‘I may be young,’ little Michael used to say while introducing the Smokey Robinson song ‘Who's Lovin' You’ in the group's act, ‘but I do know what the blues are all about.’ Though the line was just a part of the group's stage patter, the truth of it was more accurate, and more painful, than anyone in the audience ever could have guessed.
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The Jackson family was ecstatic over the boys' tremendous success at the Apollo Theater, and with good reason: this success marked a defining moment for them in terms of their future. ‘I'm so damn happy, I could fly to Gary without an airplane,’ Joseph said afterward, his grin wide. Elated at their performance and proud of their determination to be the best, Joseph was determined to continue doing whatever was necessary to ensure his family's fortune in a tough, competitive business. To that end, he decided to work only part-time at Inland Steel so that he could devote more time to his sons' careers.
In 1968, Joseph would earn only fifty-one hundred dollars rather than his usual eight to ten thousand. He would give up relative financial security in order to gamble on his family's future. However, the gamble quickly paid off; the boys started making six hundred dollars per engagement. With the influx of money, Katherine and Joseph were able to redecorate their home and buy their first colour television.
Now flushed with success, the Jacksons continued to work on their performance in daily rehearsals that would often become emotional. Once, when Joseph tried to convince Michael to execute a dance step a certain way, Michael refused. According to Johnny Jackson, Joseph smacked Michael across the face. Michael fell backwards.
‘Now, you do it the way I told you to, you hear me?’ Joseph hollered at the nine-year-old.
Michael began to cry, his right cheek red and sore. ‘I ain't doin' it that way,’ he said.
Joseph glared at him and took one step forward, his hand raised to strike again.
Michael scrambled up off the floor. ‘Don't hit me,’ he warned his father. ‘'Cause if you ever hit me again, it'll be the last time I ever sing, and I mean it.’ Father and son exchanged angry stares. However, Michael must have said the magic words because Joseph turned and walked away, muttering something about his ‘ungrateful’ son.
Michael has recalled that as Joseph got older, he became more violent. It became a running theme in his young life: his father was a bully, and he would have to live with it. ‘If you messed up during rehearsal, you got hit,’ Michael would remember, ‘sometimes with a belt, a switch. Once, he ripped the wire cord off the refrigerator and whooped me with it, that's how mad he was at me.’ It was a vicious cycle: the more his father beat him, the angrier Michael became at him. The angrier he became, the more he antagonized him…and the more he got beaten by his father. The beatings were fierce, recurring and traumatizing. ‘I'd try to fight back,’ Michael would recall, ‘just swinging my fists. That's why I got it more than all my brothers combined. I would fight back and my father would kill me, just tear me up.’
Once, Michael was late arriving at rehearsal, and when he walked in, Joseph came up from behind and shoved him into a stack of musical instruments. Michael fell into the drums and was badly bruised. ‘That'll teach you to be late,’ Joseph said.
Rebbie Marries
At about this time, 1968, when Michael was almost ten, the Jacksons faced a family crisis. Eighteen-year-old Maureen had fallen in love with Nathaniel Brown, a devout Jehovah's Witness. She announced that she wanted to marry him and move to Kentucky. Katherine, happy for her daughter, encouraged her. In Katherine's view, there was no more important role for any of her daughters to play than that of being a wife and mother.
However, Joseph was against the marriage. ‘It was all cooked up by Maureen and her mother,’ he would later explain. ‘I wasn't happy about it at all.’
Because Maureen – Rebbie, as she was known in the family – had a powerful singing voice, her father had hoped she would consider a career in show business. He felt that if she married and raised a family, she would never be able to devote her attention to the entertainment field. However, though Maureen had taken dance and piano lessons as a child, she was not interested in a musical career. She preferred the comfort and security of a happy home life to the instability of show business.
