Climbing Mountains
In 1963, at the age of five, Michael Jackson began attending Garnett Elementary School. Katherine has said that he was generous to a fault, so much so that he used to take jewellery from her dresser and give it to his teachers as tokens of his affection for them. A stubborn child, he continued to do so even after his mother chastised him for giving away her possessions.
One of Michael's first memories concerns performing at the age of five, when he sang ‘Climb Ev'ry Mountain’ from
The Sound of Music
a cappella for his class. The other children were impressed as much by his self-confidence as by his talent; he received a standing ovation. The teacher started to sob. Katherine attended the performance with Joseph's father, Samuel, who was not a sentimental man, yet even he was moved to tears by Michael's mellifluous performance. ‘I don't know where he got it from,’ Katherine said of Michael's prowess as a singer. ‘He was just so good, so young. Some kids are special. Michael was special.’
Five-year-old Michael had so much energy and charisma that Jackie, who was twelve at the time, decided his younger brother would become ‘the lead guy’. That was perfectly fine with Michael; he enjoyed being the centre of attention. However, Jermaine's feelings were hurt. He had been the lead singer of the group, and now suddenly he wasn't good enough. Some family members have theorized that one of the reasons he stuttered as a child was a lack of confidence. Still, Jermaine would support the family's decision because Michael was so obviously a natural entertainer. However, it must be said that it always seemed that Jermaine competed with Michael, especially as an adult, often trying to best him.
‘He became this great little imitator,’ Jermaine would remember of Michael. ‘He'd see something – another kid dance, or maybe James Brown on TV – and next thing you knew, Michael had it memorized and knew just what to do with it. He loved to dance too. Marlon was a good dancer, maybe better than Mike. But Mike loved it more. He was always dancin' 'round the house. You'd always catch him dancin' for himself in the mirror. He'd go off alone and practise and then come back and show us this new step. We'd incorporate it into the act. Michael began choreographing our show.’
‘Finally it was time for us to enter a talent contest,’ Michael recalled. ‘This is something I remember like it was just yesterday.
‘Everyone on the block wanted to be in the talent show and win the trophy. I was about six years old but I had figured out then that nobody gives you nothin'. You got to win it. Or, like Smokey Robinson said in one of his songs, “You got to earn it”. We did this talent contest at Roosevelt High School in Gary. We sang The Temptations' “My Girl” and won first prize.’
The boys also performed their rendition of the Robert Parker hit song, ‘Barefootin'’. During a musical break in the middle of the song, little Michael kicked off his shoes and started doing the barefoot dance all over the stage, much to the crowd's delight.
‘After that, we started winning every talent show we entered,’ Michael said. ‘It was just going from one thing to another, up, up, up. The whole house was full of trophies, and my father was so proud. Probably, the happiest I ever saw my mother and father was back there in Gary when we were winning those talent shows. That's when we were closest, I think, back in the beginning when we didn't have anything but our talent.’
By 1965, Joseph was making only about eight thousand dollars a year working full-time at the mill. Katherine worked part-time as a saleswoman at Sears. When Joseph wanted to start spending more money on the group – musical equipment, amplifiers, microphones – Katherine became concerned.
‘I was afraid we were getting in over our heads,’ she would recall. She and Joseph had vociferous disagreements about finances. ‘I saw this great potential in my sons,’ Joseph once told me, in his defence. ‘So yes, I did go overboard. I invested a lot of money in instruments, and this was money we did not have. My wife and I would have heated arguments about this “waste of money”, as she would call it. She'd yell at me that the money should have been put into food, not into guitars and drums. But I was the head of the household and what I said was the final word. I overran her opinion.
‘Black people were used to struggling and making ends meet. This was nothing new for me or any of us. I came up struggling, so my kids knew how to economize. They had no choice. We made a penny stretch by eating foods like chitterlings and collard greens. I used to tell them we were eating soul food in order to be able to play soul. We were trying to move upward, trying to get ahead. I wasn't going to let anything stop us.’
In the end, he and Katherine always got past the fights. After the shouting, Joseph would lean in and kiss her lightly on the lips. He could be surprisingly gentle. She later said she would tremble whenever he took a romantic approach; he could always reason with her in that way. ‘Joseph convinced me that the boys were worth it,’ she recalled. ‘No one ever believed in his sons more than my husband believed in those boys. He used to tell me, “I'd spend my last dime on those boys if that's what it took”.’
Soon Joseph was driving his children to Chicago to compete in talent contests there. Chicago was a city bustling with sensational sixties' soul music and teeming with talent like Curtis Mayfield, The Impressions, Jerry Butler and Major Lance. Joseph may not have been a showman, but he certainly knew about performing. He taught his boys everything he knew – by experience, observation and instinct – about how to handle and win over an audience. ‘It's incredible how he could have been so right about things. He was the best teacher we ever had,’ Michael would say.
