It was no surprise to her that Michael and I grew into the kind of men who left clothes on the floor where we stepped out of them but we cited the same defence: when you grow up as brothers in one tiny room, you get used to knowing where everything is in the chaos or clutter. We got away with a lot more things with Mother. Don’t get me wrong, she was strict, too: if we misbehaved, she wasn’t afraid to administer a firm slap around the ear with the palm of her hand. But where Mother had patience, Joseph had a short fuse trip-wired by another hard shift at The Mill. We heeded what Mother said: respect that your father is in the house, respect that he’s had a hard day at work, respect that he doesn’t want to hear noise.
When he arrived home, Respect walked through the door and the air in the house stiffened. His basic rule was simple: I’ll tell you something once and if you have to be told again, you’ll be punished. As kids within a growing family, we regularly had to be told again. Jackie, Tito and I knew from sore experience what the consequences were. Michael and Marlon, as infants, felt our fear vicariously – at first. When Joseph got angry, just one look on his face was enough – he didn’t need to say a word. He had a mole the size of a dime on one cheek and I can still see it in my mind, close up: whenever he got really mad, it and his face crunched up – the storm clouds rolling in before the clap of thunder and the dreaded words ‘WAIT FOR ME IN YOUR ROOM!’ followed by the flash of lightning; the eye-watering sting of a leather belt against skin. We normally received 10 ‘whops’. I call them ‘whops’ because that was the exact sound the belt made as it whipped the air. I screamed out for God, for Mother, for mercy, and anyone else’s name that I could think of, but Joseph just shouted louder, reminding us why we were being punished: the discipline followed by the reason, mimicking his lessons as a schoolboy.
Whenever we were punished, our screams were what Michael heard, and he saw the red marks and belt-buckle imprints on bare skin at bedtime. This made him fear something long before he actually felt it. In his mind, the mere thought of Joseph’s discipline was traumatic. That is what exaggerated fear does: it builds something in the mind to a scale that, perhaps, it is not.
A WHITE MOUSE HAD BEEN RUNNING loose around the house and Joseph was desperate to catch it because it was driving the girls crazy. When we heard them scream, we knew this rodent had scurried in for a visit. An exasperated Joseph couldn’t understand why we suddenly had this problem. What he didn’t account for was the start of Michael’s lifelong affinity with animals.
Unknown to any of us, he’d been treating this mouse like a pet, encouraging its visits with bits of lettuce and cheese. Looking back, it was obvious: whenever Mother screamed and Joseph cursed, Michael fell suspiciously quiet and slid away. He was only three: who was going to suspect his cunning? But it was only a matter of time before he was found out. That moment arrived when Joseph crept into the kitchen and caught him red-handed, kneeling on the floor, feeding the mouse behind the fridge.
The house shook when Joseph bellowed, ‘WAIT FOR ME IN YOUR ROOM!’
What Michael did next surprised everyone.
He bolted.
He started running around the house like a terrified rabbit. Joseph chased him with the belt and grabbed the back of his shirt, but my brother was a flexible, agile little dynamo, and he wriggled and fought and pulled his arms out of the sleeves, and ran on. He darted into Joseph’s room, up and over the bed, and pinned himself against the wall, tight into the corner, knowing the belt’s arc couldn’t reach him without first striking the walls.
I hadn’t seen Joseph so angry. He dropped the belt, grabbed Michael and spanked him so hard that he screamed the house down.
I hated the awkward silence that hung in the air after one of these episodes, broken only by Mother’s murmurs of disquiet and the quiet sobs into the pillow of whichever one of us had got hit.
Michael didn’t help himself because he was the most defiant. Rebbie remembers the time when he was 18 months old and tossed his baby bottle at Joseph’s head. That should have put our father on notice because when Michael was four, he threw a shoe at him in a temper tantrum – and that earned him a good spanking, too.
Michael’s fear of a spanking always sent him running. Sometimes he’d do a sliding dive under our parents’ bed and tuck himself against the back wall in the centre, gripping the bed springs. It was an effective tactic because after half an hour under there, Joseph was either too exhausted to care or had calmed down: Michael got away with a lot more than he ever let on.
