Jon Kirby

The Best of the Chicago Party

Ken Shipley, Willie Woods

Willie Woods, James Christopher

For 23 straight Saturday nights of 1982, The Chicago Party dance show assaulted Chicagoland UHF eyeballs with Spandex, Southside fly guys, tender tenderonies, magicians, contortionists, prismatic video gimmickry, and lip-synched singles by a rising regime of local post-disco casualties. Unfettered nightlife and outlandish humor poured out of oddball outpost The CopHerBox II and onto TV screens. Pooling business acumen with music scene prominence, James Christopher and Willie Woods opened the CopHerBox II in 1979 at 117th and Halsted on Chicago’s Southside. To promote their venture, they purchased airtime on Chicago’s WCIU-TV Channel 26 for weekly installments of The Chicago Party. Each Saturday, the club’s adult clientele filled the illuminated dance floor, providing vibrant B-roll between tapings of breakdancing magicians and Jheri curled ventriloquists, giving an audience to a rising regime of Chicago Soul heavyweights.