This style would in time become known as Afro Futurism, and while its origins go back to the 1950s and musician Sun Ra, LaBelle popularized and gave it a clear image. According to BET, it was on Soul Train where the popular dance move, "The Robot," was first performed to a wide audience by (who else) Michael Jackson in 1973 when performing The Jackson 5's single, "Dancing Machine." LaBelle, during a 1975 performance of "Lady Marmalade," donned futurist costumes. Because of this, some of the biggest moments in popular culture happened right on the Soul Train stage. For the first season, artists such as Curtis Mayfield, Jerry Butler, and The Chi-Lites made appearances as, like the dancers, they were based in Chicago.Īrtists knew the show was not only a place to promote their new songs but also to promote themselves. Chicago, according to a documentary about Cornelius, was known as "The Dance Capital of the World," and Cornelius took dancers off-street and paid them through the promotion of their own dances. Based in Chicago, there was no scarcity of talent. Despite a small budget to find musicians and dancers for the program, Soul Train was greenlit and premiered in 1970.īecause of budget restraints, Cornelius stayed local. According to SBS, Cornelius hosted a television program, A Blacks' View of the News, in the late 1960s, while at the same time he pitched the station a program mirroring the music programs of the era, with a focus on African-American music. His deep voice distinguished him, as well as his ambition and desire to spread Black culture worldwide. Don Cornelius was a former soldier in the Korean War and worked numerous jobs before landing as a disc jockey and announcer for Chicago's radio station, WVON.
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