Соул Трэйн: Америкалық музыкалық телешоу тарихы

American music television show
the music dance TV show

Soul Train is an American musical variety television show. After airing locally on WCIU TV in Chicago, Illinois for a year, it aired in syndication from October 2, 1971, to March 25, 2006. Across its 35 year history the show primarily featured performances by R&B, soul, and hip hop artists. The series was created by Don Cornelius, who also served as its first and longest serving host and executive producer. Production was suspended following the 2005–2006 season, with a rerun package under the moniker The Best of Soul Train airing for two years subsequently. As a nod to Soul Trains longevity, the show's opening sequence during later seasons contained a claim that it was the "longest running first run, nationally syndicated program in American television history", with over 1,100 episodes produced from the show's debut through the 2005–2006 season. Despite the production hiatus, Soul Train held that superlative record until 2016, when Entertainment Tonight surpassed it in completing its 35th season. Among non news programs, Wheel of Fortune surpassed that mark in 2018. As of 2016, the rights to the Soul Train brand, library, and associated events, such as its cruises and annual awards show, the Soul Train Music Awards, are now under the ownership of Paramount Global, through BET Networks.

The origins of Soul Train can be traced to 1965 when WCIU TV, an upstart UHF station in Chicago, began airing two youth oriented dance programs: Kiddie a Go Go and Red Hot and Blues. These programs—specifically the latter, which featured a predominantly African American group of in studio dancers—would set the stage for what was to come to the station several years later. Cornelius was assisted by Clinton Ghent, a local professional dancer who appeared on early episodes before moving behind the scenes as a producer and secondary host.

The program's immediate success attracted the attention of another locally based firm—the Johnson Products Company (manufacturers of the Afro Sheen line of hair care products)—and they later agreed to co sponsor the program's expansion into broadcast syndication. Cornelius and Soul Trains syndicator targeted 25 markets outside of Chicago to carry the show, but stations in only seven other cities—Atlanta; Birmingham; Cleveland; Detroit; Houston; Los Angeles; and Philadelphia—purchased the program, which began airing on a weekly basis on October 2, 1971. By the end of the first season, Soul Train was on in the other eighteen markets. At the time, there were no other commercial television programs being produced by black people for a black audience; When the program moved into syndication, its home base was also shifted to Los Angeles, where it remained for the duration of its run. Soul Train was part of a national trend toward syndicated music oriented programs targeted at niche audiences; two other network series (Hee Haw for country music, and The Lawrence Welk Show for traditional music) also entered syndication in 1971 and would go on to have long runs. Though Don Cornelius moved his operations west, a local version of Soul Train continued in Chicago. Cornelius hosted both the local Chicago based and national Los Angeles–based programs simultaneously, but soon focused his attention solely on the national edition. He continued to oversee production in Chicago, where Clinton Ghent hosted episodes on WCIU TV until 1976, followed by three years of once weekly reruns. The syndicated version was picked up in the Chicago market by CBS owned WBBM TV at its launch; the program moved to WGN TV in 1977 and remained there for the rest of its Chicago run. Don Cornelius hosted every episode of Soul Train from 1970 to 1993, except for Richard Pryor, who hosted the final episode of Season 4 (1974 1975). Beginning in Season 15 (1985 1986), Tribune Entertainment acquired the syndication contract; Tribune Entertainment continued producing Soul Train until the end of the show's run on March 25, 2006.

Don Cornelius stopped hosting after 22 seasons (1971–1993), though he remained the show's main creative force from behind the scenes. This was because in later years, Nielsen ratings dropped to below 1.0; most of the stations that aired Soul Train by that point were either Fox television affiliates or independent stations that would later become affiliates of The WB or UPN, and, in the process, some of the stations which had been airing Soul Train on Saturday afternoons started rescheduling the program to overnight time slots. The future of Soul Train was uncertain with the announced closing of Tribune Entertainment in December 2007, which left Don Cornelius Productions to seek a new distributor for the program. Cornelius soon secured a deal with Trifecta Entertainment & Media.

