Michael Jackson Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

MJ, as in Michael Jackson

jukebox musical

My wife and I went to Proctors Theatre on Wednesday, December 4th, to see the touring company of the Broadway musical MJ. We had planned to attend the following weekend, but a more intriguing offer arose.

I thought it was funny when several dancers were working out on stage, and some people behind us complained. “Why are they stretching now? Why didn’t they do that backstage?” They didn’t recognize that this was part of the actual show, as I had suspected. “Five minutes before Michael!”

It isn’t easy to separate the show from what one already knows about Michael Jackson, and I know a lot. The trick about these so-called jukebox musicals is that you can’t just have a whole string of songs together in a “then he sang” order.

For instance, I thought Michael’s mother Katherine, who was supportive without being harsh, was involved in one of the early great performances, singing I’ll Be There with Little Mike and contemporary Michael. Here’s a guide to the songs.

It’s like the 1992 Dangerous concert that MJ and his troupe were preparing for. You have to have a narrative flow. Michael was an artist with a vision who never wanted to hear “No.” Everything had to be bigger and better, even when it didn’t make sense financially.

A different Joe Jackson

The production made much of this, rooted in his never-satisfied father, Joe, who pushed his sons to form what became the Jackson 5. He could see that Michael had the greatest potential for success. Joe was a failed musician who put his dreams aside in favor of factory work and raising a family of nine. He was living through Michael, and he could be brutal to his son. You can’t live on your laurels.

The MTV reporter who hung out around the rehearsal intimated some of the rumors about Michael sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber, getting plastic surgery, and bleaching his skin. Michael mostly sidesteps them.

Possibly the most interesting feature is that the same actor plays the guy playing his father and the guy playing his manager, and sometimes, they blend together in Michael’s mind.

Ultimately, I think it was a decent musical, although I thought the first half of the Lynn Nottage script was much stronger than the second.

I was reading someone’s comment that the main character (Jamaal Fields-Green) occasionally disappeared. Many interviews I’ve heard featured that high-pitch, fairly monotone vocal pattern.

I enjoyed the show for what it was, though I was happy that songs were unfamiliar to some of the audience so I could experience the performers. The MJ tour continues through August 2025.

Mildly off-topic: Unreleased Michael Jackson Tracks Discovered in Abandoned Storage Unit

Quincy Jones (1933-2024)

Back On The Block

Last week, my church had a First Friday concert featuring a jazz instrumental quartet. One of the last songs they performed was Killer Joe, and I knew I had a version of that song with a vocalist. But I couldn’t initially recall on what album.

Then it occurred to me that it was on Q’s Jook Joint, the 1995 album by Quincy Jones; that track featured Töne Löc, Queen Latifah, and Nancy Wilson (the jazz artist, not the Heart member). One of the people with whom I was talking also had the album.

Soon afterward, I heard that he passed away. As the Los Angeles Times put it, he “expanded the American songbook as a musician, composer, and producer and shaped some of the biggest stars and most memorable songs in the second half of the 20th century.”

“The music producer has been a cornerstone of the music industry since his early beginnings as an 18 year old in Seattle, performing as a trumpeter and arranger for various jazz bands around the area.”

Quincy was always a major force in my life, even before I knew who he was. His previous album, Back On The Block, from 1989, featured various artists I mentioned here.

He wrangled all the artists in the all-star recording of We Are The World, the 1985 charity record for famine relief in Africa. The same year, he scored and co-produced the movie The Color Purple.

The Gloved One

Q produced the massively successful Michael Jackson albums Off the Wall, Thriller, and Bad. Audio interviews with Jones are included in the 2001 special editions of the albums. Q called Eddie Van Halen to ask to play on Thriller’s Beat It, but the guitarist hung up, assuming someone was pranking him. Q’s then-wife, Peggy Lipton, knew Vincent Price and helped get him for the title track.

Possibly my favorite Q-produced song: Strawberry Letter 23.

Q created the music for Sanford and Son, Ironside, The Cosby Show, and several other programs. He scored Roots and over three dozen movies.

Until much later, I did not know this. “Jones produced all four million-selling singles for Lesley Gore during the early and mid-sixties, including “It’s My Party” (UK No. 8; US No. 1), its sequel “Judy’s Turn To Cry” (US No. 5), “She’s A Fool” (also a US No. 5) in 1963, and “You Don’t Know Me” (US No. 2 for four weeks in 1964). He continued to produce for Gore until 1966, including the Greenwich/Barry hits “Look Of Love” (US No. 27 in 1965) and “Maybe I Know” (UK No. 20; US No. 14 in 1964).”

He worked with Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Dizzy Gillespie, Sammy Davis Jr., Barbra Streisand, Helen Merrill, Stevie Wonder, John Legend, Andy Williams, and Sonny Bono, among many others.

His accolades are extensive, filling 18 pages in his 2001 autobiography, “Q.” You can read the pieces from THR, Variety, and the New York Times.

