Examining Labor Day

“Work spares us from three evils: boredom, vice, and need.” -- Voltaire

It’s another Labor Day. Most of us think of the holiday as the demarcation line on the calendar marking the end of summer, our last chance at a warm weather barbecue or swim, or just that much-needed day off from work. On this day honoring “the economic and social contributions of American workers,” I’m thinking of what it is to “labor.” I’m thinking of the many unemployed who don’t currently have the opportunity to serve the nation, their families, or themselves through a simple thing we probably always took for granted: a job.

Since the age of 14, I’ve earned some kind of paycheck. I’ve been a summer camp counselor, a department store cashier, a library page, a photography school intern, a girl Friday for a filmmaking foundation. In college I juggled classes with Boston gigs as a writing tutor, a retail store clerk, a hospital assistant, a publishing company researcher, and a program assistant at the Cambridge YWCA. I’ve done stints selling the New York Times over the phone, typing reports for a labor union, placing college students in summer jobs, and serving as a public information officer for the New York City Housing Authority.

The bulk of my career is notable, however, for the many years I worked at what I love: writing and editing. I was a secretary then a book production editor at an educational publisher before moving on to become an editor and writer for Essence and then Billboard. Because of my positions, I got to meet a wide number of people, many of them celebrities, I got to travel across the country and sometimes outside of it; I got the opportunity to speak before large gatherings and even on TV; earned some acclaim for my work; but most importantly I got to enjoy the thrill every writer dreams of: seeing my byline in print. It wasn’t all roses, though. I worked long hours, made big mistakes, skirted deadlines, sweated bullets, cried bitter tears, lost sleep, gained weight, strained relationships, feuded with coworkers and bosses, made bad choices and sometimes made enemies. They say “find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life,” but even work we love has its price. When I briefly moved from publishing to record labels – first as a product manager and then as a publicist -- I was completely out of my depth, awash in unfamiliar details and insecurity, and woke up to find myself on the West Coast. Thanks to networking connections, I was able to go back to writing and editing for several more years.

"Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.” - Camus

I’ve been fortunate. The work of I’ve done is certainly not essential to anyone’s survival. We reminded each other often: “It’s not rocket science” or “It’s not brain surgery.” I’ve never done any manual labor, never served or prepared food, never had to rely on physical strength nor held anyone’s life in my hands (OK, some recording artists may have thought I did). I deeply admire those who work makes the rest of our lives easier and/or safer: military, police, firefighters, sanitation workers, food service personnel, farmers, miners, construction workers, postal employees, school teachers. I am grateful for them.

There are also millions of people laboring away at jobs they despise, with people they abhor, for insulting paychecks, for minimal or no benefits. But work is work. Right now there are millions of people with no job at all who would willingly take on the burden of a hateful gig.

Because I’ve been fortunate enough to work in a career I love, I’ve been spoiled. I’ve long adhered to the notion that I am supposed to do what I love and nothing else will do. Until recently I also had the idea that I could always get a job. I am forced to rethink these notions after seeing both the publishing and music industries implode and reinvent themselves on smaller scales. Like most of America during this economic downturn, I have to reform my idea of “labor.”

“We have too many people who live without working, and we have altogether too many people who work without living.” –Charles Reynolds Brown

I still have a vision of being paid for doing the work I love and am best qualified to do. I recently left a job that provided a lot of new challenges and experience in favor of this dream. A hard economy can cause such dreams to wither and die, but I'm not giving up. If you have a job, you are lucky. If you have a career, you are blessed. If you have a dream keep dreaming. Your dream is a labor of love, the key to your most productive self. And that is worth celebrating on Labor Day.

June is Black Music Month -- Remember?

June is Black Music Month.

I first heard this tagline during my years as editor of black music at "music industry bible" Billboard in the late 1980s; heretofore I was unaware of any such celebration.

I was raised in New York City and blessed or cursed with the cynicism of natives of the metropolis; after a few years in the music biz I was quickly learning the warp and woof of the rather slick fabric undergirding the frothy array of the music industry. So I quickly attributed the proclamation of black music ascendancy for the month of June as an invention of the record industry itself – much as Valentine’s Day, Secretary’s Day, Mother’s Day and other heart and hearth holidays were inventions of the greeting card biz. I thought, Hey -- the kiddies were out of school for a glorious stretch of "hot fun in the summertime," and the season offered endless opportunities for music-infused vacation activities of all kinds. The record labels and their distribution companies – which in the '80s and '90s had only recently established freestanding and now lucrative black music divisions – were only too happy to funnel money into elaborate Black Music Month advertising campaigns that easily compelled music fans into record stores (remember those?) to snap up the latest discs from their stables of soul, funk, and R&B stars. It was a sales scheme disguised as a moral imperative. It was only later that I learned the history of the designation, how a hard-fought Congressional Proclamation by music industry stalwarts and a star-studded White House Lawn celebration in 1979 compelled the country to acknowledge one of its most profound artistic treasures.

