enjoyed the michael jackson piece. only thing is i remember your mom as loving that album. shortly after it came out we drove to atlanta. we wore that tape out. and knew most of the lyrics by the time we got there. i haven't spoke to her but that's my clear memory.Heh, I remember that trip. We drove from Baltimore to Atlanta, for some book conference. When you're young, your sense of time is all screwy. I remember feeling like the trip was taking forever. I don't remember Thriller, so much as Joan Armatrading. But I trust Dad's memory more than my memory on that one.
dad
Anyway, I wanted to pick up on a debate that we started in on yesterday, and that being where Michael Jackson stands in terms of the old schoolers like Jackie Wilson, Aretha, Etta, Big O, Sam Cooke, James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Marvin Gaye etc.
Now, I realize that all these cats had different styles, and were working in different subgenres. Peter Guralnick would say Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, were more classic soul. He would throw James Brown in there too. But others would see James Brown as the beginning of Funk. I don't want to get bogged down in that debate, because I don't think there's a real answer, nor do I think it much matters. I'm more interested in the celestial place that these singers occupy, and whether there's any sense that Mike belongs up there with them.
Thriller came out at an interesting time. Bands were really losing out, as folks figured out they could do replace a horn section with a keyboard. There's this sense now that anything that came out of the disco era, and the post-disco era is essentially awful. As a kid, I had some of that. We nominally hated R&B and thought of hip-hop as the harder, "truer" form. Later we came to see hip-hop as the child of funk and soul, and 80s R&B as a corrupted, corporate, step-child.This is obviously simplistic, and not only do I not subscribe to it now. (Marvin's "Give It Up" is classic.) I don't know how much I subscribed to it then. (Dig the Lisa-Lisa clip below.) But the question is where does Mike fit into all of that? It's easy to dismiss him, just on the basis of his success, and the qualitative decline of his later work. That second part is true of almost any musician, though.
From my perspective, Mike has earned an honored place in the black music canon. Quincey Jones obviously deserves credit, but citing him to discredit Mike is like citing Steve Cropper (or Issac Hayes) to discredit Otis Redding. It's wierd to think of Mike in that tradition, given his mega-success. But I don't know how you cut him out.
Then again, maybe I'm not the best person to ask. I love Smooth Criminal, after all. I remember coming to school and fools being like, "Yo, did you see Mike hit that lean!" My whole childhood revolves around Mike's--Jackson, Tyson, Jordan...
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
I think what makes Mike so unique, and why he deserves to be in the pantheon of old school soul is that he was old school. I think now, the legend of Mike tends to begin with Thriller, but we forget he grew up in Motown. I think you can take 10 year old Mike, and what he did back then and end it there and he belongs with Otis, Jackie, Marvin and them. On that alone. take this clip from The Ed Sullivan Show from 68 or 69:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJhlFg2wvtc&feature=related
Thats just insane how good he was back then, thats history. The sparkling glove legacy no doubt deserves an honored place in soul/r&b. The King of Pop label to me has always been something of a misnomer. To me he has always been soul, and his career from 10 yr old Mike to the glove has always reflected the change of times of r&b.
Wow, what an incredible video, I have never seen anything like that. Young Michael was an amazing performer. Thanks for linking that.
That is a great performance. But I have just one question.
What. The. Hell. Is. Diana. Ross. Wearing?
A young Michael was pure talent and cuteness.
There is one correction: Berry Gordon, of Motown, decided to create the lengend that the Jackson 5 were discovered by Diana Ross, when in fact, they were discovered by Gladys Knight. Gladys often speaks about this in her interviews.
P.S. If you've seen pictures of Micheal's children unmasked lately, I wonder why none of them have any of his features?
I just wanna thank you for posting these MJ threads. I watched that performance of Billie Jean, and damn if I hadn't forgotten just how amazing he was. (May still be on stage, but as a recording artist, his career seems pretty much over).
And now Smooth Criminal. I'm just watching and smiling.
When I get home I'm gonna put it up big on the TV and crank up the volume.
I am not with you TNC, MJ was a great singer, but Otis Redding, james Brown, and Ray Charles are true originals. MJ is not!
