m not coming unless all my girlfriends get in.’ That was great, but it wasn’t great for me because he let us in, we didn’t have to wait on line. So when the rest of the people came in, instant hatred. It was really crazy.” That introduction to the show was likely the root of the disdain McCarey spoke about. “There was really great people,” Perez said, “but there were a few that were real bitter.”

  Like most popular Soul Train dancers, Rosie Perez was the toast of LA parties.

  Perez, who had come from a New York City street dance aesthetic where unisex sportswear was the norm, arrived at the studio in jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt, and staffers told her it wasn’t proper Soul Train attire. Instead they pointed out a girl in a super-short dress. Rosie had wisely brought a sexier change of clothes. Not only did they like what she’d changed into, but the producers immediately placed Rosie on a riser, where the camera was sure to find her.

  Don selected Perez to do the Soul Train scramble board, yet another honor for the novice. When Rosie spoke in that now famous Brooklyn-meets–Puerto Rico accent the host asked her, “Is that how you really talk?” Embarrassed, Perez did her best to lose the accent. Perez’s good fortune, not having to wait in line and getting a riser spot on her first day, made the New Yorker a target for some old heads on the set.

  Perez: I think that the girls were jealous because of that. We were all very, very young. Not only the girls there were jealous. There was also boys that were jealous, and these were people who saw Soul T
rain as a springboard to further success. I did not view it that way. I just viewed it as “Oh my God, we’re on Soul Train!” In hindsight I understood why they were jealous. I don’t know if it was jealous as much as angry, because they were on Soul Train for years and years and years, and these kids, they used to practice for hours, their dance moves, their dance routines, what they were gonna do going down the Soul Train line. They would spend hours picking out their outfits.

  Though viewers and other dancers characterize Perez as an aggressive dancer, she feels that she held back while on the show.

  Perez: Don Cornelius did not want to see how I really danced—I was doing hip-hop, and it was foreign to people out in California. They only knew about popping and locking, so they were not keen on hip-hop dancing. Don was like, “No, no, no. You’re a girl.” I was like, What? This is really weird. Then I had to dance in high heels, and I never danced in high heels before, and I had this little tiny short dress, and it’s riding up my ass and I’m like, Oh my God. I couldn’t move. As you can see from the tapes, I had absolutely no style whatsoever on that show. The first couple of times, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I was just excited and nervous and scared and just elated. That was my style. A bunch of nerves just oozing out of my body.

  Whenever Rosie was in doubt about her moves, she would “face dance, just face dance. Face dance means you don’t know what the hell the rest of your body was doing but your face is fierce. That’s face dancing.” Perez is much harder on herself than she needs to be. Anyone who saw her on Soul Train was impressed with her dancing. Most people who remember her from the show usually recall her dancing in either a red or black dress. That wasn’t part of any plan. They were just the only dressy clothes this college student owned.

  “Your attire had to feel like you were going to a nightclub,” Perez said. “That’s the look that they wanted, and they wanted high fashion, which I did not offer because I could only afford a dress that had that much material. I was very proud of my body back then. That’s the other thing I loved. I was hot. It’s good, it’s on tape forever. Yeah, you look like you were having a night out. That was another great thing about Soul Train. I have a picture of all of us going to a club with my friends from Soul Train. All the girls just going out to a nightclub, and we’re all dressed like we were dressed on Soul Train. It was the most surreal experience for me because I walk into the club with them and people started screaming. ‘Oh my God! It’s the Soul Train dancers!’ It was really weird.”

  When you see Rosie in Soul Train footage on YouTube, she is coming down the Soul Train line like an unleashed tiger. Her first time down the line was, for her, the most memorable:

  Perez: I was hysterical. My heart was pounding. I didn’t know what I was going to do. A lot of the dancers already had their routine worked out ahead of time, and I’m just freaking out. I don’t know what to do, and then you stand at the head of the line, and then, and the stage manager goes, “Go!” It was ridiculous, it was so bad. My girlfriends were cracking up at me because I’m hilarious, and I have a great sense of humor. I was laughing at myself. By the time I got to the end of the line, I was just in hysterics. I was laughing so hard, and Don Cornelius goes, “Do it again.” What? “Do it again. Put her up at the head of the line.” And I thought I had messed up, so I did something different and Don goes, “No, no, no, do it again. Do exactly what you did the first time.”

  What Perez thought was silly Don loved, which speaks to their difference in perspective about what good dancing was.

  Much like Jody Watley and other popular Soul Train dancers, her sudden TV celebrity led to a lot of real-world hostility. “I used to get recognized quite often as being a Soul Train dancer,” Rosie said. “Quite often. Which was great at times but sometimes was not so great. Especially back at college it was not so great. It was pretty tough.”

  A turning point in her relationship with Soul Train came when Don tried to recruit Perez into a female vocal trio along with Cheryl Song and a white dancer-singer. “I told Don I could carry a tune, but I couldn’t sing sing, you know. He told me, ‘It’s irrelevant the way you sing. What’s relevant is the way you dance and the way you wear your clothes.’ ” That didn’t exactly charm Perez. Nor did the fact that when he handed her a contract, she was told not to contact an attorney. No negotiation. He wanted her to sign the contract immediately. On the heels of multicultural hit making by the Mary Jane Girls and Vanity 6, Cornelius was clearly seeing Perez and company as a solid bet.

