{"id":12021,"date":"2012-02-01T11:38:42","date_gmt":"2012-02-01T16:38:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=12021"},"modified":"2012-02-01T11:49:04","modified_gmt":"2012-02-01T16:49:04","slug":"the-day-the-soul-train-stopped-don-cornelius-dead-of-apparent-suicide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/the-day-the-soul-train-stopped-don-cornelius-dead-of-apparent-suicide\/","title":{"rendered":"The Day the Soul Train Stopped: Don Cornelius Dead of Apparent Suicide"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12023\" title=\"DonCornelius\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/DonCornelius-300x201.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"201\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/DonCornelius-300x201.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/DonCornelius.jpg 492w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I only have a few minutes to share my initial thoughts on this, but I just read the really sad news that <a href=\"http:\/\/latimesblogs.latimes.com\/lanow\/2012\/02\/soul-train-creator-don-cornelius-dead-in-apparent-suicide.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Soul Train<\/em> creator\/host <strong>Don Cornelius<\/strong> is dead of an apparent suicide<\/a>. With this morning&#8217;s <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/little-richard-rock%E2%80%99s-taken-for-granted-flake\/\" target=\"_blank\">Little Richard<\/a><\/strong> piece I wanted to kick off Black History Month with some positive pieces on what black artists in the music world have meant to me. I wasn&#8217;t expecting to have to touch on Cornelius in this fashion. You may know that I&#8217;m usually a bit of a wiseass when it comes to the whole &#8220;RIP&#8221; ritual (&#8220;Danny Bonaduce, man&#8230;RIP.&#8221;), but Cornelius and the scene he presented meant a lot to me. To me, he was truly a <em>great<\/em>&#8230;man.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/lJ5iuWotw3M?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I grew up in the 1970s religiously watching <em>Soul Train<\/em> on Saturday mornings. In the early-through-mid-&#8217;70s the soul hits of the day were my bread and butter. My Mom and uncle were into that stuff. My uncle saw all the top soul performers in their &#8217;60s and early &#8217;70s prime. My Mom loved to dance. My grandparents owned a luncheonette that served a predominantly black factory worker population. As I kid, helping out a bit during the summer and mostly eating into the profits, I got a big kick mixing it up with those guys and their big Afros and muttonchops. Watching the young, hip African-American guys and gals do their thing on <em>Soul Train<\/em>, to the music that brought so much unity, romance, and hope to my life was an extension of the &#8220;Philadelphia Freedom&#8221; that was percolating in our city. The fact that the theme song to <em>Soul Train<\/em> was MFSB&#8217;s &#8220;The Sound of Philadelphia&#8221; only heightened the pride I felt.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve lost that sense of pride and racial unity long ago, not because I&#8217;m a hateful, prejudiced man but because circumstances have separated me from a culture that used to be right in the mix with my everyday world. I still get to high five a black man at a Phillies game, but shoot, all those guys who used to let me in on their world are long gone. In the early &#8217;80s, the factories closed down in the Port Richmond section where my grandparents&#8217; luncheonette was located. Radio is segregated and Balkanized like never before. Today,\u00a0I live in a lilywhite neighborhood, not because I want to get away from other races but because it&#8217;s a pretty, old-fashioned town, a stone&#8217;s throw from my hometown city, with a strong public school system. It&#8217;s the American Dream, but it&#8217;s devoid of a part of America I used to know, a part of America that Don Cornelius used to bring into my home each Saturday morning.<\/p>\n<p>My Mom recently unearthed a really twisted essay I wrote regarding my old school&#8217;s yearly Martin Luther King Day celebration. This was long before MLK Day was celebrated. Our school was way ahead of the curve on that. However, the day-long celebrations used to bug me a bit, not because I had any beef with MLK and his achievements but because the entire day&#8217;s activities seemed to be at arm&#8217;s length, so far removed from the living, breathing black guys I used to hang with at the luncheonette. Black and white people mixing freely, cutting up on each other, sharing family stories from the neighborhood.<\/p>\n<p>Modern-day black music (like most new music, I might add) usually leaves me cold. The cursing, the negativity, the sampling&#8230; I can&#8217;t paint it all as &#8220;bad,&#8221; but the popular stuff I hear doesn&#8217;t speak to me, doesn&#8217;t give me that sense of hope and a thriving community that the stuff on <em>Soul Train<\/em> did. Every other week I see a photo of <strong>Rhianna<\/strong> stuffed into short-shorts and a halter top. I quickly recall the first time I really heard of her, when the media was rife with that image of her after her boyfriend, a Chris someone, beat her. I feel like her father when I see her still capitalizing on her moneymaker. I want to tell her to respect herself, find a way to let her music do the talking. Truth be told, I don&#8217;t know that I&#8217;ve ever heard her music. Maybe she&#8217;s using her fine ass as just one tool to bring joy and unity into this world. I hope so. I no longer have Don Cornelius and the <em>Soul Train<\/em> dancers to introduce her music and spirit into my home.<\/p>\n<p>This dance is for you, Don.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I only have a few minutes to share my initial thoughts on this, but I just read the really sad news that Soul Train creator\/host Don Cornelius is dead of an apparent suicide. With this morning&#8217;s Little Richard piece I wanted to kick off Black History Month with some positive pieces on what black artists <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/the-day-the-soul-train-stopped-don-cornelius-dead-of-apparent-suicide\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[170,293],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12021"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12021\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}