Soul Survivors

As a rule, I'm not fond of February. It's short, cold and generally nasty, even though the month covers Valentine's Day, President's Day and public school vacations across the country. Consequently, I wasn't surprised to read that Whitney Houston died suddenly and unexpectedly, or that Don Cornelius committed suicide - the news just seems to fit in with all the other negative aspects of the month.

I first watched "Soul Train" when I was going to college in Ohio. I got into radio during my freshman year when a friend challenged me to do a show, and ended up doing afternoon drive on WOBC, the Oberlin College station. Not only did I play mostly black music - Curtis Mayfield, Aretha Franklin, The Temptations and The Four Tops, just to name a few - but my deejay patter was nuanced, loaded with the disposable "lines" I had listened to as a kid, coming out of the New York stations - "The rest of the best", "the tops of the pops," "the wax you can't afford to miss!" -for example - or - "Guaranteed to put more soul in your stroll - glide in your stride - and dip in your hip!" When I saw a young Aretha , Wilson Pickett or Motown act wallowing in soul on the show, it just enhanced my belief that it was the funkiest sound to be found even if I was committing cultural fraud by trying to imitate a black person on the radio. Don Cornelius basically took American Bandstand and created a soul version, complete with himself as the Dick Clark persona, the teen aged dancers for eye candy and the performers, opening up "soul" music to the white audience by using a format they already felt comfortable with. Imitation - whether it be my first attempt at radio or the parallels between "Train"and "Bandstand" - is still the sincerest form of flattery.

Whitney Houston deserved to live a lot longer. It's unfortunate that her audience is left with conflicting images - the Whitney who turns the national anthem into a signature once in a lifetime, never to  be equaled showstopper, and the Whitney who cringes as Bobby Brown curses her via cell phone on their "reality" show. Their tumultuous relationship played itself out to the final act with Bobby leaving the funeral service because he didn't want to make a scene. Although redundant, it needs to be repeated - judge the artist by his/her music, by their contribution to the arts, not their personal life. As far as I know, when we consider Picasso or Van Gogh or Hemingway, we don't dwell on how much they drank or whether they screwed up their relationships, so why is it that Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston are measured differently ? My final impression of the funeral was the legendary Clive Davis actually speaking - which he rarely does - about Whitney's divine talent. Coming from the man who discovered and nurtured artists like Santana, Janis Joplin and Earth,Wind & Fire, it was the best eulogy the music industry could muster.