Art Dyson, a pioneer in African-American hair care who headed the first nationwide hair salon chain that was designed especially for blacks, has died. He was 68.
Mr. Dyson died Feb. 15 at the Veterans hospital in West Los Angeles after a long illness.
“He was not only a black hair-care pioneer, but an industry visionary,” said Lafayette Jones, publisher of Urban Call, a trade publication for urban businesses.
Born in the Harlem, Mr. Dyson was raised on Nantucket Island, Mass., and spent 14 years as a mechanic in the Air Force and later at Lockheed International in Ontario, Calif. In 1969, he decided to switch careers and enrolled in a beauty college in Ontario. He later recalled that, in more than 1,600 hours of classroom instruction, only one hour had been devoted to hair-cutting styles and techniques for blacks.
After graduation, he went to work for Seligman & Latz, which owned hair salons in department stores across the country, in the firm’s salon in the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles. According to his daughter Teri, it was there that her father developed the “thermal blow-drying” technique, attaching a nozzle to a drier and blowing hair straight.
This was a departure from the standard practice of setting hair with curlers and then having a customer sit under a hood drier. The drying technique gave hair a straighter, softer look.
Teri Dyson said her father also had rejected the use of many of the chemical relaxers that were then on the market because they were harsh on the hair and scalp.
By 1975, Mr. Dyson’s vision for a national chain of hair salons and training facilities for blacks had come to fruition with the creation of Soul Scissors. He was the first president and chief executive of the Seligman & Latz-owned chain, which expanded rapidly from Oakland to Washington, D.C., and eventually included 55 salons across the country.
Survivors include 10 children, a brother and four stepsisters.
