Carnival of Soul

“The primary purpose of Soul! is neither to educate nor entertain, but to give people a chance to share in the Black experience. The show must do that first. Then it can educate and entertain. Soul! makes Blacks visible in a society where they have been largely invisible.”

Those are the words from the late Ellis Haizlip, the producer and host of Soul!, the groundbreaking music-and-talk program that aired on public television and aimed at a Black audience. At a time when Black representation in the media was either lacking or tended to negatively portray African Americans, Soul! (which ran from 1968 to 1973 and was produced by New York public TV station WNET), proudly celebrated Black arts and culture. It not only featured a wide range of African-American musical guests (more on that later), but also notable figures from the worlds of film, dance, literature and activism. Among the many guests who appeared on the program included writers James Baldwin and Toni Morrison; poets Nikki Giovanni and Amiri Baraka; actors Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis; boxer Muhammad Ali; filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles; and activists Stokely Carmichael and Kathleen Cleaver. Long before Soul Train, The Oprah Winfrey Show and The Arsenio Hall Show, Soul! featured a Black TV show host and targeted an African-American audience; it was an outlet for the Black Arts movement that emerged in the 1960s and conveyed both empowerment and pride in the Black experience (full disclosure: I was a former intern at WNET in 2009).

Nearly 50 years after its last broadcast, the legacy of Soul! and Ellis Haizlip, who died in 1991, shines on through a new documentary, Mr. Soul!, written, produced and directed by Haizlip’s niece Melissa Haizlip. Having made the film festival rounds, Mr. Soul! premiered this past weekend in virtual cinemas and will continue to do so through September 10. Not only does Mr. Soul! pay homage to a pioneering TV variety program, but it is also a tribute to Haizlip— a gay Black man who was so cool and witty as a television host, but also a mild-mannered activist and promoter of important issues pertaining to the Black community. The documentary features some of the guests who were on the program along with those who worked on the production side of things (Haizlip’s words are voiced by the actor Blair Underwood, who also serves as an executive producer on Mr. Soul!). What is most sobering about the documentary is how the issues discussed on the original TV show are still relevant today as the racial divide continues to widen.

“The time for Ellis Haizlip’s voice is now,” said Melissa Haizlip in the production notes for the documentary. “We are in a time of reckoning, and looking deeply at issues of systemic racism. We’re having conversations on where we want our country to go moving forward, and how we might get there together. It is tremendously important to have Black people in key decision maker roles throughout the media industry. Ellis Haizlip is an excellent reminder of this, and why our stories, told by our people, matter now more than ever.”

As much as Haizlip’s enlightening interviews with those aforementioned guests were a cornerstone of Soul!, a tremendous part of the TV program was the music, which Mr. Soul! focuses on (The film was scored by acclaimed pianist and producer Robert Glasper). During its brief run, Soul! featured an astounding who’s who of Black musical acts in the pre-MTV era. A number of those performers included:

• Patti LaBelle the Blue Belles (later as Labelle)
• Stevie Wonder
• Roberta Flack
• Odetta
• Mandrill
• Al Green
• The Last Poets
• Billy Preston
• The Delfonics
• Black Ivory
• Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson
• The Billy Taylor Trio
• Miriam Makeba
• Earth, Wind and Fire
• Melba Moore
• Bill Withers
• McCoy Tyner
• Wilson Pickett
• Marion Williams
• Rahsaan Roland Kirk
• Hugh Masekela
• M’Boom (with Max Roach)
• Kool and the Gang
• Gladys Knight and the Pips

As emphasized in the documentary, Soul! offered quite eclectic musical programming beyond the popular R&B hits of the day (i.e., Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition,” Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together,” and the Delfonics’ “Didn’t I Blow Your Mind”)—it also showcased other genres such as world music, jazz and the avant garde. Some of the striking musical highlights from Mr. Soul! include a performance by Rahsaan Roland Kirk, who not only played three woodwind instruments simultaneously but also slammed a chair onstage. And in another segment, the legendary spoken word act The Last Poets performed a hard-hitting, fiery piece called “Die N***a!!” that would never happen on any other TV program like The Ed Sullivan Show or American Bandstand. It’s a credit to both Haizlip and his production team for pushing boundaries that went against the mainstream.

“Our job is to present Black culture, and R&B music is a vital part of that,” Haizlip once said. “Entertainment can be a deep business, it’s not all just finger popping time. We give exposure to Black artists of all types, people whom you practically never see on white TV. And I feel good about what we’re doing.” For fans of both music and the history of the African-American experience, Mr. Soul! both educates and entertains. It’s inconceivable now that a TV show of Soul!‘s caliber could exist today where the media business is dictated by ever-changing tastes and the bottom line— which makes Soul! as a chronicler of the Black experience and an outlet for free-form musical programming such a one-off.

Mr. Soul! is currently showing in virtual cinemas through September 10. For information, visit the documentary’s website.

Bill Withers/McCoy Tyner

Rahsaan Roland Kirk

Stevie Wonder

Ashford and Simpson

Labelle

Al Green

M’Boom