Don Cornelius put together as television show that captured the love of dance and music from our past and created a classic show that could never be duplicated, at least not the way that it was back in the 1970's. The 1970's episodes were the most priceless & precious to me. We had a chance to watch very talented free-style dancers and Black entertainers that we would never, ever see anywhere else on television. Can this ever be recaptured??? Is music as important to us as it was back in the past???

Music has always been very important part of African American lives. My 80 year old mother always tells me about the extremes that they went to, to dance and listen to the blues. She came from a strict Baptist home and her father only allowed them to sing gospel music and do holy dances. Somewhere along the line, my mother & her siblings got a taste of the blues!!! My mother's family was poor and lived in the south in a poor neighborhood and they did not have access to record players and she said that they did not play the blues on the radio. She told me stories about how her oldest brother & his friends would go to town and take their small change and put it in the jukebox and learn those Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker & other blues singers songs.

She said that her brothers, sisters and friends could hardly wait for the guys to return home so that they could sneak & hear them sing the blues songs. My mother & her brothers, sister & friends would get together and go way up in the woods to have their little jam sessions. She said one friend made his own guitar, one guy had a harmonica and they made drums out of old cans. She said, they would be singing, dancing, working up a hellava sweat and having a ball!!! One day her father caught them up in those woods, partying up and she said, he beat the shit out of all of them, even their friends!!! She said that she was so afraid that he was going to kill somebody because her father was very mean and physically abusive!!! This did not stop them though, when their wounds from the brutal beatings healed, they just found a new spot and continued to do what the loved doing. She never got a chance to really hear the real blues songs on record until she became an adult but when she did get a chance to hear the real songs by the original artists, it really didn't matter. They knew the songs word by word and beat by beat so it was no big deal to hear the real thing.

I had to tell this story to let you know some of the extremes that Blacks would go to just to live and love their music!!! Back in the day, Blacks really had a hard time getting their music out there to be heard. Blacks were heavily discriminated against getting their music recorded and rarely received in profits for their fine work no matter how good they were, they were treated like dogs & had to use the back door when it came to singing, performing and recording their music but they still carried on.

Black music & dance has become the biggest in the world!!! Some of the other races of people got more soul & dance moves than Blacks in these days in times !!! Thank you Don Cornelius, thank you Mama & so many thousands of others for going to the extreme to keep our soul music alive !!!

If there was to be another real Soul train with free-style dancing & music show, it would be much more different. All people of all colors and cultures would have to participate to make it work???

Nowadays, a lot of young Blacks don't even know how to dance. Is their real "Soul" still there??? Can we really do another classic Soul Train program that will stand the test of time like Don Cornelius's Soul Train did??? It's really hard for me to say whether or not it could ever happen again, but it could never be all African Americans again in my opinion...

Do you really think that there could ever be another classic Soul Train in this lifetime ???

Poll result (4 votes) Nope, not in this lifetime... (0 votes) Vote Yes, I do believe that it can... (1 votes) Vote It's really hard to say for these days & times... (3 votes) Vote