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Author Topic: RIP Don Cornelius  (Read 4988 times)

Offline daigong

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RIP Don Cornelius
« on: February 02, 2012, 08:37:11 AM »
Damn. Industry lost a huge giant, earlier this morning:

Don Cornelius is dead in an apparent suicide, TMZ and The Associated Press are reporting. The 75-year-old creator of "Soul Train" shot himself to death Wednesday morning at his Los Angeles home, police said.

"Soul Train" had a vast and lasting influence on pop culture, and seeded -- or at least seeded the idea -- of MTV. (There were many MTV fathers, certainly, but he was one of 'em.)

He was a tastemaker who tasted everything, from Motown to R&B, and taught generations of kids to dance, or try to dance, or try to move.

"Soul Train" ran for decades, and thus, influenced not just one of those generations, but a couple. It aired from '71 to the mid-2000s [production ended in 2006; syndication continued to 2008] and may still be going on in some iteration for all I know. The Soul Train Awards, are of course,  still continuing. This was the urban "American Bandstand," and Don, the urban -- and more urbane -- Dick Clark, to whom he was so often compared. To give you but the slightest flavor of how groundbreaking "Soul Train" was and how considerable Cornelius's feat, he got this on the air at a time when there was no show on TV devoted to black American culture and ten years before the launch of MTV - which initially only aired videos by white acts. In fact, "Soul Train" was hugely popular with white kids too - it was "crossover" even before the TV industry invented the term "crossover."



MICHAEL JACKSON INTERVIEW ON SOUL TRAIN



Just one of the most classic influential shows you ever did see. He brought SWAG before they made the term swagger. I always wanted to do a line dance SOUL TRAIN style at a JPH!P WORLD TOUR near you.

Offline muppet

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Re: RIP Don Cornelius
« Reply #1 on: February 02, 2012, 04:08:54 PM »
Besides having eveyone who was anyone in the world of soul music as a guest, Don Cornelius also put the spotlight on the kids who danced on the show....never patronizing, always promoting respect and self respect.....like anyone else, Mr. Cornelius had personal flaws, but he was a postive force in the world of entertainment. And thus the influence grew bigger than just entertainment, his work and those he worked with, changed society.
Mr. Cornelius, thank you! :yossi:


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