TITO’S PASSION FOR THE GUITAR COULDN’T help itself.
As Jackie and I started learning songs from the radio, his talent blossomed through lessons at school. But when he was at home, he couldn’t practise. So, despite all warnings from Joseph, he borrowed our father’s guitar from the back of his closet. What he wouldn’t know couldn’t hurt him, right?
Whenever Joseph worked, Tito seized his moment. He started playing and we began making harmonies. On a couple of occasions, Mother walked in and found us out, but apart from a gasp that told us we were playing with fire, she turned a blind eye. She was a lot more lenient than our father. On one particular weekend, Tito started playing and we were singing some Four Tops’ song. He was sitting there, plucking away, and Jackie and I were crooning when suddenly there was a twanging noise. Tito went white when he realised one of the strings had broken. ‘Oooh, you’re going to get it now!’ squealed Jackie, part excitement, part fear.
We’re all going to get it now, I thought.
We put the broken treasure back in its rightful place and were sitting in our bedrooms when we heard his car pull up. The bomb was primed. Each loud footstep on the linoleum matched what was going on inside our ribcages. One … two … three … ‘WHO’S … BEEN MESSING … WITH MY GUITARRRR?’ He hollered so loud I think they heard him in California. When he pounded into our room, Michael and Marlon scarpered, leaving Jackie, Tito and me standing by the bunk-beds already whimpering over what we knew was coming next. Mother tried intervening, claiming it was all her fault, but Joseph wasn’t listening. We cried even louder when he told us we were all going to get it until one of us owned up.
‘It was me,’ Tito said, barely heard. ‘I was playing it –’ Joseph grabbed him ‘– but I know how to play. I KNOW HOW TO PLAY!’ he screamed.
I’ve read accounts that say Joseph clobbered him there and then, but that’s not what happened. Instead he stopped, scowled and said, ‘Play, then. Let me see what you can do!’ With a broken string, Tito started to play, and Jackie and I started to sing – even if our crying meant we could give only 50 per cent. ‘Doing The Jerk’ by the Larks became our plea for clemency and we started making harmonies, slightly off note, but it must have sounded good because Joseph visibly loosened. We kept on singing: we saw his head moving to the beat, and he did what would become a habit – he started lip-synching the lyrics, going through the motions with us. We became emboldened, stopped sniffling and pulled ourselves together. Our harmonies came good and we were snapping our fingers. Our audience’s eyes widened and narrowed in both victory and defeat. When we stopped playing, he didn’t say a word but we had been spared a major spanking and that was all that seemed to matter.
Two days later, Joseph arrived home from work with a red electric guitar for Tito and told him to start practising. He told Jackie and me to get ready for rehearsals. He told our mother that he was going ‘to support these boys.’ His focus switched from the Falcons to his sons. We had won his approval and he wanted to harness something we loved doing. It felt like recognition and it excited us. People have said that our father ‘made them sing’ or ‘forced those boys into entertainment’, but singing had come naturally to us and that passion was our choice. We had sung up a storm long before Joseph arrived with his rocket fuel. As a trio of brothers, we told ourselves that we were going to be the best group in Gary.
CHAPTER THREE
God’s Gift
MICHAEL SAT ON THE CARPET WITH two empty, cardboard tu
bs of Quaker Oats sandwiched between his knees. He bound them together by sticking a pencil through their middle. This, he told everyone, was his set of bongos. Taking up his position as a spectator on the sidelines with Marlon, he was eager for rehearsals to start even though he wasn’t involved since he’d been deemed ‘too little’. But he had decided he was going to join in anyway and four fingers on each hand contributed his beat to whatever rhythm we played. He watched as a purposeful Joseph took Jackie, Tito and me by the shoulders and positioned us like chess pieces ‘on the stage’, which was our living room. Tito, on guitar, took centre position, with me to his right; the three of us stood around wondering what our next move was going to be.