  But she still refused to sign the deal, so in an attempt to woo her, Don took her out to dinner. A business meal turned social as, for the first time, he inquired about her background and family. “What broke the ice was that when we sat down, I didn’t know which fork to use,” Perez recalled with a laugh. “Don said, ‘Work outside in.’ And then he cracked up. I cracked up, too. It was the first time I saw him laugh.” The duo had a lovely meal except for one thing—Perez still wouldn’t sign the contract.

  That cordial meal was followed by a tense taping in which the host stopped Perez “three or four times” as she grooved down the Soul Train line. Unlike her first time, when Don made her go back, his tone was harsh. During a break, the two had a confrontation over the record deal and, according to Perez, she tossed one of the handy fried chicken boxes at him and stormed off the soundstage. That was the last time she’d dance on the show.

  But this dustup with Don wouldn’t be the end of Perez’s relationship with Soul Train. About a year before Rosie was banned from dancing on the show, Louil Silas, a vice president for R&B A&R at MCA Records, was visiting the show with an artist when he spotted Rosie dancing in a corner by herself.

  “I was on the side and I started dancing hip-hop,” Rosie said. “Louil came over and said, ‘What’s that dance? What is that? What are you doing right there?’ I said, ‘Oh, that’s hip-hop.’ He goes, ‘Hip-hop, hip-hop, cool. Yeah, that’s what I want.’ I said, ‘Huh?’ He said, ‘Bobby Brown [of New Edition] is going solo. I want you to teach him that.’ I said, ‘I’m not a choreographer.’ He goes, ‘I’ll pay you sixteen hundred dollars.’ I go, ‘I’ll be there on Monday.’ That was the beginning of my choreography career. That’s how it all started. It started from Soul Train.”

  In the mid- to late eighties, when hip-hop-bred dance moves from the East Coast began to overturn the West Coast styles popularized on Soul Train in the seventies, Perez became a bridge between the two worlds. Videos were slowly beginning to replace Soul Train as the place where new dances went national. Bobby Brown, probably a more gifted dancer than singer, was the first of many acts Perez began choreographing for videos, TV appearances, and tours.

  After working with Brown, she designed steps for kiddie group the Boys, the agile rapper Heavy D of Heavy D and the Boyz, LL Cool J, and new jack swing groups Today and Wreckx-n-Effect. She even worked with the ultimate diva, Diana Ross. But the gig that put her career over the top was selecting and choreographing the Fly Girls for Keenen Ivory Wayans’s sketch comedy show In Living Color on Fox. On the show, which debuted in April 1990, the four dancers under Rosie’s guidance became the new cutting edge of urban dance. It was the peak of her career as a choreographer.

  “I was busy,” Perez recalled fondly. “I had a great career, and it all stemmed from being on Soul Train, which is crazy. It’s really, really crazy.”

  That’s how her Soul Train story comes full circle. As a choreographer, Perez became an occasional visitor to the set, aiding artists she was working with on steps for their TV appearance. At first Cornelius was prickly, and later he just ignored her. A few years later, after her acting in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing and working on In Living Color, the two ran into each other in the tunnel underneath an LA concert venue. At first Perez ignored him, but he called out to her.

  “I apologized for tossing the chicken at him,” Perez said, “and I thanked him for giving me such a great platform. He told me how talented I was and how proud he was of me. We h
ugged and smiled. I saw the guy from our dinner at that moment. Then he told me not to tell anyone about it: ‘After all, I have an image to maintain.’ ”

  Chapter 13

  Overseas Soul

  EVERYONE WHO danced on Soul Train and did any traveling to Europe or Asia had to be prepared for the excitement of being recognized by people in another country who spoke a different language. But the show’s international appeal didn’t always sit so well with its founder.

  Cornelius: Well, as far as Soul Train’s popularity outside the United States goes, we’ve never been able to gauge it so far. What we know so far is that most people outside the US that carry Soul Train are not paying anybody. They are not paying for the show, and that takes us back to some of the money that we weren’t able to make. There are so many ways to get—from YouTube on down—to get copies of intellectual property and then use it, that it’s become impossible to keep track of.

  Any quick trip around the Internet in 2013 will find some legally licensed Soul Train content (the Soul Train Japan website is owned by Soul Train Holdings) and plenty of unofficial events (for example, a party in March 2013 in Bristol, England). But during Cornelius’s lifetime, episodes of the show, many posted from Japan, proliferated. Jody Watley recalls that in the seventies there was a special Soul Train taping for Japanese TV, a suggestion that Cornelius had tried to do business overseas, but apparently it didn’t ripen into a deal.

  For many years after Watley started her recording career, she’d wanted to use vintage footage of herself as a Soul Train dancer in her live show, but Cornelius’s company could never accommodate her. However, a trip to Japan changed that. “I did a show in Tokyo in the eighties,” Watley said, “and after the show, these girls gave me a VHS that was filled with highlights of every damn number I did on Soul Train. I have no idea how they collected all that footage.”