The Hippest Trip in America by Nelson George Read Free Book Online Page B

wasn’t that filmed? Taking off his hat, spinning it, putting it on his head. Throwing his car keys in the air, catching it in his hip pocket all to the beat of the music. Doing double splits, screaming, grabbing the ceiling, coming down a slap, and you could hear his hands slap the floor, these wooden floors, real dance floors. Just hear his hand. Pow! He just fills the whole club. I mean it was just amazing watching this guy.
    Campbell, a street-dance innovator, the creator of locking and founder of the Lockers, was born in St. Louis in 1951 but raised in South Central. Drawing was his first artistic expression, and it’s why he attended Los Angeles Trade-Technical College to study drafting. While he was in college, Campbell became part of the local club scene and developed his trademark dance moves.
    The funky chicken, a southern dance, became a national hit in 1969 when Rufus Thomas recorded “Do the Funky Chicken.” Campbell was having a hard time mastering the dance’s rocking movement. As performed by Thomas, who even in his sixties could gyrate with the best, it was a rocking, wobbly move that involved arm movements that mimicked barnyard fowl. For whatever reason, Campbell couldn’t do the dance smoothly, finding that his arms would freeze or lock, creating a comical hesitation that cracked up his friends. “No matter what type of mistake I made, they clapped,” Campbell said in The Vibe History of Hip Hop.
    Quickly this embarrassment became a trademark that Campbell, along with some other folks he met at LA clubs, began embellishing with leg lifts, splits, dives, and knee drops. Because people often guffawed at the locking movements, the Uncle Sam (in which he pointed at viewers à la the famous army recruiting poster) became a standard move. Another signature move, leg lifts accompanied by hands clenched together in front of the body, looked fantastic when done by two or three dancers at a time (a move echoed in Psy’s “Gangnam Style” video in 2012).
    After those first two nights of dancing with Campbell and company, Freeman left LA for a month to dance in a musical. Upon her return home, on a Wednesday night she went back to Maverick’s Flat, where she was spotted by a Soul Train scout who encouraged her to audition at Denker Park that Friday. That’s where she met producer Tommy Kuhn and Don Cornelius, who she recalled were dressed in smart, fly coats like the title character’s in the blaxploitation flick Shaft . Not surprisingly, both Freeman and Campbell were invited to Soul Train tapings that Saturday and Sunday morning.
    While Freeman and Campbell would soon be celebrated for their dancing on that very first weekend on the Soul Train set, the duo didn’t impress Don. As soon as they went into their locking moves, several dancers complained to the staff that Freeman and Campbell were “invading” their space, as Freeman recalled. She said Don told them, “I want you two in the back over there in the corner.” So they were moved behind singer Thelma Houston, away from the cameras.
    Freeman, one of the few at the taping with show-business experience, wasn’t very impressed with the amenities for the dancers. Lunch was a box of chicken, a Coca-Cola, and one drink of water. (I visited the Soul Train set in the early 1980s and will never forget seeing a mountain of Kentucky Fried Chicken boxes stacked up for the dancers.) The changing rooms were the studio restrooms. She couldn’t do anything about these conditions, but she would have an impact on another backstage aspect of Soul Train .
    Dancers were not allowed to use the studio pay phone to call parents, friends, or anyone else. Freeman wouldn’t accept that and called her mother, who, upset about the restriction, called the police. The next day an LAPD officer stopped by the studio to let Cornelius know that he couldn’t prevent the minors on the set from having