Black Music Month at its core is a celebration of the genius and prodigious musical output of people of African heritage in the Americas. It marks righteous pride in our ingenuity and beauty. It taps into the same cultural pride and unimpeachable ascendancy that brought Black History Month into the common lexicon, offering as it did the open invitation to all and sundry – but especially to African Americans – to luxuriate in the pride and power of our indigenous aural soul sauce. Tasty! But like most celebrations, it also became a commercial vehicle, a boon to music retailers and radio programmers alike. Black Music Month was one of “our” holidays, one that generated not just abundant good will but cold hard cash, sponsored by the biggest corporations. (I garnered enough Black Music Month T-shirts, umbrellas, wall posters, baseball caps, CD samplers, calendars and jackets to supply a small village over the years.) But today many of the record companies, music retailers, radio programmers, and music executive jobs that were the beating heart of the black music business are no more.

As with Black History Month, the argument persists that every month of any year is in fact a celebration of black cultural expression. If one considers the broad array of musical styles that the term Black Music encompasses under its red black and green umbrella – hip-hop, neo soul (if in fact this term is still acceptable), R&B, funk, jazz, and blues – then the Black Music celebration carries on unabated January to December, for the music is still being made and purchased and enjoyed by legions around the world.

But if we consider the ways in which Black Music has been co-opted, contaminated, controverted, synthesized, dumbed down and ignored, today’s Black Music Month celebration could be seen as a sad mockery of a once-noble cultural pursuit. Is this opinion the sour grapes of those who once labored near the center of a thriving music industry that is no more? Is it the expression of an embittered elder shaking a finger at the young’uns over a bygone golden age? Perhaps. But I remember when Black Music was truly Black Music.

Is the celebration itself a shadow of its heyday? Is there still something to celebrate in today's musical output?

What do you think?

Love To Love You, Donna

I am devastated to learn of the passing of the brilliant Donna Summer, whose music was such an integral part to my maturation. "Love To Love You" was mindblowing, with its driving synth and daring vocals. I thought Donna was gorgeous. When her second album, A Love Trilogy, was quickly released in March 1976, just eight months after Love To Love You, I went to DiscoMat on Lexington to buy the album. Reminiscing about dancing to Donna's music, I listened to her 70s output on YouTube one day back in 2008, and it reminded me how much I loved these tracks. I even incorporated Donna into the current novel I am writing, in which the main character is obsessed with her (Lady Lady or Personal Summer).

In tribute to Donna, here is what I wrote back in 2008:

Writing while jamming to music on YouTube. Why does “Try Me (I Know We Can Make It)” by Donna Summer give me such a delicious thrill? Because it’s 1976, lost in time.

Donna’s voice is operatically, candy-coatedly sweet. There’s the precision of the violins making their commentary over the four-on-the-floor beat, made more emphatic with congas, drums, and rhythm guitar in unison, on the One. Behind it: an ethereal progression of harpsichord notes, questioning, as though this is Marie Antoinette’s disco fever, as though Mozart himself condones this conga-driven, guitar-scratching morsel of dancefloor heaven. Try me, try me, try me, try me just one time, try me, try me, try me, try me any time, try me for love, baby don’t you think you should? Don’t you? The beat clops on, simple, bright and sharp as new pennies landing in a marble fountain. Donna in a wind tunnel, her voice a piccolo of melody rising from a golden throat, her breath and her hair floating, tossing, as the background vocalists sigh their harmonies.

