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2300 JACKSON STrEET. IN GArY, INdIANA, JOE ANd KATHErINE JACKSON rAISE THEIr NINE CHILdrEN IN A SMALL TWO-bEdrOOM HOME FILLEd WITH LOVE ANd MUSIC. THE THrEE OLdEST brOTHErS FOrM A b ANd, ANd ArE EVENTUALLY JOINEd b Y TWO OF THEIr YOUNGEr brOTHErS. GLAd YS KNIGHT SEES THEM PErFOrM IN CHICAGO ANd CALLS MOTOWN. SOON AFTEr, MOTOWN’S bObbY TAYLOr TELLS THE COMPANY TO GIVE THE bOYS AN AUdITION. IN MArCH 1969 bErr Y GOrdY SIGNS THE JACKSON 5. JACKSONS_p000_320_REPRO_TEXT_MASTER_FILE.indd 17 05/06/2017 12:46
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as a HigH-scHooL student, Katherine Scruse and her friends organized house parties where they could meet boys and dance to the R&B songs that were popular on the radio—especially the slow ones. It was at one of these “blue light” socials that she first saw a handsome boy who took her breath away. His name was Joe Jackson, and not very long after that first meeting Joe took a bride—but it was not Katherine. She was disappointed, but not for long. A year later, Joe got a divorce and when he turned up at Katherine’s door at Christmas time with a present, Katherine knew he was interested in her. They were married on November 5, 1949, in Crown Point, Indiana. Joe was born in Arkansas and Katherine in Alabama. Both of their families moved to East Chicago, Indiana, where Joe found a job at the Inland Steel Company, working in the mill as a crane operator. As a couple, they dreamed of owning a home in California, and Joe promised Katherine they would live there one day. But as young newlyweds—Joe was twenty and Katherine nineteen—their budget permitted only a two-bedroom wood-frame house in Gary, Indiana. By coincidence, their new home was located at 2300 Jackson Street. They purchased it for $8,500 and borrowed $200 from Katherine’s father to make the $500 down payment. Joe was bringing home only $56 a week from the mill, so the family did without a telephone and a TV at first, finally purchasing their first set in 1953. To stay warm on cold Indiana nights, the family would crowd into the kitchen and sit by the oven. maRLoN JacKsoN: it was a tiny house, but it seemed huge to us while we were living there. It truly was a small house, but it seemed like it would be big enough for the family they were planning. Joe wanted one child and Katherine thought they should have three. They had no idea they would raise nine children in this home. By the time they had a full house, Joe and Katherine slept in one bedroom, while their sons Jackie, Jermaine, Tito, Marlon, Michael, and Randy shared the other bedroom. The three Jackson daughters—Rebbie, LaToya, and Janet—slept on fold-out couches in the living room. In his book You Are Not Alone: Michael, Through a Brother’s Eyes, Jermaine wrote, “We shared a metal-framed three-tiered bunk bed. Its length was just big enough to fit against the back wall and its height meant that Tito and I slept head to toe, about four feet from the ceiling. In the middle were Michael and Marlon, and Jackie had the lowest bunk all to himself. Jackie was the only brother who didn’t know what it was like to wake up with a foot in his eyes, ear, or mouth.” JacKie JacKsoN: there was a lot of love in that little house. my mother was the sweetest woman you could ever meet. she acted more like a sister to us. my father was the one who cracked the whip; my mom was more easy-going. she worked at the sears department store. i remember one time there was a blizzard and i was looking out of the window for her to come home, because i knew what time she finished work. i finally saw her from a distance, walking through the snow, and she slipped and fell. i ran to help her, with tears in my eyes. she did everything for us and has always been a great friend to this day. my father was strict because he had to be. gary wasn’t the safest place to live. there were gangs, and dad had six boys. He wanted to make sure we didn’t get involved in any gangs or get into drugs, so he kept us busy. maRLoN: He would have us move bricks from one side of the backyard to the other. We’d stack them up on one side of the yard, and two days later he’d have us move them back. they weren’t little bricks, and there was a lot of them. it was an all-day job, designed to keep us off the streets. JacKie: i thank him for making us do that. When i look back at moving those bricks, i realize what he was doing. a lot of the guys i grew up with are dead now. my father saw that we had talent and he got us out of a very rough environment. tito JacKsoN: We were playing a local city auditorium and there were four guys who wanted to get in, so they decided to take the equipment from our hands and walk in with it like they were with us. my father didn’t like it so he told them to give it back, but they wouldn’t. they beat him up over it. i remember michael