Free The Hippest Trip in America by Nelson George

together at a piano with Franklin, an outstanding gospel-trained pianist, on the keys, they sing a slow, sweet version of the Miracles’ classic “Ooo Baby Baby.” Franklin sings the first verse, Robinson the second, and then they sing the chorus together—not exactly harmonizing, more singing softly together in their different styles. It is a brief but magical duet that made the Soul Train set seem more like a living room after church on a Sunday afternoon than an LA TV studio.
    As we’ll see, there would be a number of Soul Train theme songs over the years, but one of the best was played only once on the show. Stevie Wonder, who was on during the first season, would make regular appearances over the years. His first song on a 1971 episode was “Superstition,” but Wonder, on grand piano, then played a ditty called “Soul Train,” with Cornelius by his side and the dancers gathered around. The hook was very simple: “ Soul Train and Don Cornelius / Where all the brothers and sisters get together,” backed by a soulful, jaunty piano riff that is similar to a melody he would use years later for “Happy Birthday.”
    Wonder got the dancers to sing and clap their hands in another of those intimate moments between singer and audience that made Soul Train feel like a window not into a TV show, but into the world of black showbiz.
    Patti LaBelle, whether with Sarah Dash and Nona Hendryx in Labelle, or later as a solo artist, was a legendary live performer known for kicking off her shoes, sometimes rolling on the stage, and always singing with celestial power. Her fellow Philadelphia native Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, leader of the Roots, doted on her Soul Train appearances.
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    Thompson: I’ll say another powerful live performer of the show, who sometimes didn’t perform with a band, and that was Patti LaBelle: I believe that all of her performances were sung with her actual voice. Once, Labelle had a band behind them, during the Nightbirds period of “Lady Marmalade” in ’74, but all of her performances were powerful and very, very live. I think she’s probably the only artist to garner ten-second applause at the end of the song before the animation starts. Usually a song is finished and a person does a bow, they’ll clap for—they’ll show the clap for one second, two seconds—and then go straight to the animation. But when she did “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” that was, I believe, December of 1981. She did “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and it was powerful enough, even without a band, powerful enough to get, I think, the only ten-second applause before Don let the animation go.
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    There were scores of other remarkable live performances during the seventies on Soul Train . But only one pulled the covers back on the precision needed for show-business success as much as the episode in which master choreographer Cholly Atkins showed how he created the O’Jays’ onstage magic. “I actually think that was Don’s idea,” said O’Jay member Walter Williams. “Because we used to rehearse in LA at times, and Don came by and saw how he was beating us up.” The song was “Give the People What They Want,” a classic Philly International message song. Viewers saw the O’Jays in street clothes and then saw them transition into the song in onstage gear. This peek behind the scenes featured show-business legend Atkins.
    Atkins and legendary tap dancer Honi Coles had been a part of a team, Coles & Atkins, that was extremely popular in the 1940s and 1950s. As popular culture changed, dance teams lost favor while stand-up vocal groups, mostly composed of golden-voiced teenagers with no stage experience, came into vogue. Working out of a studio in the Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway (where David Letterman now tapes his CBS late show), Atkins pioneered what he labeled “vocal