‘He wouldn't make it fun, though,’ Michael said. ‘“You're doing it wrong; you gotta do it like
this
,” he'd say. Then he would hit me. He made it hard for me. He would say, “Do it like Michael,” and make me the example. I hated that.
‘I didn't want to be the example, I didn't want to be singled out. My brothers would look at me with resentment because they couldn't do it like me. It was awful that Joseph did that to me. But he was brilliant, too. He told me how to work the stage and work the mike and make gestures and everything. I was always torn. On one hand he was this horrible man, then on the other he was this amazing manager.’
When the group played its first paying performance at a Gary nightclub called Mr Lucky's, they made roughly seven dollars for the engagement. The boys then began playing in other clubs and the patrons would throw coins and bills on to the stage. ‘My pockets would just be bustin' with money,’ Michael once told me. ‘My pants couldn't even stay up. Then I would go and buy candy, loads and loads of candy for me and for everyone.’
Many neighbourhood boys would accompany the Jacksons as musicians from time to time, and by 1966, Johnny Porter Jackson (no relation) was added to the group as a permanent drummer. Johnny's family was friendly with the Jacksons, who, in time, would consider Johnny a ‘cousin’. Ronny Rancifer, a keyboardist, was also added to the band. The boys played clubs in Gary and as far away as Chicago; Michael was eight years old and singing lead. Tito was on guitar, Jermaine on bass guitar; Jackie played shakers and Johnny Jackson was on drums. Marlon sang harmony and danced, though he wasn't a very good dancer. (He worked at it, though, and was so persistent at wanting to be good at it he, eventually, would rival Michael!)
The Jacksons would pull up in their Volkswagen bus to 2300 Jackson Street at five in the morning on Monday, after an exhausting weekend of performing. Joseph would kiss Katherine on the nose upon their arrival, giving her a boyish grin. ‘How ya' doing, Katie?’ he would ask. For Katherine, there was nothing better than the expression on her husband's face when everything had gone well for the boys on the road. It was one of sheer joy. Each of her sons would embrace her. Then, they would all sleep for a couple of hours while Katherine unpacked their bags, and cooked a tremendous breakfast for them before Joseph went off to work, and the boys and their siblings to school.
Though thrilled about her sons' growing success, Katherine was uneasy about the family's shifting priorities. Suddenly, the emphasis was not only on making music for fun, but also to make a living. It was as if earning money made it all right to want
more
money. However, as a Jehovah's Witness Katherine valued good works over money. Therefore, she was concerned about how jubilant the boys were when they'd come home from a concert date with their pockets full of change. ‘Remember, that's not the important thing,’ she would tell them. But what kid would believe her, especially when she herself was encouraging them to win more talent shows – and, as a consequence, make more money?
It was in the inauspicious surroundings of a shopping mall in Gary, Indiana, that The Jackson Five got their name. ‘I got to talking with a lady, a model named Evelyn Leahy,’ Joseph once told me. ‘The boys were performing in a department store, and she said to me after the show, “Joseph, I think The Jackson Brothers sounds old-fashioned, like The Mills Brothers. Why don't you just call them The Jackson Five?” Well, that sounded like a good name to me, The Jackson Five. So that's what we called them from then on. The Jackson Five.’
The group soon found themselves doing more club dates out of town on weekends. Joseph put a luggage rack on top of the family's Volkswagen bus for their equipment before hitting the so-called ‘chitlin’ (as in chitterling) circuit: two-thousand-seat theatres in downtown, inner-city areas like Cleveland, Ohio; Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, DC. There would always be many other acts on the bill, all diligently vying for the audience's favour. Sometimes these entertainers would be established artists – like The Four Tops – but often they would be unknowns, like The Jackson Five. This arrangement gave the upstarts an opportunity to learn from the experienced players. After their act, Michael's brothers would go off on their own, but Michael would stay behind and observe the other performers on the bill. Whenever anyone wanted to find eight-year-old Michael, they always knew where to look: he'd be in the wings, watching, studying and, as he remembered, ‘really taking note of every step, every move, every twist, every turn, every grind, every emotion. It was the best education for me.’
It wasn't long began Michael began to appropriate routines and
shtick
from the best of the acts on the same bill with the brothers, like James Brown, whom Michael would watch, repeatedly. (Diana Ross used to do the same thing before The Supremes were famous. She stole from everyone on the Motown Revue!)
‘James Brown taught me a few things he does on stage,’ Michael remembered back in 1970. ‘It was a couple years ago. He taught me how to drop the mike and then catch it before it hits the stage floor. It only took me about thirty minutes to learn. It looks hard, but it's easy. All I want now is a pair of patent leather shoes like James Brown's. But they don't make them in kids' sizes.’
