Authors: Steve Knopper
It was still the Jackson 5, but no longer were they singing and dancing to roaring crowds of obsessed teenage girls.
“It was a Vegas crowd—the man, the wife, the martini set,” remembers Ronnie Rancifer, who was still playing keyboards and fleshing out the group’s sound onstage. Janet, eight, and Randy, thirteen, had joined the group as a tiny satirical duo, mimicking supper-club favorites Sonny and Cher and Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. The Jacksons compacted their early Motown hits into a medley of “I Want You Back,” “ABC,” and “The Love You Save” (as they’d done frequently on tour) and added what Jackie called
“a little of everything,” including Vegas-friendly permutations of the Mills Brothers, the Andrews Sisters, “Danny Boy,” and the Supremes. No recordings exist of these performances, but judging from the group’s TV variety show a couple of years later, their between-song shtick was not quite as evolved as their singing and dancing. “Hi!” Tito would say, faux-annoying his brothers, “I’m Gladys Knight and these are my Pips!” Tiny Janet, wearing elaborate pink outfits of feathers and fur, slayed the crowd every time by imitating Mae West and demanding, “Why don’t you come up and see me some time?” Rebbie, who always had a decent singing voice despite her lack of show-business ambition, performed “Fever” with Michael and Marlon as her background dancers. The whole family, particularly La Toya, took up tap dancing—something Michael mastered immediately.
Friends stopped by frequently—old ones like Sammy Davis Jr. and new ones such as comedians Slappy White and Redd Foxx. At first, the Jacksons signed up for two weeks of shows, but they went over so well they added more, then returned in November.
In addition to Vegas, the other event that heralded the Jackson 5’s transition from boy band to grown-up pop act was Michael’s appropriation of the Robot, the perfect dance step for his long adolescent body. Motown may have influenced him in the way it created “Dancing
Machine,” but Michael picked up the dance, in part, from
Soul Train
, the syndicated variety
show in which regulars such as Damita Jo Freeman and Pat Davis evolved into stars as they danced with James Brown, Joe Tex, and many others. Freeman’s extraordinary performances in hot pants and an Afro, kicking her leg to a fully horizontal position and holding it there as she hopped to the beat on the other leg, were mesmerizing not only to viewers but to the guests, including Brown, who once kept an eye on her throughout his set. The Jacksons first appeared on
Soul Train
in October 1972.
“The brothers were older, and they liked girls,” Freeman says. “But Michael wasn’t looking at you as a
girl
. He was looking at the
moves
.”
The Robot was just as its title implies—dancers mechanically bending their elbows and knees in perfect right angles as they glide across the floor, as if on invisible treadmills, moving backward and forward, sometimes seemingly both at once. The man who often gets credit for developing this move was “Robot” Charles Washington, an early
Train
dancer who started in a frozen position, then theatrically broke out of an implied block of ice. But when pinpointing the beginning of things, whether it’s the Robot or the first rock ’n’ roll or disco song, there is always more to the story. In 1968, mime expert
Robert Shields did a variation of the Robot in front of the Hollywood Wax Museum in LA. Shields didn’t learn it from Washington or
Soul Train
. He studied it, reaching back to a 1920s craze in which dancers suspended their bodies like mannequins. The move became Shields’s signature and landed him a scholarship to study with the great mime Marcel Marceau in Paris. By the early 1970s, Shields teamed with Lorene Yarnell, and Shields and Yarnell adapted the movement in their
Clinkers routine. Eventually the duo became big enough to perform on TV variety shows, where they would occasionally encounter the Jackson 5 in person. Michael latched on to Shields the way he did with other famous mentors, including James Brown, Joe Simon, Jackie Wilson and the
Soul Train
dancers.
“I trained him on the Robot,” says Shields, whom Michael
befriended in part due to the famous mime’s large toy collection at his LA home. “Michael first saw the Robot from me, period. He took it and made it his own.”
The truth is Michael absorbed the Robot from several sources at once. After the Jacksons’ first
Soul Train
appearance, regulars Patricia Davis and Gary Keys taught the brothers important neck twists as well as acrobatic moves known as locking steps. The Jacksons summoned some of the show’s top dancers to their Hayvenhurst home for further lessons, as well as casual video recording sessions, so Michael could study the moves.
“It was a playtime for Michael,” Freeman recalls. “He always had cameras in his den.”
