“Soul Train,” the dance party that ran on television from 1971 to 2006, billed itself as the “hippest trip in America,” and on a good Saturday, it lived up to the billing. It changed the way America danced, dressed, coifed and sounded — sometimes within hours of its airtime.
“Soul Train Utica,” on the other hand, is an annual four-hour charter train ride that calls itself, in the absence of other takers, the hippest trip in Utica.
Don Cornelius, the TV show’s impossibly cool host, who died in 2012, chose the locomotive metaphor for the sock hops he organized around Chicago before he created the show. At Soul Train Utica, now in its seventh year, the train is literal.
This year, the photographer Ben Cleeton climbed aboard for the ride.
Just before dusk on a Saturday in September, about 215 people piled into a couple of passenger cars and a converted baggage car equipped with two bars and a sound system.
They came dressed for the occasion.
“Some people start to shop for their outfits in March or April,” said Tyra McKinsey, who organized the train ride with her husband, Jerome, because Utica had lost much of its night life. Big Afro wigs quickly became part of the night’s signature.
“I get my wig online,” Ms. McKinsey said.
A leopard-print-clad woman named Tomasina Mann-Degree introduced herself to Mr. Cleeton, saying: “Do you know Pam Grier? You know she’s on the train? And she’s standing right in front of you!”
Ms. McKinsey, who grew up watching “Soul Train” with her older sister and mother, said she especially loved the weekly “Soul Train Line”: two rows of dancers, each taking a turn strutting or dancing down the middle.
“I got to see the new fashions, the new dance, the new hair,” she said, adding: “My mother loved Barry White. All the ladies loved Barry.”
Mr. McKinsey and another DJ spun soul oldies on the way up, newer sounds, including some hip-hop, on the way back. Sometimes, he said, the dancers’ outfits dictated the music. “Like one guy dressed as Richard Simmons, from the ’80s, so I played music to match that,” he said.
The McKinseys have dreams of expanding the ride — possibly to New York City, to Oakland, to Florida. Pretty soon they’re calling out cities like James Brown (speaking of whom, check this “Soul Train” episode, where he meets his athletic match).
For now, though, the organizers are keeping things modest, resisting pleas to add a second ride. One per year is enough work, especially since they both hold full-time jobs. (Tyra, 53, is an accountant for the Department of Defense and a sometime party planner; Jerome, 55, works as an automated machine programmer.)
The night continued on to an after-party at the Buffalo Soldiers Motorcycle Club, where Mr. McKinsey is the house DJ. Where else were they going to go? The funk was just beginning.
To which we might add, as per Smokey Robinson and Aretha Franklin on this episode of “Soul Train,” ooh, baby, baby.