Also, of course, Rebbie wanted to get out of that house. There was always so much drama occurring within the walls of that small home on Jackson Street; from the exuberant high when the boys would win a talent show, to the crashing low when they were chased and bullied by Joseph. Rebbie wanted out. Who could blame her? As it would happen, her defection from the ranks would be just the first of such crises in the family, as several of the children chose to marry at an early age against their father's wishes in order to get away from him.
The arguments went on for weeks until, finally, Joseph relented. Fine, Rebbie could get married. However, he would have the final word: he would not give her away.
The First Record Deal
After winning another talent contest, this one at Beckman Junior High in Gary, the boys were brought to the attention of a man named Gordon Keith, who owned a small local label called Steeltown Records. Keith immediately signed the brothers to a limited record deal.
On a Saturday morning filled with great promise, Joseph took his brood to Steeltown's recording studio. The boys were led into a small glass booth. Michael was given a large set of metal headphones which came halfway down his neck. His brothers plugged their instruments into amplifiers. There were backup singers and a horn section. This was the record business – at last! The Jackson youngsters were thrilled, as anyone could see by looking at their young, bright faces. Of course, this was a big day for Joseph, too. It took a few hours to record that first song. After that, they would return every Saturday for the next few weeks for more recordings. One song was an instrumental; Michael sang lead vocals on the other six. It was obvious that he was to be the centrepiece of the group, he was so obviously unique with such a true ‘sound’ and amazing self-assurance at an early age.
Two singles were eventually released on Steeltown in 1968: ‘Big Boy’, backed with ‘You've Changed’, and ‘We Don't Have to Be Over 21 (to Fall in Love)’, backed with ‘Jam Session’. Both were mediocre numbers that don't really hint at Michael Jackson's potential as a vocalist, but the boys were thrilled with them just the same. After all, these were their first records. From here, it seemed, anything might be possible. What a memorable moment it must have been for them, then, when the family gathered around the radio to hear the broadcast of that first recording. Michael recalled that as it played, they sat in the living room, stunned. ‘Then, when it was over, we all laughed and hugged one another. We felt we had arrived. This was an amazing time for us as a family. I can still feel the excitement when I think back on it.’
Ben Brown, then a high-level executive at Steeltown, remembered the day the Jackson boys posed for publicity photographs, in March 1968. ‘After the photographer positioned the boys, Michael left the lineup and stood off to the side, pouting,’ Brown said. ‘“This isn't gonna look like a publicity portrait,” Michael complained. “It's gonna look like a family portrait.” “Well, fix it,” Joseph said. Then, Michael went and rearranged the whole group, put himself in front on one knee, and said, “Go ahead, take the picture now.” We took it, and you know what? That was a great shot. How did he know how to do that, how to take a publicity photo? He was such an old soul, as if he had been a superstar in another life.’
In May 1968, the group was invited back to the Apollo to perform and, this time, be paid for their appearance. They were on a bill with Etta James, Joseph Simon and another family group, The Five Stairsteps and Cubie – a singer who was just two years old. ‘Michael was a hard worker,’ rhythm-and-blues singer Joseph Simon said in an interview, adding in an echo of the memories of practically everyone who ever worked on the same stage as the young Jackson star, ‘there was a part of me that thought he was a midget. His father was a slick businessman, I had heard. It wou
ld've been just like him to pass a midget off as a child, I heard. I remember going up to Michael and looking at him real close, thinking, Okay now, is this kid a midget or not?
‘“Hey man, stop starin' at me, okay?” he told me.’
‘I remember him being talented, yes,’ Etta James said of Michael, ‘but polite and very interested too. I was working my show, doing my thing on stage, and as I'm singing “Tell Mama”, I see this little black kid watching me from the wings. And I'm thinking, Who is this kid? He's distracting me. So I go over to him in between songs, while the people are clapping, and I whisper, “Scat, kid! Get lost. You're buggin' me. Go watch from the audience.” I scared the hell out of him. He had these big ol’ brown eyes, and he opened them real wide and ran away.
‘About ten minutes later, there's this kid again. Now he's standing in front of the stage, off to the side. And he's watching me as I work.’