For the Jackson 5’s second
Soul Train
appearance, in October 1973, the group performs “Dancing Machine.” During the horn break at the center of the song, fifteen-year-old Michael glides through the mechanical arm movements and invisible walking steps with grace and poise, finishing with a broad, proud smile. He’s easily as good as the
Soul Train
crew, and afterward dancer Freddie Maxie found Michael and teased him.
“Michael, you don’t need me to teach you to do the Robot,” she said. Michael would tinker with the Robot for years, adding moves he developed from
Soul Train
–style locker movements and augmenting them with Bob Fosse poses and hand gestures, James Brown one-legged hops, Jackie Wilson twirls, variations on Shields and Yarnell rope-pulling, and hip-hop break-dancing. The Robot became his bridge to more exciting dance ideas.
This version of Michael, and the Jackson 5, was roughly what Epic Records’ Ron Alexenburg took in that June night in 1975. Alexenburg and his boss Walter Yetnikoff arranged to catch another show the following weekend at the Westbury Music Fair in Long Island. Yetnikoff, who had taken over as CBS’s president that year, saw music’s past, not its future.
“Less than spectacular,” he called it. “Their baby sister, Janet, who did a Mae West impression, looked silly. Their dance steps looked tired.” He called Michael a “bright spot,” but questioned whether signing
the seventeen-year-old whose solo showcase was “Ben,” a song about a dead rat, could transcend the family group.
In the end, it was Alexenburg’s right-hand man, Epic promotions executive Steve Popovich, who talked Yetnikoff into the signing. Yes, Michael had sung a hit about a dead rat. But, he said:
“ ‘Ben’ was a smash. We’ll make money on this group, believe me.”
The Jacksons were demanding a high price, but in addition to their recent lack of hits, they had a couple of blemishes that dented their leverage. Motown owned the name “Jackson 5” as well as the Jacksons’ contract through March 1976, which meant CBS couldn’t release a Jackson album until then. And there was the matter of the absent
Jermaine, who had remained behind with his father-in-law Gordy. Alexenburg didn’t care about any of that. He steered the band into a deal including a
$750,000 advance, $500,000 for a “recording fund” from which the band could make its albums, a guarantee of $350,000 per album, and a high royalty rate (compared to other recording stars) of 27 percent: 94.5 cents per album in the United States and 84 cents abroad. Sam Lederman, an executive in A&R and administration for CBS at the time, is dubious of some of those widely reported deal points:
“One thing I’ll tell you for sure: It was not a $500,000 recording fund.” But the terms were generous, if not egregiously so for a superstar group at the time. Yetnikoff refused to yield on Joe Jackson’s request to let the boys fully write and produce their own material, but verbally, he allowed them three songs per album.
After signing the deal, CBS execs met with the Jacksons at Hayvenhurst. The idea was to kick around concepts for future albums. They met for a few hours, but nothing came out of it except a promise that CBS would try a few producers and see what happened. Michael sat silently on a stool the whole time. Lederman finally turned to him: “Michael, you haven’t said anything. What is it you want to do?”
“I want to write and produce my own records,” he responded.
The Jacksons may not have been willing to make immediate creative
decisions, but Alexenburg had to.
“Ron basically had a lot on the line,” Lederman says. “Financially or otherwise, Ron put his reputation at stake.” Nobody wanted the Jacksons to be known as “Alexenburg’s folly.” Alexenburg called for reinforcements.
* * *
Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff signed the best talent in Philadelphia throughout the 1970s. They created a system. Huff, a flashy dresser, gruffly competitive, played piano and wrote the music. Gamble, who was more outgoing—a communicator—wrote the lyrics. And they had hits—pop-and-soul mini-masterpieces such as the Survivors’ “Expressway to Your Heart,” Archie Bell and the Drells’ “I Can’t Stop Dancing,” Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes’ “If You Don’t Know Me By Now.”
Where Motown’s hits were known for a persistent, jazzed-up siren call, Philly soul was more laid-back and lush, with string arrangements baked into the foundation, and rhythms so warm it seemed like the drummer and bassist were on the next bar stool. Motown had a hit with the Temptations’ “My Girl.” Philly International tacked on a few years to its audience, putting out the O’Jays’ “Use Ta Be My Girl.” These songs weren’t bubblegum soul; they were sophisticated.
