walking upstream…
Jackson 5
Joe Jackson caught his sons playing his guitar without permission in the early 1960s and, instead of punishing them, started rehearsing them three years straight before he "turned them loose." By 1966 that discipline won a Gary talent show with a cover of the Temptations; by 1967 it won the Apollo with James Brown material; by July 1968 a nine-year-old Michael was singing Brown's own steps back at a Motown audition tape, and three days later Berry Gordy signed the group. Within a year the Jackson 5 became the first act in pop history to send their first four singles to number one. What got them to Detroit wasn't polish alone — it was a family act built, song by borrowed song, out of the touring circuit's best material, until the copying became a sound entirely their own.
the sound in question
1969
I Want You BackJackson 5
walk the tributaries ↓
James Brown1960s–70s · Funk / Soul / Rhythm and blues
At six, Michael Jackson's mother woke him whenever James Brown was on television. "When I saw him move, I was mesmerized," he said at Brown's funeral in 2006. "I've never seen a performer perform like James Brown." That homework became the family's calling card: at their 1967 Apollo win they performed Brown's own material, and on the July 1968 Motown audition tape, nine-year-old Michael sang lead on Brown's "I Got the Feelin'" while doing Brown's footwork — the performance that got them signed three days later.
listen: upstream & heresource: NPR — "For James Brown, a Funeral as Big as His Life" (Michael Jackson's own words on Brown's influence) ↗
1965
I Got You (I Feel Good)James Brown
1974
Dancing MachineJackson 5
listen forThere's no surviving commercial recording of that audition song, but the debt is audible anyway: put Brown's tight, horn-punctuated stop-time hits against the Jackson 5's 1974 "Dancing Machine" and hear the same trick of a rhythm section slamming shut on a beat while the vocal keeps moving — the same stagecraft that got a nine-year-old signed, run through a disco filter.
Smokey Robinson1960s–70s · R&B / Soul / Motown
Before Motown built songs around them, the Jackson 5 opened shows for the Miracles, and by the time Rolling Stone caught their Madison Square Garden set in 1970, the borrowing had become the highlight. Michael's spoken lead-in to "Don't nobody have the blues like I have" set up his cover of the Miracles' "Who's Loving You," performed, the review noted, "with much more authority than he conveys on record." Jermaine, meanwhile, sang "I Found That Girl" — written as the Miracles' "Shop Around" answer song — as his own showcase.
listen: upstream & heresource: Rolling Stone — "Jackson Five ↗
1960
Who's Loving YouSmokey Robinson
1969
Who's Loving YouJackson 5
listen forRobinson's original "Who's Loving You" rides a slow, aching triplet groove built for his high, wounded tenor, the Miracles' harmonies cushioning every held note. The Jackson 5's studio version keeps that same pleading structure and tempo but hands the lead to eleven-year-old Michael, whose voice cracks toward the top notes where Robinson's stays smooth and controlled — the strain itself becomes the performance, a boy singing a grown man's heartbreak and half getting away with it.
The Temptations1960s–70s · R&B / Soul / Motown / Psychedelic soul
The turning point came in 1966, before any label was involved: a Michael-led cover of the Temptations' "My Girl" won a local Gary talent contest, and that win was enough to convince Joe Jackson to start booking his sons professionally out of state. The group later opened shows for the Temptations themselves on the Chitlin' Circuit, close enough to absorb the choreography — five men moving as one unit — that became the Jackson 5's own signature.
listen: upstream & heresource: The Independent (Washington Post) — Joe Jackson obituary (Apollo win, opening for the Temptations and the Miracles) ↗
1966
Get ReadyThe Temptations
1970
ABCJackson 5
listen for"My Girl" won the talent show, but it's the Temptations' "Get Ready" that shows what the Jackson 5 actually kept from the group: a driving unison hook traded call-and-response between voices, built for a synchronized stage move on every downbeat. Put it against "ABC" and hear the same engine running faster — five-part vocal-group drilling, chants answered by chants, turned into a bubblegum-soul chorus built for a school-age crowd instead of a nightclub.