Soul Train Local

I've just been sent the link for a fascinating article on the origins of the TV show Soul Train written by Jake Austen for the Chicago Reader.

The show that put black music on TVs across America got its start in Chicago—and even after it moved to LA, Chicago kept its own version running daily for nearly a decade.

By Jake Austen

October 2, 2008

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.

Read the full article here