Questlove Loves 'Soul Train.' Me too!
From 'The Greatest Night in Pop' to 'Soul Train': A Story in Three (Very Brief!) Chapters
CHAPTER ONE
You never can tell what to expect on a quest, y’know? They’re unpredictable things, sort of like this Sunday’s Super Bowl. You know how it’s going to start (with a boring kickoff with the ball being booted deep into the end zone and no run-back), but after that it’s a roll of the dice.
It’s the same with quests. It’s impossible to know when you start out where they’re going to lead, or how they’ll end up. Sometimes you can go off on a quest and find yourself, unexpectedly and unpredictably, in a spiritual soul shake across time and space with Questlove.
CHAPTER TWO
Here’s how it went down.
The other night we were watching The Greatest Night in Pop, the new Netflix documentary on the making of the 1984 pop anthem, “We Are the World.” All in all it’s an engaging entertainment, full of behind-the-scenes footage and gossipy, star-watching pleasures.
Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie wrote the lollipop of a song. They’re in the film too, as are Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Tina Turner, Bob Dylan, Huey Lewis, Bette Midler, Willie Nelson, and too many more to list. For one night in L.A. all these talents checked their egos at the door, crowded into a sweat-producing recording studio, and made a hit single that raised tens of millions of dollars for famine relief in drought-stricken Africa.
The maestro musician and record producer in charge of corralling this herd of highly pampered cats into a cohesive singing group was Quincy Jones, and this was where my odyssey began. The Dude, as he called one of his albums, is a musical hero of mine. Anyone who can produce Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and “Billie Jean” and do the arranging for Frank Sinatra in his swinging, powerhouse 1963 concert with the Count Basie band at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, my vote for Frank’s best live recording ever—a dude like that, I thought, surely has some cool things worth looking into.
But that’s when my path took a turn towards a different Mister Q, whose very name indicates that he, too, appreciates the appeal of questing. I knew a little about him before all this. Namely, that he’s a drummer. The leader of the hip-hop band The Roots, the house band for Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show. His podcast Questlove Supreme is a favorite of musicians everywhere, including my bass-playing son. He’s authored books. He also directed and produced Summer of Soul, an Oscar-winning documentary concert film with its own never-before-seen footage. It takes place at a 1969 Harlem music and cultural festival and features dynamite performances by the likes of Sly & the Family Stone, the glorious Gladys Knight and her Pips, Chambers Brothers, and Nina Simone. It’s an entertaining watch, too.
Oh yeah, another thing about him. He rakishly sports a pick in his Afro. It has become a trademark for him.
Anyway, back to the story. There I was, standing amid the dusty tomes in the music aisle of my local library when a flash of blinding light hit me. Suddenly I realized that the quintessentially hip Questlove and the not nearly as hip me share the most unlikeliest of commonalities:
WE BOTH LOVE SOUL TRAIN!!!!
CHAPTER THREE
Yes, Soul Train. The weekly syndicated music and dance TV program produced and hosted by the ultra-cool impresario of love, peace, and soul, Don Cornelius. In fact Questlove’s affection for it runs so deep that he wrote an entire book about it: Soul Train: The Music, Dance, and Style of a Generation. Growing up in Philadelphia in the 1970s and ‘80s the show was more than just a show to him; it was “a sibling, a parent, a babysitter, a friend, a textbook, a newscast, a business school, and a church.”
I can’t say it did all that for me, but as I was leafing through the pages of the oversized volume with its scores of wonderful color photographs, it did bring back memories. I definitely dug seeing acts like the Jackson 5, Aretha, and Marvin Gaye perform, all the kids in their groovy street-smart garb, and of course the dancers. Always—always—always the dancers.
The show-stopping finale of every episode was the Soul Train line, where all the soul sisters and soul brothers busted out moves that were so creative, so stylish, and so freaking hot in some cases they would make sparks fly off the screen of the black and white TV in the downstairs rumpus room of our suburban Hayward (Ca.) house.
I was not alone in my regard for the talents of these street-schooled artists of the dance. Questlove was right there with me, keeping a close eye on every bump, shake, grind, and wiggle.
“My cousins and I would watch them closely, as intent as any scientist in the field,” he writes. “You all see that?’ one of us would say. We’d look around to make sure we hadn’t seen it wrong and then head to the mirror to practice. After the show, we’d go out into the street to show off our new moves, where we discovered that most everybody in the neighborhood had the same idea.”
Another person intently eyeballing those bodies in motion was Michael Jackson who, says Q, lifted dance moves from them. Soul Train began national syndication in 1971 and Cornelius hosted every show until 1993, when he stepped off the air to focus on producing and other projects. (The program carried on for some years after that until eventually running out of steam. The BET Soul Train Awards, an annual awards show for soul, R&B, and hip-hop artists, is keeping the flame alive.) During the 22 years The Don acted as host, there were 110 episodes. Questlove watched every one. Some episodes he watched as many as 10 times. That’s not research, that’s love.
His feelings for the show and the people involved in it shine through in many of the book’s passages, co-written by his talented writing partner Michele Matrisciani. Stevie Wonder debuted his hit “Superstition” on Episode 46 on January 13, 1973 and for Questlove “it was easily one of the top ten episodes of all time. He invited God into his brain and then channeled divinity through his fingers, becoming the conduit for the greatest music celebrated since the Beatles.”
There are many such celebrations depicted in the book, including one that made my seemingly distracted quest come back full circle to square one. In the early 1990s Soul Train staged a special show devoted entirely to Quincy Jones—“probably the most star-studded show ever,” with an array of hip-hop stars and others singing songs and dancing in tribute to the man and his legacy.
How the Finnish ‘Storyville’ Got Its Name
On another topic, our piece a few weeks ago on Louis Armstrong continues to generate comment. Here’s what one reader, David Nelson, had to say: “Way back when, Barb [his wife] had a consulting gig in Helsinki. I went along for the ride. One night we went to a Finnish jazz club called ‘Storyville.’ The place was a basement firetrap, full of roaming, middle-aged single women. The band was playing accordion jazz. We didn’t stay long but I have always wondered why they gave the place the odd name of ‘Storyville.’ Thanks to your story, I know know Storyville was the neighborhood in New Orleans where Louis Armstrong was born. The Finns were paying tribute to Satchmo!”
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