NEWSMAKERS

NEWSMAKERS

‘Soul Train’ fans boogie down on Broadway in Cornelius fete

NEW YORK

Fans of “Soul Train” boogied down Broadway wearing afro wigs and bell bottoms Saturday while others recounted their favorite episodes at a Harlem meeting hall in tribute to the show’s late creator, Don Cornelius.

About 100 dancers descended on Times Square in a “flash mob” organized through the Internet.

As startled tourists looked on, they recreated one of the show’s “Soul Train lines” in which people would take turns dancing toward a TV camera while showing off their most outrageous moves.

“Don Cornelius was a big influence in my life, and I just wanted to pay tribute,” said disc jockey Jon Quick, as he held up a speaker blasting disco grooves. “He was playing the music that nobody else wanted to play. He was an amazing man.”

Cornelius, 75, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound Wednesday.

He had suffered from health problems, a difficult divorce and had pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor spousal battery charge in 2009.

But on Saturday, fans praised Cornelius’ vision in creating, hosting and selling “Soul Train” to television stations that were originally skeptical about programming aimed at blacks.

The show aired from 1971 to 2006.

NJ museum finds recording of Otto von Bismarck

For the first time, 21st-century audiences are able to hear the voice of Otto von Bismarck, one of the 19th century’s most important figures.

The National Park Service announced last week that the German chancellor’s voice has been identified among those found on a dozen recorded wax cylinders, each more than 120 years old, that were once stored near Thomas Edison’s cot in his West Orange, N.J., lab.

They include music and dignitaries, including the voice of the only person born in the 18th century believed to be available on a recording.

The trove includes Bismarck’s voice reciting songs and imploring his son to live morally and eat and drink in moderation.

“In the 18th century, the human voice was described as one of the most noble capacities of human beings,” Stephan Puille, the German researcher who identified Bismarck’s voice, said in an email. “Bismarck is no longer mute. I think his voice allows a new access to him.”

The recordings were made in 1889 and 1890 by Theo Wangemann, whom Edison sent to supervise the use of the Edison Phonograph Works machines on display at the Paris World’s Fair in 1889 before traveling to his native Germany.

Associate Press