And the breakdown, it’s heartbeat compelling, it’s a Gotta, you are gonna move your damn feet! The bass is metronomic in just two keys, alternating, I tell you the congas are delicious, I just wrote a whole story about the compelling propulsion of congas, try me, ohhhh, try me…. And now it’s a decision, a mandate: I know, I know, I know, I know, I know … twirling around in a silver feathered dream, and now the oh-so-European synth is tinkling down like a stream over the running bass and the shiver of high hat accent, … I know --we can make it! Now comes the part that is just the running bass with a tickle of guitar, the part that made me pick up my feet, hop a little in the Hustle, back and forth, We can make it if we try, we can make it touch the sky. Oh the happiness, the optimism, yes we can, I know we can can, there’s no way not to keep the beat, you bump up against the bass drum’s wall of massive power, pow, um, pow, um, every two steps, and she says, I wanna hold on tight with all my might, pray you’ll never stop, it’s a cupid prayer sent to the sky, to the glory of the night, and this is a disco siren song of symphonic, epic proportions, we’re now in the third movement.

We can make it if we try, we can make it, dead or alive, because even if we pass from here, we’re going on, our feet keep us moving to a place beyond this pale reality, where nothing fails us. And now we’re onto the next phase, baby, the place where we began, and the cymbals crash, we pause for breath, there’s a tense warning crescendo of strings, and we tumble back to Try me I know we can make it, I know we can try, and the black girls go, if we try try try. Damn, this shit gives me goosebumps.

Yet it’s so silly, so simple, so creaky with age, this track. But it wings me back to 16, when all is still new and I am fleet of foot, dancing in perfect time with a guy, a stranger who holds my hand who matches me step for step, we’re a tag team of two, never met but we know exactly what to do, and there is nothing but wind in front of us as we concoct this instant magic across a starlit floor. We’re sliding into the end zone, a beautiful high-heeled and sequined denouement, and now the drum kit is shivering, the drummer’s got both feet working, the cymbals are chattering with joy, and Donna is heaving, moans of ecstasy fading, afterglow sweet as honey sliding slowly down like the sweet icing in MacArthur Park, and I am sticky, limp with gratitude.

Thank you, Donna. Thank you.

Bittersweet Memories ….

Whitney Houston: An Alternate View

From the beginning she was
the embodiment of duality:
Sweet yet sensual,
young yet old,
pop yet R&B,
gritty yet sophisticated.
Who could successfully balance these opposites
without verging on schizophrenia?

The world is bidding farewell to songbird Whitney Houston, who left us much too soon. Her passing at the age of 48 is so tragic, ironic, and awful that even these words can’t encompass it. Her voice was a gift to the world, a force so powerful that whole generations of singers owe a debt to her shimmering mix of gospel feeling and pop precision. She had seen the pinnacle of success through adulation, awards, applause, and admiration. She had also endured the deepest recesses of hell due to addiction, abuses, failed expectations, troubled relationships, and public ridicule. I mourn for her passing, and pray for her family, friends, and fans – all of those who loved her.

I first became aware of Whitney Houston in the mid ‘80s via WBLS New York’s quiet storm program, which played her “Saving All My Love For You.” I was an editor at Essence then, and not on the music beat. The song was amazing. It sounded world-weary to my ears, rendered in a voice that was sweet yet supremely mature. This was a song about dreams of forbidden love crushed, over and over, by a married man who won’t commit, yet the dreamer chooses to delude herself into not giving up on it. Relatable, certainly, but also pathetic: love leads us to make foolish choices but we just can’t help ourselves. The performance put me in mind of someone older and/or stylistically alternative – an Anita Baker, a Regina Belle, a Jean Carne, or a Marlena Shaw. Who was this fabulous new singer? Whitney Houston, a fresh-faced former teen model, daughter of the great Cissy Houston, barely into her 20s.

The photos I finally saw of Houston, and the material she released immediately after “Saving,” did not jibe with my initial musical impressions. What could this stick-thin baby diva know about cheating with married men? I know that singers are only interpreters of music, of lyrics often written by others, and that their material is not always autobiographical. However, experience does deepen performance. In a certain way I felt gypped – maybe not by Whitney herself, but by what was being presented to me as Whitney. “Saving All My Love For You” was a great song – but the fact of her recording it told me things about her: That she was after an audience that wasn’t exactly her peer group, that she was fine with casting herself as a victim, even in a song; and that she was out of step with an era witnessing the rise of street-level hip-hop, retro British soul, and new jack swing.

Sure, I loved Whitney’s “You Give Good Love,” and she did a fantastic job with the notoriously difficult anthem “The Greatest Love of All,” but when the video for “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” came out – with Whitney in pastels, blonde extensions, and tutu, jumping around like a pogo stick, backtracking artistically to scoop up the young, all-American pop audience – the disgruntled feeling of having been duped in an artistic bait-and-switch had taken over me. I admit that I’d been giving the girl the fish eye ever since.

