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JULIE YOUNG
A
NYONE WHO GATHERED AROUND THEIR TELEVISION
SETS TO WATCH THE MOTOWN TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL ON MAY 16, 1983, KNEW THEY HAD
WITNESSED A MOMENT IN MUSIC HISTORY WHEN THEY
SAW MICHAEL JACKSON COCK HIS FEDORA, DON HIS SEQUINED WHITE GLOVE, AND DANCE INTO IMMORTALITY
WITH HIS PERFORMANCE OF “BILLIE JEAN.” HALFWAY
THROUGH THE SONG, JACKSON INCORPORATED A LITTLE DANCE MOVE THAT HAD NO NAME, YET SEEMED TO
DEFY THE LAWS OF MOTION. DESPITE PLAYING ALONGSIDE A CAST THAT READ LIKE A WHO’S WHO OF THE
RENOWNED DETROIT MUSIC LABEL, THE EVENT PROVED
TO BE THE CORONATION NIGHT FOR THE KING OF POP.
Over the years, Jackson has been called
a great many things: pop idol, philanthropist, eccentric, singer, dancer, songwriter,
and the greatest entertainer ever to have
lived. Regardless of the industry monikers,
however, he was first and foremost a Hoosier. It is important to remember that before he thrilled the world with the Moonwalk, he was a struggling young singer in a
family group from Gary, Indiana.
Jackson’s eleven years in Gary serve
as the “Once upon a time” opening for
what became an incredible career for the
singing siblings. Gary offered the perfect rags-to-riches backdrop of a family
struggling in a working-class community
and became known as the birthplace of a
youngster who ultimately redefined music
and earned him a place alongside such
greats as Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and
The Beatles. “This is where it all began,”
Jackson recalled during a 2003 visit to
his birthplace. “In Gary I sang in public
for the first time. It was the first place I
danced with joy.”
It is hard to imagine, but Jackson’s
career might have taken a much different
path were it not for the failed dreams of
two other musicians: his parents, Katherine and Joseph. Katherine had a dream
of gracing the stage one day as a country and western performer (long before
Charlie Pride broke the racial barrier in
that particular field). She played piano and
clarinet, but a bout with polio as a child
left her with a limp from which she never
fully recovered, killing Katherine’s dreams
of a stage career. She concentrated instead
on a possible nursing career.
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‘‘
A former boxer and an average guitar
player who grew up in California after his
parents’ divorce, Joe lived first with his
father and then moved to East Chicago,
Indiana, when he was eighteen, obtaining
a job at the U.S. Steel Company in Gary.
Already married when he met Katherine,
Joseph’s marriage was annulled soon after,
and he began to pursue the young lady
full time. The couple was married in 1949
and settled in Gary, where they made their
home in a modest two-bedroom, clapboard house on the aptly named Jackson
Street.
Life was not easy for the Jacksons, who
had a houseful of kids early on and were
constantly looking for ways to make ends
meet. Joseph was subject to periods of layoffs at the steel mill and often subsidized
TO GET TO THAT LEVEL
OF PEOPLE WHO CAN DO THAT,
YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT JAMES BROWN
AS A PERFORMER.
YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT ARETHA FRANKLIN
AS A SINGER.
MICHAEL WAS LIKE
THAT AS A KID.
HE DID IT ALL, WITHIN THE
PHOTO BY GAB ARCHIVE/REDFERNS
FRAMEWORK OF ONE PACKAGE.
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NOBODY ELSE
’’
DID THAT.
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D.
his income with money he made playing
with The Falcons, a local band that played
small gigs around the area. Katherine also
supplemented the family finances working
part time at Sears. On August 29, 1958,
Katherine gave birth to her seventh child
and fifth son, naming the boy Michael
Joseph Jackson. In an interview, she said
she realized the boy’s special qualities from
his earliest days. “There was something
different about him,” she said. “You know
how babies move uncoordinated? He never
moved that way. He danced like he was an
older person.”