Why?
Cause he didn't compose his beats. Computers did it. But he was original in the way he started from a black kid that looked like me, and end up looking like a white woman like Joan Rivers!
I think you're mistaken there. He composed them ON a computer, they weren't composed BY a computer. "Algorithim 1.5.4.7.2, logic step add violin stabs."
Michael Jackson as a kid was part of the end of the Motown era, but as he grew he became something else--King of Pop, and very good at it till he weirded out everyone. But "pop" or his brand of it, which has left Disney characters in its wake didn't create the same kind of environment that raises the bar for everyone. I see most of those performers including MJ more as purely entertainers, of which at his best Michael Jackson was the best.
But as for singers, TN names big names up there, but I would certainly take Stevie Wonder (here again, I would toss MJ's whole kiddie oeuvre into Fingertips Part 2), Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, David Ruffin (my favorite), and for pure heart rending soul, Percy Sledge.
A PS on Jackie Wilson (who did not, Keith, sound like Kermit the Frog, but had the kind of full bodied tenor that by contrast shows up Michael Jackson's vocals somewhere in the mousesqueak range, had a convincing emotional range that by contrast renders MJ automaton like), I wonder how many know that he suffered a heart attack at a benefit performance in 1975 and went into a coma for the final nine years of his life.
You know, Kermit the Frog had a pretty good singing voice.
More seriously, Jackie's a bit more of a vocalist and yeah, MJ more an entertainer. But if it wasn't for all the hugeness of his appearances, the album sale, the mental illness...I think things are so big when we talk about him it's hard to step back and think about the impact and the musicianship. "Baby Be Mine" is beautiful. That vocal solo in the middle of "Human Nature"? That's hard to top. I think he's one of the most versatile R & B performers-- from the tough "Beat It" to the softer, smoother stuff.
Complaints about Jackson's singing always strike me as wrong. Does anyone think James Brown was a "great" singer?
I've had some debates about whether not being a good singer disqualifies someone's music. I'd argue that someone can be a less than stellar singer, but still be entirely appropriate for the music they're making. Might not be up your alley, but Jason Molina of Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co. has what could be called a grating vocal style, but given the songs he writes, it fits perfectly into the raw pain being expressed in many of those songs.
I think no one epitomizes the "not a great singer, but appropriate for the music" idea better than Tom Waits for me. And I'll add that someone with a great voice can utterly destroy a great song (and not in the good way) if it's not the right kind of voice for the song. I heard something the other day--couldn't turn it off quick enough--a woman with an operatic voice, gorgeous in its genre probably, singing an old Robert-Johnson-y blues song, and it was horrible.
Waits is one, Brian, but the obvious choice would be Dylan. I actually think Waits is a better singer than Dylan
Add Lady Day to that list. I think I've heard she only had a 1-octave range, but *damn* she made the most of it.
Not always, but on ballads, James Brown was emotionally convincing to me in a way that I never have found Michael Jackson. My problem with Michael Jackson is not so much the tone of his vocals, which are always in tune, but the lack of convincingness and humanity in his delivery, although he does express joy well, and that is something that cannot be denied.
No humanity or convincingness is a new one. I don't know how you could hear Man in the Mirror and think he wasn't genuine. To each his own, I get it, you just didn't dig MJ. Thats cool. I can't begrudge anyone their own tastes, especially one who can pull out a Fingertips Part 2 reference. I think it's about time for my kiddies to learn about Little Stevie.
Seriously? I'm with keith on this one. Listen to "Butterflies" from his last album. It's convincing to me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAa7z5QdL4M
Weight: because it's Friday--this commercial, one of a series for BMW produced by Tony Scott, with James Brown, Clive Owen, and Gary Oldman (also a surprise cameo at the end) in which James Brown renegotiates his contract with the devil (Oldman) with a wager on a drag race beginning in Vegas:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzOxEkwHqEI
I did know that, I believe it was in Chicago(not sure though). Look, take my Jackie swipe in jest, I think he was an icon and am forever grateful that his music saved us from Vigo the Carpathian in Ghostbusters 2. And don't get me started about Little Stevie Wonder, you would crush my soul if I had to chose between him and young Mike. I will not do it! I just think your selling the musical chops of MJ a little short. Did he have "a full bodied tenor" like Jackie, I guess not, nor did Smokey(who was a better songwriter than singer in my opinion) and Ruffin and The Temps are one of a kind. But to poo poo young Mike, a voice that dripped of soul, is a little crazy. I don't get your argument about raising the bar, because he did not exist in the time of Otis and Jackie?
