Soul Train creator and television pioneer Don Cornelius died by suicide yesterday at the age of 75. Why?

Some close to the smooth-voiced television host described a man hurt and distraught by bad business decisions, poor health, and an ugly divorce that took hundreds of thousands of dollars from his children and other family members….

In 1982, he underwent a 21-hour operation to fix a congenital malformation in blood vessels in his brain. “You choose your brain surgeons for their stamina,” he later told the Washington Post. “You’re never quite the same afterward. Travel is always a real test.”

He also suffered a stroke in the last decade. His health was not the only thing to deteriorate. By the mid-2000s his personal life began to unravel. After a failed first marriage that produced two sons, Anthony and Raymond, Cornelius married a much younger Russian model named Viktoria Chapman in 2001.

NYTimes obit and appraisal. Some great Soul Train moments.