In 1962 an incident occurred that
changed the course of the Jackson family
forever. Michael remembered the event
in which his father, who had recently
disbanded The Falcons, came home to
discover a broken string on his guitar. His
second oldest son, Tito, had been playing the instrument without permission in
order to accompany his siblings as they
sang country favorites cherished by their
mother, as well as the popular soul music
on the radio. Joseph lashed out at the child
in an angry rage. “He let him have it,”
Michael said, recalling the physical abuse
endured by all of the children.
Once the altercation subsided, Joseph
challenged his son to play for him and was
impressed by the boy’s abilities, as well as
the natural harmonies of his four oldest
sons. He immediately set out to mold the
children into a group that just might satisfy the family’s musical ambitions at last.
Michael was told he was “too little” to join
the family band and had to be content to
sit on the sidelines watching Jermaine and
the others learn their steps and rehearse
the act.
There were other influences during
this time as well. Jackie Wilson was a
favorite of Michael’s along with James
Brown. Michael often talked about how he
would watch the rhythm and blues king
endlessly, mimicking every nuance of his
trademark routines. In interviews he
often said Brown was the kind of performer who would wear an audience
out both physically and emotionally.
“You’d feel every bead of sweat on his
face and you would know what he
was going through,” Michael said.
A year later, Michael’s love for
music could no longer stay hidden,
and the kindergartener approached Gladys
Johnson, the principal of Garnet Elementary School, about singing at the holiday
assembly. Prior to this, Johnson said she’d
never heard of the boy. “He was brought
to my attention because he wanted to sing
the Christmas song for his class,” she
said in an interview with CNN. “If he
hadn’t raised such a ruckus in kindergarten about singing the kindergarten
song, I wouldn’t have known Michael
was there.” That first public performance of “Climb Every Mountain”
from The Sound of Music was a hit, and
his parents could no longer overlook
the little boy with the big voice.
Even his brothers realized they had
a dynamo on their hands that could
not only sing an emotionally uplifting
song, but could belt out rhythm and blues
classics better than the original recording
artists. “He was only four-feet tall . . .
small person who could do anything he
wanted to do onstage with his feet or his
voice,” Don Cornelius, creator of Soul
Train, told Time magazine. “To get to that
level of people who can do that, you’re
talking about James Brown as a performer.
You’re talking about Aretha Franklin as a
singer. Michael was like that as a kid. He
did it all, within the framework of one
package. Nobody else did that.”
At the age of five, Michael, now the
lead singer of the Jackson 5, was driven to
perform. He and his brothers endured six
hours of rehearsals a day at the hands of
their taskmaster father, who entered the
boys in local talent contests (including
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IMAGES
PHOTO BY
MICHAEL
OCHS ARCH
IVES/GETTY
a much heralded win at Roosevelt High
School). Over the years, Joseph has been
vilified by those who suggest he was an
over-the-top stage parent, while Katherine
remained the caretaker, mollifying the volatile situation and tending to the hurting
child after the fact. Still, it is interesting
to note that Michael, while not excusing
his father’s behavior, credited Joseph for
the strong work ethic he instilled in the
children and having an instinct for what it
would take to turn the boys into professional singers. “He taught me exactly how
to hold a mike and make gestures to the
crowd and how to handle the audience,”
Michael said, noting the lessons came at a
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high price. “If you messed up, you got hit,
sometimes with a belt, sometimes with a
switch. Dad would make me so mad and
hurt that I’d try to get back at him and
get beaten all the more.” William Mabel,
who lived on the same street as the family
in Gary said that Joseph has been unfairly
maligned in Michael’s upbringing. “It’s
what he did FOR Michael that made him
what he was in the world—a star,” he said.
