Whitewash

February 28, 2005...One of the great things about growing up across the river from Detroit was ready access to WGPR-TV. Although I didn't realize it at the time, channel 62 wasn't simply a black-owned television station, it was the first commercially licensed black-owned television station in the United States.

WGPR started broadcasting on September 29, 1975, and, from the get go, it was obvious that it was coming from a special place. WGPR didn't have the money that the stations affiliated with the major television networks had. You could see it in the programming, a mixture of long-forgotten, black-and-white serials and movies, and low budget, locally produced programming for a primarily African American audience.

WGPR was probably most famous for its dance show, The Scene, which was a more funky, Detroit version of Soul Train. (See the photograph below.) Many a Saturday night, I'd catch the tail end of the show, and watch in awe as the dancers parted into two lines and chanted "throw down, throw down," while one or another of their number danced through the middle.

Then there was Movies All Night...

As you might suspect, on Movies All Night, WGPR would air … movies … all night. Of course, the station only owned about twenty or thirty movies in total, so, if you were a nighthawk, you’d see them all again and again.

About half of WGPR's tiny video library seemed to consist of black-and-white oldies, most of them westerns. These I would usually take a pass on. But the other half was comprised of the not-so-classics of modern European cinema ... dubbed into English ... poorly. Those I would never miss.

I must have seen The Daydreamer (avec Pierre Richard), Killer Cop (con Claudio Casinelli) and Run, Rabbit, Run (mit Helge Anders) a dozen times each. Sure, the occasional flash of titty was nice, but what was really intoxicating for me was the backdrop, Europe in the late 1960s and early 1970s. To this day, I cannot think of France and Italy in anything but a foolishly romantic light.

And nothing, but nothing sounds like a poorly-dubbed film. You have no idea how rich the world of sound is until you're listening to the mono-dimensional dubbed version of The Senator Likes Women, starring Lando Buzzanca and Agostina Belli.

Like The Scene, on a good night Movies All Night was a glimpse into a whole other world, parallel to my own. I couldn't turn it off.

Now, back to where we started… As the first black-owned commercial television station in the United States, WGPR had an important role to play as a transmitter of black consciousness and black pride. So reruns of the 1965-68 series I Spy, featuring Bill Cosby, in the first starring role for an African American on U.S. network TV, were a regular part of the schedule during WGPR's early days. I believe it was on WGPR, too, where I first heard today's song, the theme from The Bill Cosby Show, which originally ran from 1969 to 1971.

Quincy Jones & Bill Cosby - Hikky-Burr

Though Quincy Jones assembled a crack team of musicians to compose music for Cosby's show, the fruits of their labour were released only last year as Quincy Jones & Bill Cosby: The Original Jam Sessions 1969. Oddly, Cosby's vocals appear on only one track ("Hikky Burr") on the record. Apparently, Cosby's voice is all over the 1969 release Hooray for the Salvation Army Band, however, which Mojo magazine (December 2004) described as "a lazy, aggressive, stoned funk album." Someone, please buy me copies of both these records.

As for WGPR, CBS bought the station in 1994, changed its call letters to WWJ, and proceeded to replace everything that was unique about it with the same old shit you can see on any other CBS station in any other city. Score another one for the homogenizing forces of the "free market." Will they not rest until we are all eating identical genetically-modified meals from identical, paper-lined plastic trays?

They will not.

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