After the show, when Etta was in her dressing room taking off her makeup, there was a knock on the door.
‘Who is it?’ she asked.
‘It's me.’
‘Who's me?’
‘Michael,’ the young voice said. ‘Michael Jackson.’
‘I don't know no Michael Jackson,’ Etta said.
‘Yes, you do. I'm that little kid you told to scat.’
Etta, a robust black woman with dyed blond hair and a big, booming voice, cracked the door open and looked down to find a nine-year-old gazing up at her with large, wondering eyes. ‘Whatchu want, boy?’ she asked.
In a manner that wasn't the least bit timid, Michael said, ‘Miss James, my father told me to come on back here and 'pologize to you. I'm sorry, ma'am, but I was just watchin' you 'cause you're so good. You're just so good. How do you do that? I never seen people clap like that.’
Etta, now flattered, smiled and patted the boy on the head. ‘Come on in here and sit with me,’ she said. ‘I can teach you a few tricks.’
‘I don't remember what I told him,’ Etta recalled, ‘but I remember thinking as he was leaving, Now, there's a boy who wants to learn from the best, so one day he's gonna be the best.’
While Joseph was at the American Federation of Musicians' hall in New York filling out certain forms for the Apollo engagement, he met a young, white lawyer by the name of Richard Arons. After talking to him for just a few moments, Joseph asked Arons to help him manage his sons. Joseph relished the idea of having white assistance – a preference that would cause problems for him in years to come. Arons, as a co-manager, began seeking concert bookings for the group while Joseph tried to interest the record industry in them. At one point, he tried to contact Berry Gordy, president of Motown, by sending him an audiotape of some of the Jacksons' songs; there was no reaction from Gordy, or from anyone else at Motown.
In 1968, when The Jackson Five played The Regal Theater in Chicago, Motown recording artist Gladys Knight arranged for some of Motown's executives – but not Berry – to attend the show. There was some interest in the group at that time; word got back to Berry that the Jacksons were an up-and-coming act, but still, there was no interest from him in terms of signing them to the label.
In July 1968 – when Jackie was seventeen; Tito, fourteen; Jermaine, thirteen; Marlon, ten; and Michael, nine – the group performed at Chicago's High Chaparral Club as an opening act for a group called Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers. After he saw the Jackson boys in action, Taylor telephoned Ralph Seltzer, head of Motown's creative department and also head of the company's legal division, to suggest that the group be allowed to audition for Motown.
‘I had some doubts,’ Ralph Seltzer would recall. ‘Creative considerations aside, I had concerns about their age and the way they would change when they grew older, in terms of their appearance and their voices. But there was so much excitement about them from Bobby, I finally told him to bring them onto Detroit.’
Though the Jacksons were scheduled to leave Chicago for a local television programme in New York, Bobby Taylor convinced Joseph that he should, instead, take the boys to Detroit for an audition. Taylor arranged to film their performance. If the boys were impressive, he said, Ralph Seltzer would then forward the film to Berry Gordy, who was in Los Angeles, for his approval.
Later that day, Katherine called the High Chaparral Club to talk to her husband. She was told that he and the boys had gone to the Motor City. ‘Detroit?’ she asked, puzzled. ‘You mean to tell me they gave up that television show to go to Detroit? What in the world for?’
‘Motown,’ said the voice on the other end. ‘They've gone to Motown.’
The Jacksons Sign with Motown
It was quarter to ten in the morning on 23 July 1968 when the Jackson family's Volkswagen minibus eased into a parking space in front of a cluster of small white bungalows at 2648 West Grand Boulevard, Detroit. The sign above one of the structures said it all: Hitsville U.S.A. This was Motown Records, the place from which had sprung forth so many memorable, chart-topping hit records. By 1968, Berry Gordy, Jr., had made an indelible impression on the entertainment world with this company. Gordy was a maverick in the record business in every way, a visionary who had plucked young, black hopefuls from urban street corners to then transform them into international superstars, with names such as The Supremes, The Temptations, The Miracles, The Vandellas and The Marvelettes. His success with those kinds of groups and solo artists, like Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, was largely the result of his brilliance at surrounding the singers with the most talented writers, producers and arrangers Detroit had to offer: Smokey Robinson, Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland, Norman Whitfield, and Barrett Strong, to name just a few. Using the notion of team work as their foundation, they and the artists formulated an original, contagious style of music that sold millions of records. It was called the Motown Sound.