Whitney possessed a beautiful face, figure, and talent. She was an old-fashioned chanteuse for a new generation; she could venture into pop ditties, sweeping anthems, and R&B grooves with equal ease. She had laserlike control over that unbelievable voice – like Luther Vandross, she could execute exactly what she envisioned with little audible struggle. Her phrasing was off-the-chain pristine. My response to her was varied, though. I liked individual songs. I knew her story, where she came from, how she had developed, who she was working with musically. But I couldn’t really feel her as a person behind the artist. As naturally talented as she was, I was profoundly aware of her as a construct, as a product of an ever-spinning “A Star Is Born” machine.

Does no one remember how Whitney was booed at the Soul Train Awards in the early ‘90s because of the perception that she’d sold out to cross over to the pop chart? Whitney was a church girl from Newark whose genes came from Cissy, Dionne, and by extension, Aretha, and she had become the epitome of the American Dream Girl. But we like to claim our own. And folks weren’t comfortable with the genre tightrope-walking visible in her career trajectory. From the beginning she was the embodiment of polar opposites: Sweet yet sensual, young yet old, pop yet R&B, gritty yet sophisticated. She went from chitlins to caviar. (And let’s not forget that her first film role as a proud black diva paired her romantically with – not Denzel, not Eddie – but the older, white Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard. When she married Bobby Brown, her fans could not seem to wrap their minds around the Pop Princess marrying the Bad Boy of R&B.) Who could successfully balance these diametrically opposed qualities in their life without verging on schizophrenia at times?

Personally I was stuck on the jazz promise I’d first heard in her. I wanted Whitney to front a big band, break out some standards, and scat. I wanted her to write poetic material and sing words that came from her soul, backed by organ hits and a horn section or soft acoustic guitars. I wanted her to, as Teddy Pendergrass once sang, “get down, get funky, get loose.” Some people will say that I’m nuts, that Whit was as real as it got, that certainly she could go there, and when she performed gospel material it was a revelation for all. Folks were eating up what Whitney dished out and clamoring for more. In interviews there were flashes of warmth and charm. Still, I wondered when the real Whitney Houston would stand up. To me she seemed professionally rehearsed and guarded, with something harder underneath. But this was my critical view; my perceptions can often be those of a jaded conspiracy theorist. What I wanted for Whitney clearly had no bearing on anything, and if she had taken the musical path I imagined for her she would not have become a worldwide phenomenon and beloved vocal icon, may not have attained the well-deserved honors bestowed on her. But perhaps she’d still be alive.

While working at Billboard, I did get a chance to meet her. In fact, I was invited to her palatial home in Mendham, New Jersey, for her 26th birthday bash. It was incredibly exciting to make the drive out to her private domain for a spectacular bash chock-full of music industry greats. She was a gracious hostess, but we did not have a conversation.

Just a few years later, I became a product manager at her label, Arista Records. I did have dealings with the Nippy camp; The Bodyguard soundtrack had just topped the charts when I came on and Whitney was busier than ever. I dealt most often with her close friend and handler, Robyn Crawford, rather than Ms. Houston herself. I remember making a business trip to provide support for a Houston event, and Whitney barely acknowledged my presence. Granted, she had a lot going on. I had a better time goofing around with her husband, Bobby Brown, whom I always found to be engaging and funny. But I lasted less than a year in the gig. I was never to see Whitney again other than on television.

Whitney’s downward slide into drug abuse, bizarre behavior, financial ruin, and ultimately divorce saddened me. Like her most ardent fans, I hoped that with the release of her last album she would rally and reconnect. That did not happen. I was surprised to learn that she had been cast in the remake of Sparkle: that too represented a glimmer of hope for her professional and financial future. But perhaps the role – as the mother of a singing star in the making – only served to remind her of all she’d lost. We’ll never know. But as Whitney Elizabeth Houston is sent home in grand style at her family church in Newark this weekend, I hope that she truly and finally is “at rest.” The world will never experience a voice like hers again.

