"Soul Train" Coming Back Under New Ownership

After two years of sitting dormant on the tracks, the Soul Train is ready to move again, thanks to new ownership. Series creator and longtime host Don Cornelius has sold the long-running franchise to production company MadVision, who plan to both produce new episodes for the first time since 2006 as well as release DVDs and Internet content from the show's massive archives. In recent years, Soul Train had only been broadcast in syndication in the form of "Best Of" episodes. MadVision is already talking to producers about the 2008 version of Soul Train, hoping to update it to connect with a younger audience. For the nostalgic set, "The series has never been shown on DVD, and it's not been utilized on video-on-demand or mobile or Internet platforms," MadVision co-founder Peter Griffith said. "There are many opportunities that we are exploring."

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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