In the kitchen, Mother stayed out of the way with Rebbie and La Toya, allowing us to do our thing. She knew what we’d soon find out: these sessions were not some dreamy pretence but a serious business in our father’s eyes. A single microphone was hooked into its stand in the middle of the room. No hairbrushes or shampoo bottles for his sons. It was borrowed from the Falcons, a baton passed to the next generation. ‘You’ve got to learn how to use it, not be afraid of it, hold it, play it,’ said Joseph.
Play the microphone? I think our faces said it all.
He put on a James Brown LP, turned it up loud, grabbed the mic, dipped left, dipped right, then threw it forward so it bounced right back. That was ‘playing’ the mic. ‘Hear that voice, Jermaine? Do it like that. Do it just like that.’ He played classic 45s and LPs so that we could study, over and over, one song at a time, how it was sung, and how it should be performed. I remember the repetitiveness of ‘Green Onions’ by Booker T. & the MGs, and James Brown’s version of ‘Night Train’. As Joseph encouraged us to move, we started doing the cow-step, snapping our fingers, and self-consciously shuffling around. He wasn’t impressed. ‘Boys, you can’t just sing and sway. You gotta move – put more feeling into it! Like this …’
He stepped in, with James Brown as his dance track, and started getting down, bobbing his head. We couldn’t help but giggle at his lack of grace. ‘I can see you laughing,’ he said, ‘but I don’t want you looking like amateurs.’
We went back to our ‘marks’, back to being choreographed. Back to the class where there was no motto above the door but if there had been, it would have read: ‘The Right Way Becomes Habit’.
In the meantime, there was always Joseph’s verbal handbook, which was seared into our memories. ‘You have to entertain. Be dynamic. Be different. Take it to the audience!’ We studied songs and learned moves for two, three, sometimes five hours a day for months on end. Whenever Joseph wasn’t working or sleeping, we practised. ‘Practice does not make perfect,’ he always said. ‘It makes consistency.’ Practice made us remember. And yet we seemed to forget regularly. ‘Let’s do it again … and again … and again, until we get it right,’ he said.
Meanwhile, Michael kept pounding those upturned oatmeal cartons. I lost count of how many he went through, but Joseph eventually found him a real set of second-hand bongos. And our lessons kept coming. ‘Imagine the crowd … picture them … look out … feel them … and SMILE!’
We looked straight out of the window on to Jackson Street – always facing the light – and saw other kids running around playing tag-football or roller-skating. We heard fun and laughter. When school friends knocked on our door to ask if we wanted to play, Joseph refused. ‘No, they’re busy rehearsing,’ he said. This, in turn, built an endless curiosity about the goings-on inside our house for the rest of the 1960s. On a few occasions, children came up to the window to see what was happening, mushing their noses against the glass. I guess that was the start of living in a goldfish bowl. Some kids banged on the window and made fun of us.
‘You’re locked up! You’re locked up!’ they chanted, and ran away laughing.
Joseph drew the curtains. No one got anywhere in life from playing in the street. ‘Focus’, he said. ‘You’ll always face distractions,’ he added, ‘but it’s about keeping your minds on the job.’ If he could take time out to work hard between his shifts, so could we. That was the unspoken message.
As we continued, he recognised our talents. But entertainment wasn’t just about skill: it was showmanship, he said. We had to create ‘the Jackson mystique’. As for those dance moves, never, ever start counting them. ‘You must not do that. It can’t be one, two, three … kick. That’s dancing by numbers,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to know and feel what’s coming up next. Take OUT the numbers, bring IN the feeling!’
In those early days, Joseph was patient and took his time shaping us. He knew we were green, so he was forgiving. When he witnessed our gradual improvement, this pleased him and in turn, made us dig deeper. Impressing him and winning his respect mattered. Family members like Uncle Luther and Mama Martha came over, and Joseph asked us to sing. He noted their enthusiastic reactions, but it was never good enough. ‘You can give more. We can do better!’ At least Joseph was kicking our butts with something we loved doing. At least he was spending time with us, unlike a lot of fathers in the neighbourhood. We felt driven, not pushed, guided into where we wanted to go.