running to the phone booth to call the police. they were bigguys to us, because we were little kids. it was a difficult show to do because we knew our father was headed off to the hospital and we still had to go on and sing. that was really bad. Before his brothers were born, Jackie had one older sister: Maureen, known affectionately as Rebbie. JacKie: Rebbie was the overseer. she made sure that all of the children were taken care of. she was like a mother figure to the younger kids after they were born, and i was like a father figure. We did everything from washing the clothes and hanging them up to keeping the house clean. as a teenager, i felt more like an adult. i was like a counselor, keeping my brothers in line. When my mom and dad weren’t there, it was up to me to oversee things. i felt like i couldn’t be myself, or have a girlfriend. We were so busy making music that i didn’t have a day free when i could take a girl out. tito: Being a kid in gary was fun. We would shovel snow to make money. We cut lawns and pulled weeds. i helped my neighbor with his paper route, delivering newspapers on mondays, Wednesdays, fridays, and sundays, then i got my own route. Jermaine would help me. We’d wake up in below-zero weather. there would be five stacks of newspapers that we had to fold and put in bags. JeRmaiNe JacKsoN: i call those days [in gary] the best days, because i remember walking to the store with tito, or going for a strawberry soda or a bag of potato chips. i remember running across the field, playing baseball. those days we can never relive. Now i look back on them as something very, very special. It wasn’t all work. The boys found ways to entertain themselves, especially when their parents weren’t home. JacKie: i loved having brothers. We played a lot of sports. When our parents left for work, we would move the furniture around and fight with boxinggloves. that was really a lot offun. i’d win all the time, and then i’d remind everyone not to tell mom and dad. i even gave my younger brothers candy and made them promise not to say anything. then as soon as my mom came home, the others would say, “Jackie’s fighting!” she’d be very upset. Boxing wasn’t the only sport in which Jackie excelled. 18 JACKSONS_p000_320_REPRO_TEXT_MASTER_FILE.indd 18 05/06/2017 12:46
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JacKie: there was a moment when i thought i was going to be a baseball player. We all played baseball back in the day, all my brothers. there was a baseball field right behind our home, not even forty yards away. i was a shortstop and a pitcher. i did pretty well for a little while, but music was something that i wanted really badly with my brothers. i used to watch the san Diego chargers on tV, and i watched the cleveland Browns and the chicago Bears. it was gale sayers and Dick Butkus at the time. When i watched those games, it was cold and there was snow on the ground. and then the next game would show the san Diego chargers in california. there would be palm trees on the tV and i would think, “oh my god, how can i get there?” people in the stands would be enjoying the nice weather in January and we would be freezing. i played on local teams and in Babe Ruth leagues, but i wanted music more than baseball because i knew music was something you could sing forever. Baseball and other sports meant you’d have a short career. You could only play for so long. scouts for the chicago White sox were watching me. eventually i had to make a decision, and i chose music. i wanted to be with my brothers and they loved music so much. i was the oldest, and i thought if i wasn’t with them, it might hurt the group, so i decided to make music with them and it was the right move. The house on Jackson Street was filled with music, and not just from the family record collection or the radio. Joe and his brother Luther had a band, the Falcons. JacKie: We would watch them play music all the time. We were fascinated to see them play the blues and guitar. We could sit around for hours and hours just watching them play. We really looked up to my father and our uncle and their friends. that was how my brothers and i became interested in music. In his book You Are Not Alone: Michael, Through a Brother’s Eyes, Jermaine reminisced, “Uncle Luther played the blues and Joseph switched between his guitar and the harmonica. Those were the sounds that sometimes helped us drift off to sleep.” While Joe was passionate about the blues, Katherine grew up listening to country music. Her father loved to tune in to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio and he would play country songs on his box guitar while Katherine and her sister Hattie sang along. tito: our mother would sing while she was washing the dishes or doing the laundry, and all of us kids would harmonize with her. We sang “cottonfields” a lot. maRLoN: i