By: Lennard James
If you want to see the difference between a trend and a movement, follow the logistics. Dr. Logan Westbrooks has spent a career working to turn the raw power of Black music into sustained progress by pairing cultural intuition with operational rigor. The Source Records ascent of Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers—powered by “Bustin’ Loose”—wasn’t just a story of an overnight success but rather an example of how to move culture on purpose.
Start with the premise: Go-Go in the late 1970s was highly effective where it lived. The groove was participatory, almost architectural, inviting rooms to build the song in real time. Many executives might hear that and ask how to make it “fit” radio. Westbrooks, however, heard it and asked how to make radio fit it. He recognized that the greater risk may not have been that America wouldn’t understand Go-Go, but that the industry might mishandle it. So, he did what pioneers do: he took steps to build conditions for success rather than waiting for permission.
He secured manufacturing and distribution through MCA/Universal so that interest would never outpace access. He also extended the runway via EMI’s international footprint, positioning the sound to echo through Europe. He understood that the timing of a release can often be as decisive as the “what,” and he embraced a fourth-quarter timetable that others might have avoided, confident that a coordinated plan could help push through. He set that plan in motion by activating relationships across radio, retail, clubs, and television—relationships that he had built over years of showing up and delivering.
Photo Courtesy: Chuck Brown
Early 1979 provided evidence of the proof. “Bustin’ Loose” encapsulated the band’s live energy without flattening it; the campaign refined the presentation without draining its spontaneity. Los Angeles tastemaker nights helped to broaden the base. Soul Train played a role in turning curiosity into recognition, recognition into excitement. Print coverage served to educate new listeners to listen, translating the D.C. grammar without translating the music itself. And because Westbrooks had already aligned the supply chain, every media moment had the potential to convert into a measurable outcome: spins into sales, sales into tickets, tickets into new markets, new markets into momentum. Source Records didn’t merely chase legitimacy; it took strategic steps to generate legitimacy by behaving like a label twice its age.
What sets Westbrooks apart as a pioneer of Black music is not singular taste, though he has that; it’s his combination of strategic patience and commitment to cultural fidelity. He didn’t succumb to the false dichotomy between art and apparatus. In his world, authenticity and professionalism can coexist, with the mechanics existing to lift the voice, not to mute it. By synchronizing media cadence with retail readiness and by surrounding a local sound with a national and international delivery system, he created a repeatable framework for turning regional truth into mainstream fact.
The legacy of that pattern is visible far outside any one chart run. It contributed to rewriting the assumptions of gatekeepers about what Black regional music could potentially do without compromise. It also provided younger executives with a model of how to advocate for artists with both heart and spreadsheets. And it helped to deepen a wider understanding that America’s vital music often has its roots in corners the industry can’t initially see—corners that require champions who can build roads as deftly as they hear songs.
In that sense, “Bustin’ Loose” is both case study and metaphor. A record broke through; a label launched; a city’s sound found a larger stage. But the deeper story is how it happened: a pioneer who treated culture as precious and logistics as sacred, who believed that the right ears would hear if the right paths were built. Dr. Logan Westbrooks has spent a lifetime building those paths for Black music—lighting them, protecting them, and widening them—so that when a local heartbeat is ready to travel, the world has the opportunity to move with it.