A muscular rhythm section, engaging hook lines and choruses, and witty lyrics were all standard elements of songs like ‘Where Did Our Love Go?’ and ‘I Can't Help Myself’. ‘Dancing in the Streets’, ‘Please Mr Postman’, ‘Stop! In the Name of Love’, ‘The Tracks of My Tears’ and seemingly countless others became not only anthems of an entire generation, but also emblems of the period in American history in which they were recorded.
Berry Gordy was a tough taskmaster who encouraged intense competition among his groups, writers and producers. The biggest criticism levelled at Gordy – by outsiders at first and then, later, by the artists themselves – had to do with the complete control he exercised over his dominion. Practically none of the artists had a clue as to how much money they generated for the company, and they were usually discouraged from asking questions about it. They sang and performed, and that was all that was expected of them. ‘I never saw a tax return until 1979,’ Diana Ross, who signed with Gordy in 1960, once said. ‘Berry was such a mentor and strong personality, you found yourself relying on that. You didn't grow.’
Joseph had heard some rumours about Motown – nonsense about it being linked to the mob, for instance – and had also heard that some artists had trouble being paid for their work. However, none of that was on his mind when he took his boys there that day in 1968 for their audition.
Joseph and Jack Richardson, a close family friend who travelled with them and acted as a road manager, were in the front seat of the van as they drove up to Hitsville. Crammed in the back were the Jackson boys with a plethora of instruments, amplifiers and microphones.
‘Get out and in line for inspection,’ Joseph ordered.
The youngsters clambered out on to the already-warm Detroit street, where, as if a military troop, they lined up according to age: seventeen-year-old Jackie; fourteen-year-old Tito; thirteen-year-old Jermaine; ten-year-old Marlon, and nine-year-old Michael. Seventeen-year-old Johnny Jackson joined the group. Though they were not related, Joseph treated him just like he treated his own sons, and Johnny obeyed just as quickly. ‘All right,’ Joseph growled. ‘It's ten o'clock. Let's go. Remember everything I taught you and, exc
ept when you're singing or being spoken to, keep your mouths shut. And remember what I always say…’ He looked at Jermaine.
‘Either you're a winner in this life, or a loser,’ Jermaine said. ‘And none of my kids are losers.’
‘Thata' boy,’ Joseph said, patting him on the back.
Inside the main building, the first person to greet the gang was a sharply dressed, black man. When he asked how he could assist them, Joseph explained that they were the Jackson family from Gary and that they had an appointment for an audition. The man said that he'd been expecting them. ‘You must be Michael,’ he said, looking at the smallest. Then, pointing to the boys in turn, he correctly called each one by his name. ‘And you, sir, you must be Joseph,’ he announced as he and the family patriarch shook hands. The boys looked at each other, amazed.
The family was then led into a small studio. As they walked in, they noticed a person setting up a film camera on a tripod. There were ten folding chairs in front of the small, elevated wooden platform which would serve as a stage.
Suzanne dePasse, creative assistant to president Berry Gordy, entered the studio wearing a blue miniskirt and a yellow blouse with ruffles. Her high heels clicked as she approached the group to introduce herself. She was an attractive, young black woman with shoulder-length, soft hair and a bright, friendly smile. The boys liked her immediately.
Ralph Seltzer was the next to appear. A tall white man wearing a dark suit and conservative tie, Seltzer seemed more intimidating than dePasse. He shook the hand of each boy, and then Joseph's and Jack's.
‘We've heard a lot about your group,’ he said to Joseph. ‘Mr Gordy couldn't be here, but – ’
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