remember singing Roger miller’s “King of the Road”; that was another one of her favorite songs. We loved singing with our mother. she was the one who kept our house together while our father worked. she was a disciplinarian, but not as much as my father. tito: Watching the falcons rehearse in the house, i used to stare at their guitars. i wasn’t paying any attention to their vocals; i was only interested in the guitars. my father warned us not to touch his guitars while he was at work. “When i’m out, don’t be fooling with my guitar,” he’d tell us. my mother would let me know when dad was about to arrive home from work so i could put the guitar away before he found me playing it. three or four months went by and i was playing songs like “Louie Louie.” i tried to remember what he was doing with his hands and to copy that. He never knew i was playing his guitar until the day i broke one of the strings. i didn’t know what to do, and my mother told me, “Don’t worry, i’ll talk to him.” But i knew that wasn’t going to be good enough. i knew my father and how angry he was going to be. He came home and went to play his guitar and saw the broken string. the first thing he said was, “Who’s been playing my guitar?” i started crying and he gave me a good spanking. then he told me to sit down and he said, “show me what you know.” i was playing the guitar and still crying, and he looked at my mother and said, “Kate, this one can play.” she replied, “i told you so. You should listen. they sing a little bit, too.” But he didn’t have the time to listen to us; he was too busy working and he thought we were just kids fooling around. He didn’t know Jackie, Jermaine, and i had been harmonizing with our mother. it was just the three of us at this point. marlon and michael were little babies. they wanted to play with their toys, so we would kick them out of the room while we played music. We were serious about what we were doing, but our father would tell us to be quiet because he was trying to sleep so he could get up early and go to work. The boys’ musical knowledge wasn’t limited to the songs the Falcons played or the country songs their mother loved. They listened to the radio and visited their local record store, too. JacKie: We were buying 45s. We’d go to the store, and that’s where we discovered Johnny mathis. We’d see his albums on display and he was really elegant, so groomed with his hair. We’d stare at his album covers. We loved his songs like “chances are” and “gina” and really looked up to him, as well as mary Wells and later the Delfonics. We loved “Venus” by frankie avalon, too. Before gigs, we’d play those songs backstage, just for us. We still do that today—you’ll hear us playing “Venus” before we go out. it’s such a beautiful song. It wasn’t long before the three Jacksons expanded to five. JacKie: tito, Jermaine, and i started the group. We were just fooling around on guitar and bass and then one day michael joined us, playing bongos on a Quaker oatmeal box. He played them so well we thought he should be part of the group. as soon as we did that, he started dancing up in front, doing his James Brown thing. michael always watched James Brown on television, and Jackie Wilson, too. also the temptations and the four tops. He would copy what they were doing. that’s when we realized how much showmanship he had, and we thought maybe he should be up front, singing lead. michael was a little kid at the time but he was very professional. tito: michael and marlon had both been asking to be in the group. We kept telling them they were too young, that this was just for their big brothers. When michael was in first grade, he proved himself singing “climb ev’ry mountain” from The Sound of Music at garnett elementary school. We told michael, “You’re in the band now.” then marlon said, “me, too?” We told him, “You too, marlon.” In his autobiography Moonwalk, Michael described how he was overwhelmed at the ovation he received from the audience in JACKSONS_p000_320_REPRO_TEXT_MASTER_FILE.indd 19 19 05/06/2017 12:46 CHAPTER ONE 2300 JACKSON STREET
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the school auditorium. “The applause was thunderous and people were smiling; some of them were standing. My teachers were crying and I just couldn’t believe it. I had made them all happy. It was such a great feeling. I was a little confused, too, because I didn’t think I had done anything special. I was just singing the way I sang at home every night.” With the brothers now officially a quintet, word of their musical prowess spread through the neighborhood. JacKie: Whenever we played music at home, kids who lived nearby would gather outside and peek in the windows to watch us. We really enjoyed that, playing motown songs and hits by sam cooke and sam & Dave and all those musicians from stax. We loved to play “green onions” by Booker t. & the