Recording was the next logical step and
the singing group made their way to Steeltown Records, where the Jackson 5 cut its
first single, “Big Boy.” Steeltown owner
Gordon Keith still has an original pressing
of the Jackson 5 single and Ben Brown,
The Jackson 5 perform on an unnamed television show, circa 1969. From left to right: Tito,
Marlon, Jackie, Michael, and Jermaine. Music historian David Ritz credited the group’s success
to the simple fact that “the singing and songs makes us happy. They are moments of incandescent
beauty—young, wildly optimistic.”
the former president of the company, said
he recognized Michael’s star power from
those early sessions when the prodigy’s
talent transcended the technological limits
of a 1960s small-town recording studio.
“Michael’s voice could cut through all of
that,” said Brown. “Michael’s voice was
perfect for the electronics of that time.”
Michael’s business sense was evident
at this time as well. During a promotional
photo shoot for Steeltown, Brown noticed Michael seemed unhappy with the
contrived shot. “Michael said the set up
looked like a family portrait. He said ‘Isn’t
this supposed to be business?’ So he set up
the group the way he thought it should be
and took his pose at the front, and that’s
the picture we used,” Brown explained.
“He had some savvy.”
With their routines in place and a
grassroots public relations campaign
behind them, the Jackson 5 began making the rounds to local and regional clubs,
high schools, and other venues, playing for
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MICHAEL JACKSON
anyone and everyone who would listen.
The boys eschewed baseball games and
buddies in exchange for the second-rate
comedians, lounge acts, and strippers
they played alongside in local dives such
as Guys and Gals Cocktail Lounge, Joe
Green’s Club Woodlawn, and Mr. Lucky’s.
Michael remembered those early days
of his career, shuffling from Gary to Chicago and other regional theaters, as well as
the crowd reaction to their performances.
The audience often threw money onto the
stage and it was little Michael who crawled
on the floor, filling his pockets with coins.
One incident in a strip club stood out
from the rest for Michael. “I must have
been nine or ten. This girl would take off
her clothes and her panties and throw
them to the audience. The men would
THE AUDIENCE OFTEN THREW
MONEY ONTO THE STAGE AND
IT WAS LITTLE MICHAEL WHO
CRAWLED ON THE FLOOR, FILLING HIS POCKETS WITH COINS.
pick them up and sniff them and yell. My
brothers and I would be watching all of
this, taking it in and my father wouldn’t
mind,” he said.
It was hardly an ideal upbringing for
young men in the onset of puberty, but
not every gig was as racy. Deborah GriffinWoodson, a former Gary resident, said she
saw the Jackson 5 at the Memorial Audi-
PHOTO BY GILLES PETARD/REDFERNS
A 1966 photograph
of the Jackson 5 with
Michael grabbing
center stage with a
microphone. According
to Motown founder
Berry Gordy, the group
became “the last big
stars to come rolling off
my assembly line.”
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torium as well as the Gary Edison High
School after-prom dance in 1968. The
event was held at the old San Remo restaurant on Ridge Road. “As a member of the
prom committee, I contacted Joe Jackson
at home to get more information and to
see if they were available. Of course I was
a minor, so he could not conduct business
with me. I referred the information to the
teachers in charge at the time of the prom
committee. The Jackson 5 was the hottest
group around in 1968,” she said.
Throughout the end of the 1960s,
the Jackson 5 toured constantly on the
“Chitlin Circuit,” a series of black theaters
and clubs where the brothers opened for
performers they admired such as Etta
James, Sam and Dave, and Gladys Knight.
Joseph kept the boys on a tireless pace,
forcing them to go onstage even when they
were ill and insuring that they kept up
with their studies. The group did have fun
on the road, however, often engaging in
pillow fights and dropping water balloons
from hotel balconies.
Joseph defended his stern actions
saying that the group was ready to move
on to bigger shows. “At first I told myself
that they were just kids,” he said in 1971.
“I soon realized they were very professional. There was nothing to wait for. . . .
