When Chris Lehman set out to write the story of Soul Train, he didn’t know he’d be writing an obituary. But in April, just as McFarland published his A Critical History of Soul Train on Television, Reuters carried Don Cornelius’s first public acknowledgment that the show he’d created 38 years before had ceased production. Anyone actually watching Soul Train knew Cornelius hadn’t presented a new episode in two years, instead airing popular reruns, and many fans already assumed the curtain had descended. But the fiercely independent mogul, notoriously stingy with interviews, had until that point been mum on the subject.
Soul Train wasn’t the first black dance show, or even the first one on Chicago television. In the 1950s deejay Jim Lounsbury hosted Bandstand Matinee, inspired by the success of Philadelphia’s Bandstand, which became American Bandstand. Lounsbury, who was white, also hosted Record Hop in the 1960s, giving airtime to Chicago’s great black musicians. Other local dance shows included Time for Teens, Spin Time, and The Swingin’ Majority. But the two most idiosyncratic programs, the ones that really paved the way for Soul Train, were WCIU’s Kiddie-a-Go-Go and Red Hot and Blues. Kiddie-a-Go-Go, which unlike its teen-oriented counterparts featured preteen dancers, started in 1965 and ended only months before Soul Train debuted. The show welcomed black dancers, though they rarely came.
In 1987 he launched the annual Soul Train Awards, which gave high-profile exposure to African-American artists that they couldn’t otherwise get on mainstream television. But after MTV surprised itself with the success of Yo! MTV Raps in 1988, black artists found themselves more welcome on cable and network TV. And when Robert Johnson sold his Black Entertainment Television cable network to Viacom in 2000, Soul Train was suddenly up against a behemoth that included, starting in 2001, the spectacular, big-budget BET Awards. The weekly program too was struggling to book big names, and fans seemed more excited than upset in 2006 when new episodes were supplanted by reruns from the show’s golden era.
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This time, after weeks of frustration, I was able to track down Ghent with the help of his brother, Peter Pan Ghent. He’s far from a recluse, but after becoming frustrated with the state of the entertainment business in the 80s, he made a point of losing touch with his showbiz associates.
The Soul Train pilot was shot at WCIU, and thanks to Ghent it was stocked with ringers—not the usual teenyboppers but the “baddest dancers” from Budland. When Sears exec George O’Hare saw the sample episode that he eventually was able to convince his bosses to sponsor, he was watching a group of adults re-creating the smoky, sexy atmosphere of a south-side club.
And that wasn’t all. Dancers became neighborhood celebrities—teachers even favored them in class. Crescendo Ward even swears that Soul Train saved his life: After walking a girlfriend home to Cabrini-Green, he was assaulted by members of the Vice Lords gang. Mid-mugging one stopped, Ward told Lehman, declaring, “Yo, wait a minute, that’s that Soul Train motherfucker!” After that they gave him bus fare home.