m.g.’s. it was the best music. We were crazy about the motown beat and would sing every motown song we heard on the radio. We’d emulate the temptations and Diana Ross & the supremes. We would say that we’d love to be on motown even though we weren’t ready yet. We were just little kids singing in the bedroom, using broomsticks for microphones. The brothers’ reputation grew, and one day Katherine received a phone call from her friend Evelyn Leahy. She was organizing a children’s fashion show at a department store in Forest Glen Park, about an hour away in Illinois. She wondered if the boys would sing three songs as part of the show. Katherine asked her sons and they all said yes. Evelyn needed to know the name of the group so that she could print flyers. Since the boys didn’t really have a name yet, Katherine suggested the Jackson Brothers Five. Evelyn said she would shorten it—to the Jackson Five. When the family arrived at the department store, Katherine was disappointed. There was no seating for the audience. Shoppers were going to have to stand if they wanted to hear the first-ever public show by the Jackson Five. The boys were embarrassed at first, but the enthusiastic applause at the end of their set helped them get over any misgivings. tito: our very first talent show was at theodore Roosevelt High school in gary. that was a challenging show. one of the groups we were competing against was called the ethics. they were very good. they sounded just like the temptations and could have made it big. i don’t know why they didn’t. We were challenged by them many times and we won at least 90 percent of the time. another competitor of ours was Deniece Williams. she was also from gary and she was great. DeNiece WiLLiams: i didn’t compete in a lot of talent shows because of my involvement with the church, but when i did, i always lost to the Jackson five. there was no hope once they hit the stage. it was over. they could sing and had stage presence. i think it was W. c. fields who said, “Never work with children or animals.” i was going up against five young children performing. it wasn’t a fair fight. At that first Roosevelt High School talent show, Jermaine sang the Temptations’ hit “My Girl.” Katherine put the costumes together, just as she had for the department store show and would for many years to come. Winning the talent show sent the Jackson Five into a citywide competition, where they also triumphed. Up until this time, Joe was too busy working two shifts to give his sons much attention, let alone coach them musically. But after the talent show victories, he started them on a regular schedule of rehearsals and bought them guitars, amplifiers, and microphones. The first payinggig for the Jackson Five was at a local club, Mister Lucky’s Lounge. JacKie: it wasn’t a very big club but it was famous in gary. We did a really good job performing, and the people in the audience started throwing money on stage. tito, Jermaine, and i were at the back, but michael and marlon were standing in the front doing some dancing, so they picked up all the money. the three of us at the back were feeling jealous because we wanted to pick up some money, too. We were so intent on watching michael and marlon grab all the money that we started to forget the lyrics. the next day, michael and marlon took their money and bought a lot of candy. Convinced that his kids could be successful, Joe bought a VW van so he could take the brothers and their musical instruments and equipment to Chicago to play gigs. JacKie: chicago was about thirty miles from gary. coming from a small town, we’d go to the big city and look up at all the buildings. We were really impressed with comiskey park, where the chicago White sox played. We played in a lot of clubs in chicago. We were too young to hang out in these clubs, so we would have to wait in a room backstage for forty minutes or so. then we’d perform and the crowd would go crazy. after the gigs, we’d go to White castle hamburgers on the way home. We loved those small hamburgers. We’d get home very late on a sunday night, around two in the morning, and we’d have to take our instruments out of the car and get everything into the house. then we’d have to wake up early and go to school. One of the Chicago venues where Joe took his sons to play was the Regal Theater, a venue built in 1928. The theater catered to black audiences and over the years featured headliners such as Nat King Cole, B. B. King, Della Reese, and Dionne Warwick. The Jackson Five won a series of amateur nights at the Regal, which allowed them to join a bill that included some of the most popular acts of the day. One of those artists was a singer who knew what it was like to perform as a child star. Gladys Knight was only twelve years old when she started in the business. At this point in her career, she and the Pips were signed ...