I ran out of reasons to keep them from
the school of hard knocks.” It did not get
any harder than the Apollo Theater in
New York, where the Jacksons performed
during the weekly amateur night contest
in 1967. To everyone’s amazement, the
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boys won the contest and were signed
to a one-week run at the famed Harlem
Theater, where they performed thirtyone shows for a thousand dollars. Bobby
Schifman, whose family owned the Apollo
at the time, said the Jacksons did not have
enough money to cover their hotel bill
while in New York, or their travel expenses
back to Indiana.
Though Diana Ross is credited for
discovering the Jackson 5 and introducing
them to Motown, Knight first spotted the
Jacksons during a talent show at the Regal
Theater in Chicago. During the group’s
rehearsal, she immediately got on the
telephone and called everyone she could
find who was affiliated with the Detroit
label trying to get them to come and see
Michael and his brothers, but no one did.
Knight was not the only Motown artist
who thought the boys might be a wonderful addition to the label. Bobby Taylor
arranged for an impromptu audition in his
apartment for Motown assistant Suzanne
De Passe, who was so impressed she called
Barry Gordy and insisted he see the act.
Though he was initially resistant, he too
fell under the spell of the Jackson 5 and
signed them. “We could not believe this
old man in this young kid’s body,” he said
of Michael.
The casualty list of pop stars that have
cracked under the pressure of fame could
be a volume in and of itself. While Joseph
continued to labor in the steel mill for a
time after signing with Motown, it was
not long before the Jackson 5’s first singles
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began reaching the top of the
charts and things started changing for the boys. De Passe said
fame was especially tough on
Michael. “One day you could go
to a restaurant or shop and the
next, you couldn’t go anywhere,”
she said. “It really happened that fast
and I think it took the greatest toll on
Michael because he had the greatest
responsibility and the greatest requirement to deliver. When a show was
over the older boys would go off and
play softball but Michael didn’t have
the freedom to run and jump unless
you are on private property somewhere.
It’s a pretty early age to lose all sense of
freedom,” she said.
Michael described himself as a sad and
lonely child who spent more time in a
recording studio than playing with others.
It was clear that Michael’s talent was the key to the Jacksons
leaving their working-class
life behind forever, and in the
same vein as other child stars
that came before him, Michael
traded a normal childhood for a
professional life of unparalleled
fame. In a 1993 interview with
Oprah Winfrey he described watching
children playing in a park and wishing
he could be one of them. “I’d just stare at
them in wonder—I couldn’t imagine such
freedom, such a carefree life—and I wish
more than anything that I had that kind
of freedom, that I could walk away and be
just like them,” he said.
In the world of manufactured superstardom, however, there is a short shelf life
for young singers, and it appeared Katherine and Joseph knew the importance of
capitalizing on Michael’s looks and ability
long before puberty set in and he became
merely another talented kid, rather than
a prodigy. A family friend reportedly
overheard Katherine explain during the
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MICHAEL JACKSON
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MICHAEL JACKSON
CALUMET REGIONAL ARCHIVES, INDIANA UNIVERSITY NORTHWEST
Gary years that the best chance for success
with Motown for the boys would occur
when Michael was still “cute.” She noted:
“He’s cute now, but he won’t stay that way
forever. Then what do we do? They have
got to get a record contract now.”
Michael also seemed to understand
that talent was not enough to have a lasting career. He was conscientious of his
looks long before he became the poster
child for an extreme makeover. His brothers often teased the youngster about his
nose and lips to the point that Michael
developed a complex about his appearance. When the teen years settled on him,
his voice dropped and he developed a case
of acne. No longer just the cute little boy
in front, Michael said the evolution from
child to teen sensation “messed up my
whole personality.” He told Winfrey: “I
had pimples so badly it used to make me
so shy. I used to not look at myself. I’d
hide my face in the dark, I wouldn’t want
to look in the mirror, and my father teased
me about it and I just hated it. . . . I cried
every day.”
