To be honest, Delhi Township resident Billy Miossi had never heard of Soul magazine or its co-founder and editor Regina Hall.
Miossi, who directed and produced WCPO-TV’s Cincinnati's Uncle Al in 2022, was researching the 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles when he first met Jones.
When that project fell through, he decided to do a film about Jones and her Soul magazine, which were not exactly household names in the 21st century — even though the Soul entertainment publication for Black readers was started in 1966 before Rolling Stone.
That’s why he called the film, Who The Hell Is Regina Jones? It premieres 8 p.m. Monday, Feb. 16, on the Story Television, DABL and Start TV channels owned by Weigel Broadcasting.
“Soul had set a lot of precedents and there wasn’t even a Wikipedia page about Regina,” says Mossi, a content producer for Weigel Broadcasting and Weigel Productions for 10 years. He started working for the Chicago-based company when he and his wife lived in Chicago.
“Regina’s the first person to put the Jacksons [5] on the cover of a magazine. And she had relationship with all these incredible artists. She has had such an interesting life,” he says.
“I was surprised. I have never heard of it. I didn’t know how big it was. They did more than 300 issues in 16 years. They did stories on Bootsy Collins. They did stories on all the big artists,” Miossi says.
Jones was a Los Angeles Police Department dispatcher during the 1965 Watts riots. Regina and her husband Ken Jones, along with Cecil Tuck, founded the Black entertainment biweekly newspaper celebrating Black music in 1966, a year before Rolling Stone.
The inaugural issue on April 14, 1966, featured James Brown and Mick Jagger on the cover for a story called, “White Artists Selling Negro ‘Soul.’ “ It sold 10,000 copies. Subsequent cover stories featured Little Richard and Otis Redding. It ceased publishing in 1982, after the Joneses divorced. The magazine covers are archived at soulpublishing.co.
Jones’ “stacks of old issues in her garage” in Los Angeles — which have been archived by her grandson Matt Jones — provided a starting place for the film, co-directed by Miossi and Soraya Selene, a Los Angeles-based photographer.
Viewers will see Soul stories on a Who’s Who of Black entertainment icons: Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Sly Stone, Pam Grier, Tina Turner, John Amos, Isaac Hayes, Al Green, Snoop Dogg, Michael Jackson and his brothers, and Brown.
Helping tell the story are video clips, Jones’ family home movies and audio recordings of Jones speaking to Aretha Franklin and others, as well as her recorded memos to writers about their stories.
Jones, now in her early 80s, provides the narrative. Only a handful of coworkers are interviewed — including former Time magazine photo editor Bruce Talamon.
But Miossi didn’t speak to any of the celebrities featured in Soul.
“We had lots of discussions. We wanted the film to be about Regina, not about Soul,” he said.
Miossi says Jones is pleased with the film, which has been nominated as an outstanding documentary film in the 57th NAACP Image Awards to be presented Feb. 28.
“She loves it, and thought it was the best you could ask for,” he says.
Miossi has produced many programs for Weigel, which also owns MeTV, MeTV Toons, Catchy Comedy, Movies!, Heroes & Icons (H&I) and WEST (Western Entertainment Series Television). He’s also done several Cincinnati short films, including Goldie (about Tim Goldrainer of The Menus performing at nursing homes) and The Moleman, about a western Hamilton County mole trapper.
Before meeting Jones, he wanted to make a film about journalists who had covered both the Watts riots in 1965, the beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles in 1992 and the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020.
“Over the next year, I talked a couple times a month with Regina, and I fell in love with her. That’s when I learned about Soul. Her husband Ken was the first Black anchor on Los Angeles TV. She got pregnant at 15 and had five kids before she was 22,” Miossi says.
Selene was hired to shoot Jones’ 80th birthday for the film’s finale.
“We started talking, and I thought it was valuable to have the point of view of a woman, and not just that of a white male. We just clicked. It was a wonderful collaboration. She was available when we needed a shot,” he says. The film was edited by Nancy Novack in Portugal.
In a 1974 clip from Soul Train, Jones tells host Don Cornelius, “I think it’s very important so we can have something on record, actually what the Black entertainer has done, and maybe 100 years from now they’ll be history.”
Or 50 years later.
The 57th NAACP Image Awards will be presented live on CBS and BET at 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 28. There are two Cincinnati-related nominations: Who in the Hell is Regina Jones? for best documentary, and for Yemi Oyediran for best direction for his documentary, The King of Them All: The Story of King Records.
On the air
Who The Hell Is Regina Jones? Airs twice on Monday, Feb. 16, at 8 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. on three Weigel Broadcasting channels available in Greater Cincinnati:
- Story Television: WLWT-TV Channel 5.4, Spectrum Channels 238 and 1238; Altafiber Channel 272; and Comcast Channel 1177.
- Start TV: WBQC-TV Channel 25.4; Altafiber Channel 299, Spectrum Channels 237 and 1237, Dish Network Channel 291, DirecTV Channel 84.
- DABL: Dish Network Channel 357.
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