When Don Cornelius Productions still owned the program, clips of the show's performances and interviews were kept away from online video sites such as YouTube owing to copyright infringement claims. Cornelius also frowned upon the unauthorized distribution of Soul Train episodes through the sale of third party VHS or DVD compilations. In May 2008, Cornelius sold the rights to the Soul Train library to MadVision Entertainment, whose principal partners came from the entertainment and publishing fields. The price and terms of the deal were not disclosed. However, by the start of the 2008–09 television season, the Tribune Broadcasting owned stations (including national carrier WGN America) that had been the linchpin of the show's syndication efforts dropped the program, and many others followed suit. Soul Trains website acknowledged that the program had ceased distribution on September 22, 2008. Following the purchase by MadVision, the Soul Train archives were exposed to new forms of distribution. In April 2009, MadVision launched a Soul Train channel on YouTube. Three months later the company entered into a licensing agreement with Time Life to distribute Soul Train DVD sets. MadVision then came to terms with Paramount Global owned BET to relaunch the Soul Train Music Awards for BET's spin off channel, Centric, in November 2009. Centric would broadcast archived episodes of the program. Archived episodes can also be seen on Bounce TV. MadVision sold the rights to Soul Train in 2011 to a consortium led by basketball player Magic Johnson and backed by private equity firm InterMedia Partners. The Johnson InterMedia consortium planned on a potential film project that Cornelius had briefly mentioned prior to selling the franchise, as well as producing potential stage adaptations and a cruise. As part of the sale, Johnson's Aspire TV channel also began airing reruns of the series. Cornelius continued to appear for Soul Train documentaries and ceremonies until his death by suicide in February 2012. In 2013, Centric began presenting a cruise based revival, marketed as Soul Train Cruise. All rights and trademarks to the Soul Train brand including the show's extensive library, the annual cruise event, and the award shows are under the ownership of Paramount Global after its Paramount Media Networks division acquired the franchise in 2016.

The opening sequence showed a black animated locomotive with multicolored smoke coming out of its smokestack, and steam coming out of its sides, passing through a city, tunnel, or through outer space around the Earth. The scenery around the train changed as years went on. The Soul Train logo was featured, with a song or instrumental playing throughout. One of the most distinctive parts of the opening was when “Soul Train” was announced, stretching out the first word into a high pitched imitation of a train whistle. Within the structure of the program, there were two enduring elements. The first was the "Soul Train Scramble Board", where two dancers are given 60 seconds to unscramble a set of letters that form the name of that show's performer or a notable person in African American history. In describing the person's renown, the host concluded their description with the phrase " whose name you should know". Cornelius openly admitted after the series ended its run that the game was usually set up so everybody won in an effort not to cause embarrassment for the show or African Americans in general.

There was also the popular "Soul Train Line" (a variant of the 1950s fad then known as The Stroll), in which all the dancers form two lines with a space in the middle for dancers to strut down and dance in consecutive order. Originally, this consisted of a couple—with men on one side and women on the other. In later years, men and women had their own individual lineups. Sometimes, new dance styles or moves were featured or introduced by particular dancers. In addition, there was an in studio group of dancers who danced along to the music as it was being performed. Rosie Perez, Damita Jo Freeman, Darnell Williams, Cheryl Song, Louie "Ski" Carr, Alfie Lewis, Pat Davis ("Madam Butterfly"), Alise Mekhail, Andrea N. Miles, Carmen Electra, Nick Cannon, Vivica A. Fox, MC Hammer, Jermaine Stewart, Heather Hunter, Fred Berry, Laurieann Gibson, Pebbles, and NFL legend Walter Payton were among those who got noticed dancing on the program over the years. Two former dancers, Jody Watley and Jeffrey Daniel, enjoyed years of success as members of the R&B group Shalamar after they were chosen by Soul Train talent booker/record promoter Dick Griffey and Cornelius to replace the group's original session singers in 1978.