“I’D JUST STARE AT THEM IN WONDER—I COULDN’T IMAGINE SUCH FREEDOM, SUCH A CAREFREE LIFE—AND I WISH
MORE THAN ANYTHING THAT I HAD THAT KIND OF FREEDOM,
THAT I COULD WALK AWAY AND BE JUST LIKE THEM.”
After the family’s move to Encino,
California, Michael continued to rock
the music world, first with his brothers at
Motown and then in his own solo career
that began with 1972’s “Got to Be There”
and “Ben,” an ode to a rat. He even took
on the role of the Scarecrow in The Wiz
starring longtime friend Ross. No longer
content to hold back his talent, Michael
pushed past his bubblegum pop recordings
and into more sophisticated sounds for
1979’s Off the Wall. The album confirmed
that Michael might be one of those rare
people to escape the confines and limitations of childhood fame and move on to
something bigger. “If he had done what
he did as a child, he would have still been
the genius that he is considered today,”
said musician Lenny Kravitz. “It is not
natural for a child
to sing with that
amount of depth,
with that amount
of emotion and
with that amount
of interpretation,
the pitch, the purity
and the feeling. The
only musician I can
compare that to is
Mozart.”
Michael proved
he was a game
changer with the
release of 1982’s
Thriller, which
stands today as the greatest selling album
of all time. Not only was the music timeless, the accompanying minimovie shorts
defined music videos and broke racial barriers on the infant Music Television Channel. Rolling Stone’s Mikal Gilmore wrote
that while Thriller proved to be a success,
the defining moment came during the
Motown Twenty-fifth anniversary special
when Michael broke out from the shadow
of his past and stepped into the spotlight
of his future. “It was startlingly clear that
he was not only one of the most thrilling
live performers in pop music, but that he
was perhaps more capable of inspiring an
audience’s imagination than any single pop
artist since Elvis Presley. There are times
when you know you are hearing or seeing
something extraordinary . . . that came
that night,” Gilmore said.
Michael himself knew something big
had happened. As he took calls from wellwishers, including legendary dancer Fred
Astaire, he learned that fifty million people
had viewed the program. “After that, many
things changed,” he wrote in his autobiography, Moonwalk.
Awards, accolades, more hit records,
and controversy followed the release of
Thriller, and it was easy to wonder if the
little boy from Gary became lost inside the
superstar who reigned supreme throughout the 1980s and 1990s with the release
of such hit albums as Bad (1987) and
Dangerous (1991). As his eccentricities
became more pronounced, some believed
The Jackson 5 pays a visit to the Inland Steel Company’s Indiana
Harbor works in East Chicago, Indiana. A neighbor of the Jacksons in
Gary remembered walking by the family’s home at night and hearing
the group practice. “You’d walk by and hear the drums and things,”
recalled Mable Moore.
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that Michael was distancing himself from
his past, while others saw a direct correlation between Michael’s early poverty
and his lavish lifestyle later on, not unlike
Presley’s behavior decades before.
Doctor Carole Lieberman, a media
psychologist, said that Jackson’s epic shopping sprees and the purchase of Neverland
Ranch in Santa Barbara was a way to
overcompensate for the money he did not
have as a child and sent a clear message
to the world that he was no longer a poor
child from Gary, Indiana. “He tried to fill
an emptiness that he experienced from the
lack of love in his childhood,” she told TV
Guide.
Michael knew how to spend lavishly,
but he also knew how to give generously.
He helped mastermind the “We Are the
World” single for famine relief in Africa,
and also donated a lot of time, money,
and resources to a number of charities
throughout the world. He opened his
home to a number of children (some of
whom would be central characters in
Michael’s later child-molestation charges)
and in 2003 Michael made a triumphant return to Gary, where he
visited his old home with plans to
build a theme park and a children’s
art center (those arrangements
eventually fell through).
Scott King, who was the mayor
of Gary at the time, presented
Michael with a key to the city telling the Gary native that as long as
he had the key, he didn’t have to be
a stranger. “It is great to be home.
