Before Off the Wall: The Jackson 5 Motown Years

The Jackson family lived in a small house in Gary, Indiana, a steel town south of Chicago. Joseph Jackson, a crane operator who had played guitar in a local band, organised his sons into a group in the mid-1960s. Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Michael (the youngest, born in 1958) played talent shows, clubs and theatres across the Midwest, including the Apollo in New York.

The group recorded singles for the small Gary label Steeltown Records before Motown signed them. Those early years of relentless rehearsal and live performance are where Michael learned the stagecraft he would use for the rest of his career. He later spoke openly, in interviews and in his autobiography, about how demanding and at times painful that upbringing was.

The Jackson 5 auditioned for Motown in 1968 and signed with the label in 1969. Motown's publicity at the time said Diana Ross had discovered them, and their debut album was titled Diana Ross Presents the Jackson 5, but that was a marketing story. Other artists, including Gladys Knight and Bobby Taylor, had championed the group earlier.

Berry Gordy moved the family to Los Angeles and assigned a new writing and production team, which he called the Corporation: Gordy himself, Alphonzo Mizell, Freddie Perren and Deke Richards. The Corporation wrote and produced the group's first hits.

I Want You Back was released in October 1969 and reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1970. ABC and The Love You Save followed to number one in the spring and summer, and I'll Be There, a ballad, reached number one in October 1970. The Jackson 5 became the first group whose first four singles on a major label all topped the Hot 100.

The records sound joyful, but they are also tightly made. I Want You Back opens with a piano glissando and a bassline that is still studied by musicians. Eleven-year-old Michael's lead vocal is confident and rhythmically sharp, and it is the reason many listeners remember the group as Michael's.

Michael began releasing solo records while still in the group. Got to Be There (1971) was his first solo album, and the song Ben, from the film of the same name, reached number one on the Hot 100 in 1972. It was his first solo number one.

Motown kept tight control over what its artists recorded, and by the mid-1970s the brothers wanted to write and produce their own songs. Sales had also slowed after the early hits. In 1975 the group signed with Epic Records. Because Motown owned the Jackson 5 name, they became the Jacksons. Jermaine, who was married to Berry Gordy's daughter Hazel, stayed at Motown, and Randy Jackson joined the group.

At Epic the Jacksons were first produced by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, and then took control of their own records with Destiny (1978). Michael and Randy's Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground) was the group's biggest Epic hit, and it showed Michael the kind of dance record he could write for himself. A year later came Off the Wall.

The Jackson 5 were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. Michael was inducted again as a solo artist in 2001, one of a small number of artists inducted twice.

It is easy to treat the Jackson 5 as a prelude to the solo career, but the records hold up on their own. If you only know the solo albums, start with I Want You Back and I'll Be There, then play Rock with You. You will hear the same singer growing up, and you will hear why Off the Wall felt like such a leap.