Remembering Don Cornelius

I’m not sure when I first became aware of Soul Train. I probably heard my friends talking about it, or perhaps it appeared in psychedelic splendor before our startled eyes as my younger sister and I battled for control of our living room television set, flipping channels between cartoons and reruns on a South Bronx Saturday morning. Our attention was galvanized by a seldom-seen-on-TV-in-the-70s glimpse of hip young black folks (hey – they look like us!) in their Afros and bell bottoms dancing in a yellow and orange stage set to the latest soul tunes. I was instantly hooked. I don’t know what I liked more: watching the live or semi-live performances by the flesh and blood R&B artists whom I only knew by name from the Top 45s list at the Korvette’s record shop, or watching the funky dance moves executed with such abandon by the studio dancers. Soul Train was THE show, hands down. You were socially required to study and report back on the dances, the clothes, the performances, the newest tracks, the scramble board mystery name (usually an African American historical figure or performer) -- even the latest Afro Sheen and Ultra Sheen commercials, which featured proud and regal black women and together brothers sporting glistening, perfectly rounded natural ‘dos.

Soul Train was water cooler television before there was a name for such a thing. It was beyond exciting to see Stevie Wonder sit before a piano and play, to watch Al Green (perhaps one of my favorite Soul Train performers) croon out one of his numerous hits, to see what Aretha Franklin would be wearing. I remember seeing the electric Joe Tex – accompanied by popular Soul Train dancer Damita Jo Freeman -- perform his tune "I Gotcha!," which scandalized my 12-year-old sensibilities (“you made me a promise now you better stick to it!”). In junior and senior high my girlfriends and I would stay after class and practice the moves we’d witnessed on the most recent show’s "Soul Train Line," especially popping and locking, the breakdown, the penguin, the funky penguin, the bump, and a gang of other colorfully named routines. As a 45 rpm spun on a portable record player (I remember in particular the Isley Brothers’ “Who’s That Lady?”) we’d mimic the formation of two opposing lines, with the dancers bopping and contorting their way along between them.

And then there was the program’s host himself. Don Cornelius. He was unlike anyone I had seen before on television. The sonorous voice, the elegant and distinctly hip diction, the glasses, the wide lapels, the crisp collar and tie, the giant puff of afro. He looked part business man and part gangster. Before I knew what a producer was, I knew that Don was clearly in command of everything on and off camera; it seemed to me that by the sheer force of his personality, a wave of his hand or the arch of a brow, he commanded the teenagers to undulate, the “TSOP” theme to begin blaring, and the Soul Train train logo to chug its percolating path across the screen. Soul Train was Don’s House, and stars like Stevie Wonder, Isaac Hayes, Marvin Gaye, the Spinners, the O’Jays, Gladys Knight &the Pips and all the others arrived in a steady stream not only to entertain the viewers, but to pay homage to The Media Potentate. Even some pop and rock acts – Elton John, David Bowie – paid a visit to The Soul Svengali. Most of the time Don seemed cool and distant, but every once in a while he broke out a smile, or gushed over a guest of whom he was truly fan. His deliberate style of speaking and his dress set him apart from the artists and the dancers – he often seemed to be operating on a different vibrational wave length, even as he delivered his famous and radio smooth parting phrase at the end of every show.

I became R&B music editor of Billboard in June 1989, and the Soul Train Music Awards – which were inaugurated in 1987 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium -- were traditionally held in March. I flew from New York to Los Angeles to cover the awards for the first time in 1990; Don and I were likely introduced backstage or at the Sprite-sponsored pre party. I found him somewhat intimidating; he was, after all, an icon. He was tall and imposing, decisive, urbane, and just old school cool. Over the course of my time at Billboard I had occasion to speak with him several times.

I interviewed Don by phone for a Soul Train anniversary story that I did in the early '90s that included his own recounting of how—inspired in small part by Philadelphia's American Bandstand -- Soul Train was originally produced in Chicago on a shoe string before he decided to move the whole thing to Los Angeles to be closer to the labels. The details of his history are well documented by now; I don’t have a clear recollection of any particularly significant comments he made (and I thought I had a printout of our interview somewhere in my files, but I can’t put my hand on it). He was justifiably proud of the fact that he’d been able to take this nugget of an idea and run with it until it became the cultural touchstone of an entire generation. He was pleasant to talk to, funny, and occasionally he could be flirtatious. Back then I would type my phone interviews in shorthand to save myself the agony of transcribing later, and Don spoke so slowly and deliberately that I could write every word he said.

