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    Legends of Rock & Roll: Michael Jackson
    Legends of Rock & Roll: Michael Jackson
    Legends of Rock & Roll: Michael Jackson
    Ebook106 pages1 hour

    Legends of Rock & Roll: Michael Jackson

    By James Hoag

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    About this ebook

    They called Michael Jackson the "King of Pop". He outsold Elvis and every other performer of the past fifty years. His story is one of success, heartbreak and loneliness: extreme highs and terrible lows. He was accused of being a child pedophile. He was called every name the press could think of. His life was not a happy one, but he rose above it all and became one of the most beloved performers of the past hundred years.

    Michael Jackson started out singing with his brothers, The Jackson Five, eventually leaving them in the dust. To read about the early years of Michael Jackson, pick up the book: Legends of Rock & Roll - The Jackson Five (available for Kindle).

    This book, Legends of Rock & Roll - Michael Jackson, is primarily about the years after he started going solo and then left the group to form his own career.

    After leaving Motown Records and his brothers, Michael recorded the biggest selling album of all time, Thriller. That record still holds today. He went on to become the greatest performer in the world during the Eighties.

    This book chronicles Michael's life after he started distancing himself from his brothers. There is no sugar-coating here. I discuss the good, the bad and the ugly.

    All the Legends of Rock & Roll books are essentially biographies, but I am interested primarily in the music. You'll find that the emphasis is on the music, how it came to be, who wrote it and performed it and any juicy tidbits about any given song or album.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJames Hoag
    Release dateMay 20, 2016
    ISBN9781311084378
    Legends of Rock & Roll: Michael Jackson
    Author

    James Hoag

    James Hoag has always been a big fan of Rock & Roll. Most people graduate from high school and then proceed to "grow up" and go on to more adult types of music. James got stuck at about age 18 and has been an avid fan of popular music ever since. His favorite music is from the Fifties, the origin of Rock & Roll and which was the era in which James grew up. But he likes almost all types of popular music including country music.After working his entire life as a computer programmer, he is now retired and he decided to share his love of the music and of the performers by writing books that discuss the life and music of the various people who have meant so much to him over the years.He calls each book a "love letter" to the stars that have enriched our lives so much. These people are truly Legends.

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      Book preview

      Legends of Rock & Roll - James Hoag

      Introduction

      I grew up in the Fifties, and Elvis Presley had always been the King of rock and roll. I honestly thought no one would ever take his place, even after he died. Then the Jackson family came along and from them a young man whose voice was bigger than he was.

      Michael Jackson started out being the lead singer for his brothers. Then, in later life, he decided he could do better on his own and struck out to become, some say, even bigger than Elvis.

      They call Michael Jackson the King of Pop to distinguish him from Elvis who is called the King of Rock and Roll. Not a whole lot of difference in my eyes.

      I have loved Michael Jackson right from the beginning. However, Michael had quite a different career than his brothers did. He stayed with them as long as he could but then had to break away and do solo work.

      This book is really volume two for the Jackson Family. The first volume covers the Jackson Five and the early years up until the time Michael went on his own. I felt Michael deserved his own story, so I split him off into his own book. To read more than is included here about his growing up, the years before Motown, the big break signing with Motown, and then the popularity of the Jackson Five please see the companion volume: Legends of Rock & Roll The Jackson 5.

      Growing Up

      Michael Jackson was born in Gary, Indiana on August 29, 1958. He was the seventh of eleven children born to Joe and Katherine Jackson. They lived in a four room house which had two bedrooms. Life was hard for the family. There was never any extra money, but Joe found enough to start his boys as a singing group. Known eventually as the Jackson Five, they paid their dues until being discovered by Motown and being signed to a record contract.

      They moved to California where the Jackson Five became the stars they were always meant to be. Their first four singles all went to number one, a feat never done before by a new group.