Michael Jackson in his prime was the only one doing what he was doing, but the Miracles, Temps, et al--they were all performing at the same time and the style of music that came from motown, stax/volt and atlantic among others actually dominated the entire American popular dance music scene. There were simply more great performers then--and that, if you look at artistic movements throughout history, always has the effect of raising the level of the artform all around. Collectively they raised the bar for popular American dance music. Michael Jackson was not part of such a phenomenon, except as part of its tail end, and the one he inspired in its wake has been to my ears rather bland, even, dare I say it, robotic.
But it's a generational thing. I was already an adult when he hit the scene, so his popstardom did not register with me as anything more than that.
And there it is..."Good ole day syndrome". I hear you, and I admit that like TNC I was raised in an era dominated by Mike's, so naturally I want to defend MJ. But I think it's little unfair to hold the sparkling glove era against him. The time of Motown, Stax?volt was new to everyone back then. Of course those artist were going to influence an audience that had never been exposed to anything like that. Hell I wasn't even around back then, and they influenced me greatly because it was the beginning.
One more thing on MJ, I don't anyone was doing what he was doing at his peak not because he didn't inspire. Really, who in the 80's could do that? Although I think your way off in regards to starting a dance movement, robotic was IN in the 80's. Who hasn't tried to Moonwalk or lean????
Before Michael Jackson, black artists didn't get heavy rotation on MTV. After came "Walk This Way," Prince's videos, and hip-hop as a central cultural phenomenon. If Michael hadn't broken through, someone else might have-- but Michael's still the one who did it.
I'm happy to be causing so much consternation and response--allows one to see the pleasure of trollery--feed me, feed me--but DH all I can say about butterfly conviction in response is "Please, Please, Please."
I just want to point that we have a Jewish-American (CitizenE) and a Mexican-American (Keith) debating Mike's place in black music. Not that I have a problem with that. To the contrary, I think it's awesome and says a lot.
Ha! And that's what makes this little space of yours so great. Kinda like how I feel when I see a brutha from Baltimore school people on the greatness of Emmitt and da Boys.
By the way, did you guys know that Marvin Gaye was playing the drums on Fingertips. Good god Berry had a deep ass bench back in them days. It's even more amazing that from Berry Gordy, Rockwell was spawned...
Maybe there hasn't been enough distance yet--it's easy to point to the performers in the sixties and seventies and then pick out their impact on music that followed them because of all the time that's passed. I know that my gut rebels a little at including Michael Jackson in that group at first glance, but maybe it's because I haven't paid enough attention to pop music in the last ten years and haven't seen his impact--or worse, haven't wanted to credit him. I don't know if it's the music that had the impact or the showmanship--I see visual hints of MJ in all sorts of people today (though I suspect most of them would claim James Brown as an influence first), but I don't hear them so much. Again--I've not paid close attention to those genres, so it would be easy for me to miss.
One other thing--it's impossible to overestimate the damage the child-molestation claims have done to Jackson's image. I know there's an argument about separating the artist from the person, but lots of people can't do that.
One other thing--it's impossible to overestimate the damage the child-molestation claims have done to Jackson's image. I know there's an argument about separating the artist from the person, but lots of people can't do that.
Especially when the artist is alive, has kids, etc. It's easier to forgive someone who lived five hundred or even fifty years ago.
pardon the 'jacking' of this thread and pls feel free to erase but thought that folks might want to hear T talking about hi dad right now on NPR's Fresh-Air father'sday show
"It's easy to dismiss him, just on the basis of his success, and the qualitative decline of his later work." Did the quality of the music really decline or did the music sales slow? I ask that because, I wonder if we sometiems equate the two more than we should. If memory serves, Dangerous was on a pretty healthy pace to make huge sales when the first allegations of pedophilia surfaced with enough evidence to be taken seriously. Sales plummeted and he never really recovered (nor should he have, IMHO) so its acceptable to say his music wasn't as good as it was when he was moving millions of units. Although I understand it, I don't know if it's accurate in Mike's case.