I think we got along because I was very much aware of the history Don represented as an African American television producer, and as a consistent presenter of black culture and artistry on television. I didn’t hesitate to pay my respects for all that Soul Train meant to me, and what it still meant as Don continued to build the brand through the presentation of the Soul Train Music Awards, the Soul Train Lady of Soul Awards, and even an annual Soul Train Christmas Starfest broadcast. His personality seemed to demand that kind of acknowledgment. There was a prickly quality to him – I had the sense that if things didn’t go his way, I might find out how quickly he could administer a colorfully worded cussout. Occasionally I heard rumbles from the music industry about how as the producer of the Awards show, he played hardball to demand top musical artists, sponsorships, and more. Some questioned how the winners of the awards were actually determined. That side of Don I was not privy to, and I never questioned the integrity of the Soul Train Awards themselves.

By 1994 I had moved to L.A . As a publicist for Perspective/A&M records, I escorted acts like Barry White, Sounds of Blackness, Mint Condition and CeCe Peniston to the Soul Train studio set on Gower Street in Hollywood to tape the weekly show. Don had long since retired from hosting duties, but sometimes he lurked on the sidelines with his producers and we said hello. I remember being shocked at how small the TV studio actually was – the set seemed a vast playground on the screen.

Don would appear at an annual press conference to announce the nominees and performers for the upcoming Soul Train Awards. The locales for these announcements changed from year to year: a Beverly Hills restaurant or hotel or at the Paramount studio lot. The Soul Train Awards presentations were generally held at the Shrine Auditorium in downtown LA, while the Lady of Soul presentations usually were staged at the Pasadena Civic Center. I was writing again as Managing Editor for Billboard’s R&B Airplay Monitor by 95, back on the R&B radio beat. At one press conference in the mid '90s I stood up in the hotel ballroom to ask him a question and instead of answering he made a comment about my appearance, something along the lines of “that fine Janine McAdams.” The room laughed. I was mortified and annoyed – one, that he hadn’t answered my question, two, that he had made a sexist comment, and three, that I hadn’t used my formerly married name in years!

Don did show his prickly side – to me and especially to J.R. Reynolds, who was then the R&B Editor of Billboard. In March of 1996, we each attended the Soul Train Music Awards at the Shrine. I was backstage in the press room, and I believe J.R. may have had a seat in the theater itself. This was at the height of the popularity of the awards show; the Awards were really the place where R&B and hip-hop artists could celebrate themselves. The show was well attended by stars, their handlers, labels, and the press. There was a lot of excitement because I think Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. were in attendance. As the show finished, more artists and their entourages came into the backstage area. At one point there was a scuffle, followed by screams, and then the crowd rushed for the exits to the parking lot – me included. There were reports from several people on site that gunfire had erupted between the Death Row and Bad Boy camps, fueling more rumors of the deadly feud already brewing between the two rap stars. Later, others said there had only been a fight. In the parking lot I got quotes from several people who claimed to have seen shots fired. In my reportage of the Awards for R&B Monitor I included information about the incident, as did J.R. in his section of Billboard. We weren't the only journalists to report that this incident took place.

Don was enraged. He felt that the media was trying to smear the reputation of the Awards with a false story; African American events involving hip-hop artists were already battling to keep big money corporate sponsors who feared that rap meant violence. He sent a scathing letter to the publishers of Billboard; I don’t have a copy of it, but both J.R. and I printed a rebuttal saying we were not guilty of a smear campaign and that we stood by our stories. We were reporters. You can read J.R.’s response at Google Books (Billboard, April 27, 1996, p 19).

-- unfortunately Google Books did not archive the Monitor so I can’t access my version and I don’t have a copy in my files. Strangely, it seems there is little evidence now that this backstage East Coast West Coast incident ever took place. But six months later Tupac was dead in Las Vegas, and a year later, upon leaving a Vibe-sponsored Soul Train Awards post party, Biggie was gunned down (I left the same party literally minutes ahead of Biggie -- he and Puffy were coming down the escalator at the Petersen Automotive Museum just a few feet behind me and colleague Suzanne Baptiste).

Don was one of a kind. He had a profound vision and a commitment to pushing forward our unique culture and artistry through the Soul Train brand. He was driven as a business man and as someone who wanted African Americans to attain their rightful place of recognition in the fabric of society. For a considerable period, he may have been the most powerful man in black music for his ability to showcase new talent and new projects nationally. However, the downtrend in the music industry negatively affected his media profile, and in recent years he has battled personal and health problems. Now, as the Soul Train brand has been consolidated and celebrated through DVD rereleases, compilation albums, and the revival of the Soul Train Music Awards, it is sadly ironic that Don chose to take his own life now. Suicide is an extreme response to private pain, but I pray he rests in peace. Thank you, Don, for letting us take the hippest trip in America.