Houston's Kashmere High School was an all-black institution in the less-than-affluent Fifth Ward of the city that benefited from the presence of one dedicated, visionary and inspiring teacher.
He taught music and ran the stage band, which fused jazz and the emerging funk of the late '60s and early '70s to create a legendary sound that lifted the band, the school and the entire student body to the heights of musical and academic glory.
"Thunder Soul" was their sound, and "Thunder Soul" is the name of the winning documentary about Conrad O. Johnson and the students — they all called him "Prof" — he impacted during his decades on the job. It's an uplifting and entertaining film about that music — rediscovered by DJs and music producers, decades later — and the kids who embraced the music and used that experience to launch the rest of their lives.
"He could see the future inside of us," one remembers.
Johnson was not a young man by the time his glory days arrived. He'd been teaching kids jazz and inspiring them to higher ambitions for decades before he, through them, discovered James Brown, Earth Wind & Fire and funk. In vintage TV interviews, Johnson recalls composing and arranging pieces in that vein, which his students dove into and further funked up with a lively, bouncy, dance-in-their-seats showmanship.
Kashmere kids dominated competitions and toured the world. The film remembers those days, and follows a reunion concert arranged to relive that glory and to celebrate Johnson, a lively 92 when "Thunder Soul" was filmed. Former students recall the era — hot on the heels of the civil rights movement, in the middle of women's liberation ("A girl playing trombone? You never saw that!"). And they recall the teacher.
"He set incredibly high goals." "He taught me how to be a man." "That band was going to take me somewhere some day."
One serious omission in the film: identifying what these seemingly prosperous alumni of the band do for a living and did with their lives.
In the period in question, maybe 200 members went through Kashmere's stage band, with 30 to 40 of them showing up to perform in the reunion concert, and the film makes claims that members went on to be "doctors, lawyers," etc.
So why not show some examples? No, the many shots of concertmaster Craig Baldwin's BMW don't cover that.
Nothing would buttress the movie's subtext more than a few simple graphics: "Class of '77, Doctor, Taos, New Mexico," and the like.
'Thunder Soul'
Genres: Documentary, music
Running Time: 83 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
