Love, Peace, and Soul: Behind the Scenes of America's Favorite Dance Show Soul Train: Classic Moments
Danois detours from the tracks more than a few times to take the reader deeper into the side stories, back-stories and wild stories of Don Cornelius s business dealings, various relationships, and the mechanics that steadily propelled the train for over three decades. --Ebony.comIn her new book, Love, Peace and Soul: Behind the Scenes of America's Favorite Dance Show, Soul Train, author Ericka Blount Danois does more than a pop-chronology or even a look behind the scenes. She gets deeply into the history and sociology of a man and a media movement that reshaped how America looked at race, self-expression, and culture. --Huffington PostCornelius incredible rise and tragic fall is compellingly and comprehensively chronicled in Love, Peace and Soul: Behind the Scenes of America s Favorite Dance Show: Soul Train: Classic Moments (Backbeat Books, $24.99) by Baltimore-based music journalist Ericka Blount Danois. The author traces how Cornelius went from being a Korean War veteran and Chicago cop to a radio DJ who started a TV dance show in 1970 that featured local black teens. ''He had the swerve and nerve to take that show to Los Angeles, where it morphed into an international phenomenon. Soul Train came around at a time when America needed it the most,'' Danois writes. ''It exported great music around the world and the changed the culture.'' --Philadelphia WeeklyIn ''Love Peace, and Soul''...Ericka Blount Danois takes on the challenge of documenting the complicated back story of ''Soul Train.'' She wonderfully addresses some of the show's most important -- and to often ignored -- aspects. Danois captures the voices and stories of the dancers, who were the heart of ''Soul Train'' but were rarely given a forum to tell their tales. --Chicago TribuneIn ''Love, Peace, and Soul,'' Ericka Blount Danois relives Soul Train s real meaning and retrieves Cornelius s true legacy with love, craft, and meticulous research. -- Dan Charnas, author of The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-HopDon Cornelius was a champion of independent Black media and a real example of Black Power in the United States. With her brilliant new book, Ericka Blount Danois takes us behind the stage of the show and into the inner workings of the man who helped change America with the simple phrase ''Love, Peace and Soul.'' --Mark Anthony Neal, author of Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black MasculinitiesWith deft reporting and flavorful insight, Love, Peace, and Soul is a ''stone cold gas'' as it goes down the Soul Train line, providing vivid context for one of the most important programs in the history of America television. Ericka Blount Danois is our travel guide as the book takes us on ''the hippest trip in America,'' documenting the influence and impact of a truly iconic cultural landmark. --Dr. Todd Boyd, the Katherine & Frank Price Endowed Chair for the Study of Race and Popular Culture in the USC School of Cinematic Arts and author of ''The Notorious Ph.D's Guide to the Super Fly 70s''Today, when hiphop is central to youth culture around the world, it s impossible to imagine a time when brilliant black music was confined to both literal and metaphorical ghettoes. Don Cornelius's show Soul Train blasted opened those doors for African-American artists and for a broader African-American aesthetic that included fashion and dancing. With ground-breaking research and lucid writing, Ericka Blount Danois has given Cornelius and Soul Train the treatment they deserve serious scholarship that is infectiously readable. --Samuel G. Freedman, author of Breaking the Line: The Season in Black College Football that Transformed the Sport and Changed the Course on Civil RightsFrom the beginning of the post-civil rights seventies, the power of Soul Train refused to be contained by mere television screens. Inspiring, inspirational and important, the groundbreaking program became a cultural force in American households. Written in a style that is artistic as it was political, as rhythmic as it is revealing, ''Love, Peace, and Soul'' takes us behind the scenes of the iconic show. Through meticulous research and reporting, author Ericka Blount Danois has composed a textual journey through the golden era of Blackness and beyond. ---- -Michael A. Gonzales has written about soul culture for Wax Poetics, Vibe, and New York