      Michael actually started recording solo albums before he officially left the group. In late 1971, Berry Gordy approached Joe with an idea that would change the face of American music forever. Berry thought Michael was ready to record a solo record. Joe was against the idea at first but Berry Gordy always got his way. Soon, Michael was in the studio working on a solo album and on October 7, 1971, Motown released the first single from his upcoming album, Got To Be There. The single peaked at number four on the singles charts. Michael would have to wait a year to get his first number one. (I only consider Billboard when I talk about charts, but Cashbox Magazine has been a respected source of music information for years, and they showed Got To Be There as number one on their music surveys.)

      Michael went on to record a full album with the title of the first single Got To Be There. It was released on January 24, 1972 and got as high as number 14 on the album charts and number three on the R&B album charts. They released a second single, Rockin’ Robin on February 7, 1972. The song went to number two. This is a cover of a Fifties hit by Bobby Day, where it also hit number two in 1958. The record sleeve of the single shows Michael posing like he’s Frank Sinatra, leaning against a lamppost with a coat draped over his shoulder. He’s looking very grown up.

      I’m not sure, but that album cover could have been taken from the Diana Ross television special which aired April 18, 1971. It featured several songs by the group as a whole but also featured the first time America had seen Michael as a solo artist. He walked next to the set of lamp posts with a coat draped over his arm like Sinatra would and sang a couple lines of It Was a Very Good Year, one of Sinatra’s signature songs, only instead of When I was seventeen…, Michael sang When I was two years old… It was very cute, if brief. Furthermore, it was the first time Michael sang solo before an audience.

      Motown then released a third song from the Got To Be There album called I Wanna Be Where You Are. Althnough it was not as big a hit as the first two songs from the album, it did reach number 16 on the Billboard charts. This song is noteworthy not only because Michael sang it but because it was co-written by Leon Ware along with Arthur T-Boy Ross, the younger brother of Diana Ross.

      Michael continued to record solo albums while still working with his brothers. His second album was Ben, which featured the single by the same name Ben. This song was the title song of a movie with the same name. Ben, the movie, was a strange one. I remember seeing it and cringing through the entire movie which is about a boy who can control rats. His favorite rat he named Ben. The movie was a sequel to Willard, which is also about rats.

      Michael said he really liked singing a song from a movie. Whenever he saw the movie, there was his name in the credits. He didn’t have to wait too long and he would see his name everywhere. The Ben album only had the one hit which was Michael’s first number one hit. If you listen to the album, you can feel Michael pulling away from Motown. There is only one song by The Corporation, Motown’s power writing team, and there is just one song written by Berry Gordy. The rest come from various places, including covers of other Motown artists.

      Ben had to be finished quickly because Michael was growing up and his voice was changing. They wanted the album to have all one sound and it should be the younger Michael Jackson voice. They didn’t want the sound to change halfway through the recording of the album.

      When we think of Michael Jackson today, we see a superstar who literally took over the American music scene in the Eighties. Unfortunately, while he had a lot of support behind him, he did have his failures. In April of 1973, Michael recorded his third solo album, Music & Me. This album did nothing. It barely made the Hot 100 on the album chart, peaking at number 92. There were five singles released from the album: Morning Glow, Too Young, the title song, Music & Me, Happy, and Doggin’ Around. None of them charted at all. Not only did they not make the Top 40, they didn’t even appear on the charts. Not all of these were released in the United States; some were only released in other countries such as Italy and the United Kingdom. This had to have been discouraging to Michael. He was fourteen at the time, and his voice was changing. That may account for the tepid response to the album, I don’t know. The album did manage to sell about two million copies.

      Later, in 1975, he would record his fourth solo album. It was called Forever, Michael, released on January 16, and was the last album he did for Motown. This one did even worse than the previous album, peaking just outside the Hot 100 at 101. It ended up only selling about one million copies. Only two singles were released from Forever, Michael: We’re Almost There (#54) and Just a Little Bit of You (#23).

      In 1975, the group left Motown for good, except for Jermaine who had married Berry Gordy’s daughter Hazel and felt

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