“Gamble and Huff were really adult oriented, especially during those times,” says label drummer Charles Collins.
Before the Jacksons left Motown,
Gamble and Huff had tried to sign them. They had discussions with Joe. Recalled Gamble:
“CBS offered them movies. They offered them a TV show, cartoons, and everything. And, of course, Gamble and Huff, we couldn’t offer them all those things, so they decided to go with CBS.” But the duo wound up working with the Jacksons anyhow. CBS’ Alexenburg agreed to pay them
8 to 10 percent of the Jacksons’ wholesale record sales.
The Jacksons, who had been touring nonstop since the late sixties, moved to the Hyatt Cherry Hill, in nearby New Jersey, to record their first album at Gamble and Huff’s Philadelphia studio. The Philly International
stars prized their anonymity back then, and Teddy Pendergrass and Lou Rawls often hung around the downtown studio without much external fuss between sessions. The Jacksons were something different.
“It was
the Jacksons
,” drummer Collins says. “There were some girls outside, for sure.”
The group arrived with an entourage of ten people—the boys, Joe, occasionally Katherine, tutor Rose Fine, security man Bill Bray, and
“associated people,” as Joe Tarsia, longtime engineer for Philly International’s Sigma Sound Studios, recalls. With the Jacksons officially signed to the label, Gamble and Huff immersed them in the system,
preparing twenty songs for the group to pare them down to a twelve-song album.
Gamble called Tito a “great guitar player,” soothing words after Motown had never let him play a note. Tito had told reporters of his desire to be a producer, and Gamble and Huff were ready to be mentors. But while experienced studio hands gave Tito advice and suggestions, it was Michael who stayed after hours, hanging around the boards, asking questions.
“Lemme try . . .” Michael often asked engineers like Tarsia. It was becoming obvious to Tarsia that Michael was a driven, attentive perfectionist.
“Just watching Huff play the piano while Gamble sang taught me more about the anatomy of a song than anything else,” Michael said. “Kenny Gamble is a master melody man. He made me pay closer attention to the melody. . . . I’d sit there like a hawk, observing every decision, listening to every note.”
When Tarsia recognized the boys were lonely, he invited them to his home, where his wife cooked a big family dinner. “They were like lost children,” Tarsia says. One time, the Jacksons realized they’d inadvertently crashed Tarsia’s daughter’s sixteenth birthday party, so they sent their driver to buy a cake. Tarsia also accompanied the group to an all-day tour of
Muhammad Ali’s training camp, where the engineer snapped photos of Michael fake-punching the Champ. (This would not be the last Jackson encounter with Ali; Jermaine Jackson once walked
into his family’s kitchen in Hayvenhurst to find Ali with Michael and his mother. Michael spent hours at Ali’s house, too, and Jermaine credits the legendary fighter, known for his lighter-than-air moves, for teaching Michael “what it took to be a showman.”)
The group’s first CBS album, 1976’s
The Jacksons
, is so pristinely produced that the music appears to shine. Gamble and Huff provided funky touches like the electric guitars slipping between the choruses in “Think Happy,” the slippery synth bass that opens “Keep On Dancing” and the vibe of the laid-back “Good Times.” Michael sporadically breaks out the whoops and “oh yeahs” that would become his signature. But the album isn’t really about anything other than dancing and having a real good time. “Enjoy Yourself” is the mission statement.
Throughout the recording, Michael’s preternatural talent was obvious to everybody, and the Jacksons were experienced professionals in the studio. But not everything was easy for the Philly International hands.
“[Michael] had that breathy voice,” recalls Tarsia, the engineer. “I recorded a couple albums with Lou Rawls—when he got on the mike, he devoured it with his heavy tone. And Michael was like recording a cloud. You could put your fingers through it.”
The follow-up album,
Goin’ Places
, a year later, shows a glimpse of a more self-assured MJ. From the first track, “Music’s Takin’ Over,” he’s grunting like James Brown, ad-libbing melodies at the ends of verses, hollering and scat-singing, trying on new musical clothes and personalities. Part of his inspiration, while recording the album in Philly, may have been an encounter with “Lonely Teardrops” soul man
Jackie Wilson, who lay dying at Hahnemann University
Hospital down the street. The entire family, including Joe and Bill Bray, made a pilgrimage there, although it’s unclear whether Michael and Jackie spoke to each other, as Wilson was in and out of comas at the time.