Broadway legend. Inimitable comedienne. Infamous Muppet Show guest. Carol Channing is all of these, and cultural revolutionary to boot!

I'm willing to guess that nobody but me remembers it, but Carol Channing once got jiggy and threw out some dope beats on national TV. That's right, the revolution WAS televised and you missed it. In 1969, Channing did what was completely unheard of among middle-aged caucasians: namely, donning black hippie garb and laying down a stoned soul picnic.

I first witnessed the scene on Nick @ Nite about ten years ago, when they used to air that bastion of badness, "Laugh-In." Amongst the usual melee of half-drunk has-beens, quasi-psychedelic humor, and general impotence, I discovered one of the most unusual pieces of sketch comedy ever committed to video: Carol Channing, Soul Sista.

Old Caz came out sporting a white faux-afro (looked more like bleached clown hair), a far out 'mod' mini skirt--so clingy you could almost see the hip-surgery scars--and some serious love beads. On her, they were more akin to 'like' beads, or possibly even 'don't call me I'll call you' beads, but I digress.

CC was joined by a young African-American woman dressed in a matching outfit and spouting lots of "groovy" lingo like "sock it to me." I guess she was there to teach CC how to be more ethnic; which is kind of like teaching a dog how to be more like a sewing machine, hence the LAFFS. However, after a few little hip-shakes and and finger-snaps, Ol' Bug Eyes caught a real fly groove. As the skit ends, she is fully immersed in a soul trance, body twitching and arms flailing, belting (in her familiar lisp), "I wanna be like a shoooooul shishterrrr"! And a soul sister she was like, indeed.

What on Earth, you may be asking, could anyone involved with this scene have possibly been thinking?

Well picture it: Burbank, California, Summer of Love. The country is embroiled in Vietnam...racial unrest...sexual revolution. It's a hot day on the set of Laugh-IN. As usual, Jo Anne Worley can't keep shit on her side of the dressing room; Paul Lynde is being a fag; and worst of all, Flip Wilson called in sick and is being subbed with Don Rickles. Still smarting after being passed over for the fIKM version of, well just about every play she ever rode to the bank on Broadway, CC is in a state of emotional and social turmoil. A few hits of Sammy Davis, Jr's doobie lands her in a psychotropic tailspin. And dear readers, that ain't all, because old Caz wasn't even getting laid at this or any point of her forty year marriage. You can imagine her wanting to stir shit up, and strike back at the man!

In my fantasy extended version of this sequence, Carol Channing is so moved by the catharsis of becoming "soulful" that she throws off the bourgois Broadway chains and wails a cry for "Revolution!" Punching a defiant fist in the air, she commences to setting fire to the NBC studios. After kicking the crap out of a few cast members who always annoyed her (like Alan Sues and Barbara Sharma) she starts ripping out chairs in the audience and flinging them into the fire, a fire that burns for all those whiteys who dared to keep Carol out of the "Hello Dolly" movie. Days later, Burbank still burning, she emerges from the day-glo ashes of gin-soaked comfortability as a fiery wench, ash-covered and lipstick smeared. She has somehow obtained a machine gun and lets loose on the cast of "Petticoat Junction," high-tailing it into the Hollywood Hills where she forms an underground cult to rival the Mansons in size and insanity. Never seen in society again, Channing becomes a legend among the disenfranchised, the drunk, and the bored.

But of course it's only now that I realize how amazingly subversive Carol's act of soul was. I never even thought about it until a few months ago, when I was playing the Samantha Fox records, "I Wanna Have Some Fun" and "Naughty Girls (Need Love Too)". Lo and behold, with the help of Full Force, Sam was wanting to "be like a soul sister" too!

Just then it seemed so obvious, that Carol Channing had laid down the groundwork for all of modern 'blue-eyed soul', from Teena Marie (don't mess with LADY T) to Madonna (sort of) even to today with Arista Recording Artist P!nk. You'd think at least one of them would send Carol some flowers for her troubles. In my opinion, they just aren't as "real" as CC, and can only dream of one day becoming such a beautiful boogie butterfly.