“Quincy Jones’ last Grammy win took place at the 65th awards held in 2023; through Harry Styles’ win with Harry’s House as the Album of the Year, it took Jones’ all-time Grammy records to 28 wins from 80 nominations.”

Graphic novel: Michael Jackson in Comics

as talented as he was eccentric

A friend of mine provided me with a digital version of Michael Jackson in Comics, a 190-page item from NBM Graphic Novels, officially released on February 12. Conceptually, I liked the idea of a narrative, broken up by various artists showing bits of the story.

It’s interesting to me that I actually knew a fair amount of the Michael Jackson story beforehand. I was familiar with his abusively controlling father, Joe trying to whip the Jackson 5 into shape. Like millions, I watched the 25th anniversary of Motown, when he debuted the moonwalk. But I had forgotten about his friendship with young Ryan White, who had become the face of HIV/AIDS in America.

Specifically, I wrote a paper in library school about how MTV didn’t allow black artists on the channel until the Columbia/Epic label threatened to pull ALL of their artists. Now, it’s hard to think of MTV without the videos from the Thriller album.

But the writer gingerly deals with the more “wacko” elements, such as his surgeries, his children, and the allegations of abusing young boys. Clearly, he believes Michael’s versions of the stories or thinks we just don’t know the facts.

The graphic pieces, done in the many styles, I enjoyed, for the most part. I preferred the pieces that actually expressed a point of view, rather than merely restating what was in the text. In particular, I thought Vox’s The Man With the White Socks, about a goofy fan, was a bit humorous.

Prolific

I take it that someone named Céka wrote both the text and scripted biography. He’s noted on Amazon as “also the author of the Rolling Stones in Comics. Formerly a copywriter in advertising, he has scripted over 30 graphic novels.”

The narrative is much better with the art. While some of the text was necessary, especially in the beginning and the very end, the story got very repetitive. If those text sections were edited down by about 50%, it would be a much better collection.

Moreover, he tended to use a lot of exclamation marks unnecessarily! And whoever did the layout would put hyphens to break up words in a most bizarre way! Mon-ths, for instance!

MJ was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Twice in five years. As the introduction to Michael Jackson in Comics notes, well beyond his passing in 2009, he “remains one of the most adulated and mysterious stars in the world.” I expect that is still true.

“Incredible singer, brilliant musician, amazing performer, he was just as talented as he was eccentric, adored as well as reviled with sordid accusations, sadly caught between a stolen childhood and a suffocating star system.”

Michael Jackson: erase performers?

Jackson 5.Diana Ross Presents.1969 The ever-inquisitive Arthur asked about a recent post:
About your Rolf Harris song [Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport] – it raises a question: Are we under any obligation to erase performers or songs we once liked because it later turns out that they were either allegedly or actually terrible humans or allegedly or actually did terrible things, like Rolf?

I should note that I was totally oblivious to the charges against the singer. “Harris was convicted of 12 indecent assaults at London’s Southwark Crown Court in June 2014, one on an eight-year-old autograph hunter, two on girls in their early teens, and a catalogue of abuse against his daughter’s friend over 16 years.”

That’s mighty disturbing. Had I known that, I might have passed on that particular song for the list, not as a way of rewriting history but rather not wanting to be perceived as condoning pedophilia. Am I going to go back and delete that musical link? No, because I didn’t know at the time.

Arthur continues: After Leaving Neverland aired on TV here, radio stations announced they were banning Michael Jackson’s music (despite the fact that many of them never played it, anyway, because the music they played was completely different genres or eras). It seems to me that the three reactions are to join the mob, defy the mob and continue to like whoever it is, or to just keep quiet about liking whatever it is or whoever the person is—cowed into silence by the mob. What do you think?

Now you’ve really hit a nerve. I haven’t seen Finding Neverland, and I don’t know that I will. But I do not dismiss the allegations out of hand.

I was writing a post about what songs I would singing karaoke to, a post I haven’t had a chance to finish because of the lack of time. Clearly, though, the songs would include the early works of the Jackson Five. If I were to pick one, it’d be The Love You Save, but ABC and I Want You Back would also be appropriate.

In the day, I was right in Jermaine’s vocal range. Even now I’d join in with anything that Michael, and Jackie, who also hit some really high notes, weren’t singing. For The Love You Save, in addition to harmonies, I’d sing, e.g.:

Those other guys will put you down
As soon as they succeed!

and

The way they talk about you
They’ll turn your name to dirt, oh!

Am I going to stop singing along with Jermaine because of something that Michael reportedly did? Nah. For that matter, will I cease playing Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall album, which I believe is better than Thriller? Absolutely not.

If I were DJing a wedding – unlikely, but I did so once – would I play J5 or MJ? I don’t think so, but only out of an overabundance of caution about offending others.

But where would it stop? I could name any number of musicians who were/are schmucks, and who are on the radio daily right now. Where the line is from which one can erase performers – an ahistoric action I’m most uncomfortable with – I just don’t know.