I think the decline started when Quincy Jones and he split. The hooks were gone, and there were fewer and fewer good singles.
This may be true and I don't necessarily disagree with you. However,QJ last worked with him on "Bad" and although "Dangerous" was doing pretty well in sales, I only though 1/2 the songs were good. But to me "Remember the Time", "Dangerous", "In The Closet" and "Can't Let Her Get Away" were all right up there with some of his earlier work (of course I realize that opinion might not be shared by all LOL).
"Remember the Time" certainly is up there.
I love "Remember the Time." I'm completely incapable of judging "In the Closet" fairly. It just creeps me right out.
It's complicated because as MJ and QJ were parting ways, you are also in the era of hip-hop's rise. That was bound to make any pre-rap Black artist in the '80s seem out of touch and out of sync.
Yeah, that's true.
This made me laugh, because I watched thatguywiththeglasses.com's review of "Moonwalker" yesterday. He spends a solid 15 minutes tearing apart the general terribleness of the entire film up to the point the "Smooth Criminal" video starts, at which point he has to grudgingly (and fanboyishly) admit that that sequence is in fact the coolest fucking music video ever.
Everything he is to the culture is in that film: he plays it up as an idol, a target, a cheeseball, a guy with some incredibly disturbing childhood issues, and a pretentious "world activist," and in his spare time, he does performance art that just make your jaw drop with the awesome.
I definitely don't know the timeline as well as others here but aren't the comparisons here with the mo-town greats comparing Jackson 5 era Michael with fully grown adult artists? I honestly don't know which way this cuts as an 'advantage'. Additionally The Jackson 5 were, to my mind, a boy band so its strange to compare them to individual artists. A talented and legitimate in their own right band but a boy band too.
Then, during Michael's solo career, its simply different music. His disco-pop-rock, it feels to me comparing this with the mo town stuff is like asking if Biggie is better than Johnny Cash. The question just doesn't make sense to me in an apples and oranges way.
Anyway, really I just wanted to share a great article I read a few years ago published after the last Jackson trail talking about how celebrity trial 'are American tragedies for our age'. I wonder how he'd update it in light of the Phil Spector conviction.
http://dir.salon.com/story/ent/feature/2005/06/14/jackson_essay/index.html
Well, the Jackson 5 were a boy band technically. But they were all about Michael, he was the group and their music reflected what was being played at the time. I contend that young Mike was every bit the soul singer as any of that time and before that time, regardless of age. Off the Wall, his first solo, was heavily disco influenced, much like all the music of that time(1979). But I don't know how you can hear "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough" or "I Can't Help It" and not hear soul/r&b. The 80's is where we get into the pop vs. soul/r&b debate. I consider Thriller and Bad to be pop successes, but the music, to me, remains as soulful as any of the time. I don't think there is that much difference between say "Human Nature" and "Sexual Healing" by Marvin. Certainly not as big a divide as Biggie and Johhny Cash.
I wouldn't even think this was debatable - Michael Jackson = all-star member of the Black music pantheon. That's indisputable on the basis of 1) the quality of his output, from the Jackson 5 through "Thriller", at the very least; 2) his impact on pop music in terms of sales and influence - look at how many other family bands with young vocalists came out post-Jackson 5?; 3) his impact on American pop culture (and this is before the Jacko phase).
Honestly, the only reason, for me, that Jackson doesn't belong in that conversation is because of his alleged pedophilia. That has nothing to do with his music but it obviously impacts his public image.
The celestial ranking of black music*: and imho you gotta do it chronologically -- because the present can't exist w/o the past. And you have to look at influence. "Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see." There is musical genius on this list.
(1) Sam Cooke/Ray Charles - took gospel music and made it secular
(3) Little Richard/Chuck Berry - rock n roll can't exist w/o them
(4) James Brown - funk, soul, hip-hop, all of it springs from him
(5) Otis Redding - the best SOUL singer ever
(6) Temptations/Isley Bros. - best group of all time debate?