The Jackson Five won the amateur talent show at the Regal, a theatre in Chicago, for three consecutive weeks, a major coup for the family. The Jackson boys were becoming more experienced and polished, their lead singer, Michael, more poised and professional. They played St Louis, Kansas City, Boston, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. Not only did they open for The Temptations, The Emotions, The O'Jays, Jackie Wilson, Sam and Dave, and Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers, but they formed friendships with these artists and learned first-hand from many of them what to expect of the entertainment world.
Before one talent show, one performer remarked to another that they'd better watch out for The Jackson Five, ‘because they got this midget they're using as a lead singer’. Jackie overheard and couldn't stop laughing.
When Michael heard about it, he was hurt. ‘I can't help it if I'm the smallest,’ he said, crying.
Joseph pulled his young son aside. ‘Listen here, Michael,’ he said, kneeling down to eye-to-eye level with him. ‘You need to be proud that you're being talked about by the competition,’ he said, his tone gentle. ‘That means you're on your way. This is a good thing.’
‘Well, I don't like it,’ Michael recalls saying. ‘They're talking bad about me.’
Joseph kissed his son on the top of the head, a rare moment of gentleness from him. ‘This is only the beginning, Mike,’ he said, smiling, ‘so, get used to it.’
In August 1967, The Jackson Five performed at the famed Apollo Theater in Harlem, as contestants in its world-renowned amateur show. Working at the Apollo was the dream of most young black entertainers at the time. In his book
Showtime at the Apollo,
writer Ted Fox observed, ‘[The Apollo was] not just the greatest black theatre but a special place to come of age emotionally, professionally, socially and politically.’ Joseph and Jack Richardson, a close friend of his, drove the boys to New York in the family's Volkswagen. At this time, Jackie was sixteen; Tito, thirteen; Jermaine, twelve; Marlon, ten; and Michael had just turned nine. The brothers entered the so-called Superdog Contest, the winning of which was the most prestigious achievement in any of the categories.
Michael once told me, ‘The Apollo was the toughest place of all to play. If they liked you there, they really
liked
you. And if they hated you, they'd throw things at you, food and stuff. But, you know what? We weren't scared. We knew we were good. We had so much self-confidence at that time. At the other gigs we'd played, we had 'em in the palms of our hands. I'd be on stage singing and I'd look over at Jermaine and we'd wink at one another because we always knew we had it. I mean, you have to feel that way just to get up on that stage and take the chance, you know? Plus, Joseph would not have had it any other way. We wanted to please him. I mean, that was as important as winning any contest.’
Backstage at the Apollo, The Jackson Five found a small log that had been mounted on a pedestal, which supposedly came from the fabled Tree of Hope.
According to legend, The Tree of Hope had stood in front of Connie's; Inn, where Louis Armstrong performed in the famous Harlem version of Fats Waller's
Hot Chocolates.
Over the years, hundreds of performers would stand under that tree and touch it for good luck. It became tradition. When Seventh Avenue was widened during New York City road construction, the tree was uprooted. However, Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson arranged for the Tree of Hope – he was the one who named it – to be moved to a street island, at Seventh Avenue, south of 132nd Street. Eventually, the tree was cut down; no one remembers the reason, and a plaque is all that remains at its final location. However, a small log from the Tree of Hope was mounted on a pedestal backstage at the Apollo. It then became tradition that the first-timer who touched the tree before he went out on to the stage would be destined for good luck: he would join the ranks of those black performers who had struggled to make their dreams a reality, who had fought for respect, who had paid their dues and eventually triumphed, shaping American popular culture in the image of their race and heritage.
The pedestal was placed off to the side of the stage so that the crowd could watch as the performers touched it. It was a Wednesday night and The Jackson Five were on the bill with The Impressions, one of the most popular vocal groups of the day. One of its founding members, Fred Cash, once told me that he went to nine-year-old Michael before the brothers hit the stage and told him the legend about the tree. ‘No kiddin'?’ Michael asked Fred, his eyes wide as saucers. ‘Wow. That is so great. I love that. I'll bet it works, too.’
‘Hey, guys, did you know 'bout this tree thing?’ Michael then asked his brothers. ‘Touch this tree and we'll have good luck.’
‘Nah. I don't believe in luck,’ Tito deadpanned.
‘Well, I sure do,’ Michael countered. ‘Wish I could take that log home with me. Then I'd
always
have good luck.’
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ the announcer said as the boys pulled themselves together backstage, ‘here they are, The Jackson Five.’
The lights went up. It was time for The Jackson Five to take their rightful place in history. Joseph watched proudly as each of his sons touched the plaque of the Tree of Hope: First, Jackie; then Tito; Jermaine; Marlon; Michael; then, ‘cousin’ Johnny. The group ran out on to the stage as the audience offered its applause. Michael, though, was the last one at the footlights. He ran back to touch the Tree of Hope one more time… just to be on the safe side. It must have worked; the boys won the contest, an enthusiastic audience response sealing their victory.