What if Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” had been recorded in the thirties? Wayne Brady and Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox answer that musical question

N is for Noteworthy? (ABC W)

A former contestant on 16 and Pregnant (that’s a show?) recently passed away.

For the longest time, I have been fascinated by what people are considered to be famous. The late Andy Rooney, who was best known for his commentary on the CBS News program 60 Minutes from 1978 to 2011, did a special around 1979, where he mused who was noteworthy. To him, Paul McCartney was famous, but Michael Jackson was not. Of course, this was before the album Thriller came out; I suspect Rooney would have altered his opinion.

In the days prior to 157 cable channel, it was pretty easy in the United States to ascertain that whoever was on national television had a modicum of fame. That is no longer the case. A former contestant on 16 and Pregnant (that’s a show?) recently passed away, and it was reported in my local paper; of course, I never heard of her.

There’s a database called Datasets I belong to, and it put out, at the end of this past year, an international list of “celebrity deaths”. The roster for April 11, 2016 included:

Ed Snider, 83 – American sports executive (Comcast Spectacor, Philadelphia Flyers, Philadelphia 76ers)
Doug Banks, 57 – American radio personality (The Doug Banks Radio Show)
João Carvalho, 28 – Portuguese mixed martial arts fighter
Hokie Gajan, 56 – American football player and broadcaster (New Orleans Saints)
Veenu Paliwal, 44 – Indian motorcyclist
Alan Hurd, 78 – English cricketer.
Alvin Lubis, 37 – Indonesian musician.
Miss Shangay Lily, 53 – Spanish drag queen.
Steve Quinn, 64 – British rugby league player (York, Featherstone)
Albert Filozov, 78 – Russian actor.
Emile Ford, 78 – Saint Lucian singer (“What Do You Want to Make Those Eyes at Me For?”) and sound engineer.
Édgar Perea, 81 – Colombian politician and football commentator.
Tony Ayers, 82 – Australian public servant.
Peter J. Jannetta, 84 – American neurosurgeon (Allegheny General Hospital).
Huntly D. Millar, 88 – Canadian medical technology executive.
Yura Halim, 92 – Bruneian politician, Chief Minister (1967–1972) and lyricist (national anthem)
Richard Ransom, 96 – American businessman (Hickory Farms).
Anne Gould Hauberg, 98 – American arts patron, founder of the Pilchuck Glass School
Ruth Gilbert, 99 – New Zealand poet.2016-04-11
Dame Marion Kettlewell, 102 – British naval officer, Director of the Wrens (1966–1970)
Mohsen Gheytaslou, 25–26 – Iranian soldier (65th Airborne Special Forces Brigade).
A. R. Surendran, no data – Sri Lankan lawyer
Tibor Ordina, 45 – Hungarian track and field athlete

I know NONE of these 23 people, save for Ford, who I heard of only vaguely. I did read Ransom’s obit. Let’s try February 13.

Bořek Šípek, 66 – Czech architect and designer
Flakey Dove, 30 – British racehorse, winner of the 1994 Champion Hurdle
Trifon Ivanov, 50 – Bulgarian footballer (national team)
Slobodan Santrač, 69 – Serbian football player (Yugoslavia) and manager
Barry Jones, 74 – New Zealand Roman Catholic prelate
Giorgio Rossano, 76 – Italian footballer.
Antonin Scalia, 79 – American judge, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court (since 1986)
Nathan Barksdale, 54 – American heroin dealer, dramatized in The Wire
Bud Webster, 63 – American science fiction and fantasy writer.
Angela Bairstow, 73 – English badminton player.
Robin Ghosh, 76 – Bangladeshi composer.
Avigdor Ben-Gal, 79 – Israeli general, GOC Northern Command (1977–1981)
Yvonne Barr, 83 – Irish virologist, discovered Epstein–Barr virus
O. N. V. Kurup, 84 – Indian poet, recipient of the Jnanpith Award (2007)
Mike Shepherdson, 85 – Malaysian Olympic hockey player (1956) and cricketer (national team).
Edward J. McCluskey, 86 – American electrical engineer.
Sir Christopher Zeeman, 91 – British mathematician.
Rafael Moreno Valle, 98 – Mexican military physician and politician, Governor of Puebla (1969–1972), Secretary of Health (1964–1968).

Of the 17 people, and one horse, listed, the only one I had unequivocally heard of was Scalia, the SCOTUS justice whose vacancy President Obama was not allowed to fill. I do remember reading the obituaries of Ghosh and Zeeman.

I thought to write this when Zsa Zsa Gabor died in 2016. While she was in some 30 movies, she was most famous for being famous, a precursor to Paris Hilton or those darn Kardashians.

In December, Arthur posted YouTube Rewind: The Ultimate 2016 Challenge plus some 2016 music mashups. I knew hardly anyone in these videos – I must be getting old – but I didn’t care at all.

ABC Wednesday – Round 20