(7) Marvin Gaye/Stevie Wonder - btw them the best of 70s Mowtown
(8) Curtis Mayfield/Donnie Hathaway - singing & songwriting combo
(9) Teddy Pendergrass/Al Green - best of the 70s non-Mowtown
(10) Michael Jackson/Prince - the 2 best of the modern era
Honorable mentions:Issac Hayes, Luther Vandross, Jackie Wilson, Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave, Barry White, D'Angelo, Lenny Williams, Ben E. King, Smokey Robinson, Levi Stubbs, Billy Stewart, Rick James, Phillipe Wynne, Philip Bailey/Maurice White.
btw the props to Thriller are all deserved but track for track Off the Wall is a superior album.
*male
Thats a good list, the only honorable mention that I think is missing is Lionel Ritchie and The Commodores. That cat was a hell of a songwriter. To this day, one of the most cold blooded break up songs ever is "Sail On".
Thanks. The honorable mention list could go and on. As Peter King, a NFL hall-of-fame voter, once described there is the hall-of-fame and the hall of the very good. No shame in being in the hall of the very good. Lionel is on that list.
Love the inclusion of Ben E. King--Drifters, Spanish Harlem--Puerto Rican beats-black doo wop connection. I wonder here what you all think of Jimi Hendrix--without Hendrix, there is no Prince, really.
I'm glad you mentioned The Drifters, an interesting group with a lot of personnel changes. I think that Clyde McPhatter and Ben E. King were the only Drifters who had solo careers. My own "journey into black music" started with Spanish Harlem. But the most beautiful vocal performance of the mid-20th century is, in my opinion, Johnny Moore's lead on "Under the Boardwalk."
Another asterick to note this list generally excludes blues and jazz (purposefully, I'm sure).
LOL -- and women!
It's worth mentioning that Mike actually got his name on a patent for the boots used for the lean in the Smooth Criminal video:
http://blogbilongadam.blogspot.com/2008/12/michael-jackson-inventor.html
I, for one, appreciated the Joan Armatrading reference. She is one artist who is sadly underappreciated
I was just about to post about Armatrading - so underappreciated.
I was gonna say that it has been clear to me in reading this blog how well TNC was brought up, but the fact that his parents had him listening to Joan Armatrading puts them in the parental stratosphere.
Odd how some people get such stardom (Lady GaGa?), and some don't (Armatrading).
I don't think acknowledging Quincy Jones' genius as a producer takes anything away from Mike. It's a symbiotic relationship. Except for maybe folksinging and some techno stuff, music is a collaborative art form. Always has been. The producer's role in pop is arguably more important than the conductor's role in classical music, because that first collaboration with the composer is recorded and becomes THE definitive version (at least for a while), while a symphony has many interpretations. But the producer has got to have something to work with. Classical music snobs love to argue about which conductor and what orchestra does the 'best' version of, say, Beethoven's 9th. But if old Ludwig Van hadn't cranked out a work of genius, nobody would care about interpretations, because we would have long ago forgotten that it ever existed.
I don't think acknowledging Quincy Jones' genius as a producer takes anything away from Mike. It's a symbiotic relationship. Except for maybe folksinging and some techno stuff, music is a collaborative art form. Always has been. The producer's role in pop is arguably more important than the conductor's role in classical music, because that first collaboration with the composer is recorded and becomes THE definitive version (at least for a while), while a symphony has many interpretations. But the producer has got to have something to work with. Classical music snobs love to argue about which conductor and what orchestra does the 'best' version of, say, Beethoven's 9th. But if old Ludwig Van hadn't cranked out a work of genius, nobody would care about interpretations, because we would have long ago forgotten that it ever existed.
Great point, JadedOptimist. The difference between recorded sound and live musical performance doesn't get discussed enough.
You wanna see the Michael Jackson legacy, watch some Bollywood. Here's a semi-random example.
I hadn't realized that some people didn't realize MJ was a child star -- that's a huge part of his messed-up-ness, and of his incredible talent.