It is a wonderful feeling . . . your
hospitality has been overwhelming . . . the
love has been phenomenal,” Michael told
the adoring crowds.
The later years of Michael’s life have
been tarnished with stories and speculation
about his marriages, his three children, the
criminal charges, a drug habit, and surgical
procedures, all of which contributed to
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MICHAEL JACKSON
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MICHAEL JACKSON
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Children examine a memorial to Michael Jackson at the pop star’s
former childhood home in Gary following his death at age fifty. Mayor
Rudy Clay of Gary has announced plans to create a hotel, museum, and
performing arts complex on the site of the house where Michael and his
brothers grew up.
nearly eclipsing the music and showmanship that dominated Michael’s early life.
In March 2009 the singer announced a
fifty-show “This Is It” run in London that
was to be a comeback of sorts for the King
of Pop, who was reportedly millions of
dollars in debt and had to sell part of his
interest in his beloved Neverland Ranch,
as well as the music catalog that contained
a number of songs by Paul McCartney
and John Lennon. Despite the less than
favorable publicity of recent years, the
shows sold out in minutes and videotaped
rehearsal footage showed the fifty-year-old
pop star dancing in a manner that his fans
had come to expect. No doubt the concerts would be a tremendous success.
Sadly the show did not go on. On June
25 Michael Jackson was pronounced dead
of cardiac arrest at the UCLA Medical
Center. Fans everywhere gathered at Neverland, the Jackson compound in Encino,
the Apollo Theater in New York, and his
boyhood home at 2300 Jackson Street in
Gary. A large memorial was held. Those
who knew Michael recalled the boy they
remembered as well as the superstar with
whom Gary will always be linked.
As reports of
Michael’s passing
hit the newswires,
Google searches,
text messages, and
tweets on Twitter
caused the Internet
to crash and sales of his albums and merchandise rocketed to the top once again.
It would seem that Michael achieved
the comeback he craved and, in death,
managed to pull off the performance of a
lifetime. The official memorial was held
at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, but
Gary, too, played homage to the superstar
with Joseph Jackson and Jesse Jackson (no
relation) attending the memorial held on
July 10 at the U.S. Steel Stadium.
Gordon Keith, who had auditioned
Michael and his brothers for Steeltown,
took a moment to stop by the former
Jackson home (which has become a makeshift shrine to the singer) and reflect on
the boy who went from local to legendary.
In a Chicago Tribune phone interview he
tried to convey Michael’s place in Hoosier
history. “We take pride that Michael is as
talented as he is, and so the pride is that by
him being so good, he certainly put Gary
on the entertainment map,” Keith said.
“He did quite a bit to make the world feel
good, so that people could forget about
the toils of the world and just enjoy themselves. Michael gave us that.”
Julie Young is a freelance writer in the
Indianapolis area whose work has appeared
in numerous local, regional, and national
publications including the Indianapolis Star,
Indianapolis Business Journal, and Indianapolis Woman. Young is the author of A
Belief in Providence: A Life of Saint Theodora Guerin (2007), Images of America:
Historic Irvington (2008), and Eastside
Indianapolis: A Brief History t
FOR FURTHER READING
Byrne, John, and Robert Mitchum. “Michael Jackson’s Hometown of Gary Hit Hard by His Death.” Chicago Tribune, June 26, 2009. | Davich, Jerry. “Michael
Jackson Is Gone but His Legacy Lives On.” Gary Post-Tribune, July 22, 2009. | von Drehle, David. “A Little Boy with Outsize Gifts Takes Charge of His Family’s
Band, Then Leaves It Far Behind.” Time, July 2009. | Jackson, Michael. Moonwalk. New York: Doubleday, 1998. | Kostanczuk, Bob, and Teresa Auch Schultz.
“Jackson’s Nice Side Recalled.” Gary Post-Tribune, June 26, 2009.
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