‘Blood, sweat and tears, boys – if you wanna be the best, blood, sweat and tears,’ he said.
Tito had the guitar down, I was vocally strong, and Jackie’s forte was honed by the dance contests he’d won with Rebbie. He led the moves Joseph wanted, and we mirrored him until we were in sync. We were light on our feet so it soon came easy. Outside these sessions, I was encouraged to sing ballads: ‘Danny Boy’ and ‘Moon River’ – Mother’s favourites. I mastered them by putting on the LP and writing out the lyrics. The tough part was holding my notes with the lungs of a kid but Joseph noticed my initial struggle.
‘You gotta sing from your stomach,’ said our vocal coach, choreographer and manager. ‘Imagine a balloon expanding as it sucked in air,’ he said. ‘That’s breathing in. Releasing that air is how you sing, hold and control a note. Think bagpipes.’ I compared my lungs to balloons and bagpipes for many years because knowing how to breathe – swelling the stomach – taught me how to sing.
‘Master the melody before the lyrics. Know where the key change is. Know where the notes are,’ he said. This was the strongest lesson inside 2300 Jackson Street: understanding our voice is the melody, and that the melody is everything. ‘You should be able to sing a song without music.’
Even our ‘ear’ was being trained.
We knew it was all starting to click together when none of us looked down at Jackie’s feet, or muttered a countdown under our breath. We just fell into it. Performing felt like the most natural thing in the world.
MAMA MARTHA WAS EVER-PRESENT IN OUR childhood, always visiting from her house in Hammond, East Chicago, about 20 minutes away. She arrived with pound cake and a big smacker of a kiss, which, when planted on the cheek with vigour, made one of those squelching sounds of puckered lips on skin. A real grandmother’s ‘mwah’!
After we had put in endless practice as a trio, Joseph was keen to show his mother-in-law what his micro man-management had created. What we didn’t know was that Michael was also itching to get in on the action. As our all-female audience – Mother, Mama, Rebbie and La Toya (plus two-year-old Randy) – stood watching, Jackie, Tito and I lined up in formation, ready to do our father proud.
Michael was, as always, seated with his bongos on the floor. As we came out of the intro of some song I now forget, the girls started to clap with the rhythm and Michael stood. Then, sensing the song building, he started to sing spontaneously, coming in on a part. Distracted, I waved him away, trying to hush his mouth. As far as we were concerned, he was ruining our moment.
Before we knew it, Joseph had stopped the record.
‘He’s not supposed to be singing!’ I said, protesting.
Mama Martha jumped to his defence. ‘Leave him alone. Let the boy sing if he wants to sing! You want to sing, Michael?’
His face lit up. We stood to one side to let him have his moment i
n our grandmother’s sun and Joseph begrudgingly turned on the music as our little brother started to sing. What he produced was no ‘Jingle Bells’ at a Christmas window. It was one hundred times better because it was an invited rendition, not a forbidden carol. This was Michael, shy but confident and knowing exactly what to do: he played the mic, worked the floor and sang beautifully, and we were, like, ‘Damn – that’s good!’
I didn’t know where that voice came from.
‘Heaven,’ said Mother.
The wide-eyed look on Joseph’s face was a picture.
All that time on the sidelines, Michael had been memorising everything we were doing. And then Talent emerged from its hiding place.
As everyone applauded, he felt as big as his brothers, and that’s all a kid brother wants to feel.
Mama Martha and Mother nodded knowingly to one another, as if to say ‘Always knew that one had it in him’.
I don’t remember Joseph immediately installing him in the group because there were still reservations about his age: he had only just turned five on 29 August 1963. But a few weeks later that no longer mattered when Michael became the first brother to perform before a live audience – at a Parent Teacher Association gala at Garnett Elementary School. It was Michael’s first term there, and a set of grey, oblong blocks became his first stage.