Note: If viewing Michael Jackson Ultimate Archive on archive.org (Wayback Machine), please view the latest snapshot of this page for the most up-to-date information and media.

"Right On!" Katherine Jackson Interview

Date range assessed by the fact that, at the point of this interview, The Jackson 5 is “now known as The Jacksons at Epic Records” (The Motown contract expired on March 16, 1976.)

"Right On!" (1976)

I always say that in a way, I started the group. We sat around the house; I wouldn't even let them run around with the neighborhood kids. Tito learned to play the guitar and we'd sing. One day I was listening to the kids sing a Temptations song and they were really good. I told my husband, Joe, I wanted him to hear the kids, and from that day on, he started working with them", remembers Katherine Jackson, mother of the nine Jacksons.

In the early days, Mrs. Jackson did everything for the group although now she can relax and take it easy. "I even made their suits", she mentioned, in her soft spoken voice. "I had to make six outfits because their friend Johnny was in the group too. When I think back on those outfits, they were terrible!"

She chuckles and winces in remembrance. She's a very pleasant woman, always smiling with a streak of mischief filling her eyes. They say her kids get their teasing streak from Papa Joe, but after being with her for a short while, you can see, she likes to have fun too. Michael has a lot of his mommy in him.

"Michael, as quiet as he is now, was really outgoing like Randy as a little boy. He was just as fast!", she exclaimed in admiration. "He'd play tricks on people all the time. When he was about eleven or twelve, he had a really high voice, so he and other boys would get together and call his brothers at hotels pretending to be girls who wanted to meet them. He'd trick the brothers into going down to the lobby to meet the girls and they'd go down there and not see anybody. THen he'd laugh and say, 'that was me, fool!'"

After a few years, Michael got quiet and serious. This was of deep concern to his mother who longed to comfort her son. "I think a lot of it had to do with his adolescence. He had acne. It got so bad that he wouldn't look in the mirror because he was so embarrassed. He went to a dermatologist who gave him something that turned him completely black, like the color of your tape recorder."

As you know, Michael's face is now a healthy normal color, but it must have been a very traumatic experience for his mother...

It would appear that with so many children in one family, that some of them would lack for attention, but apparently this wasn't so with the Jacksons. "Michael's the child who didn't want any attention. He was very independent, even as a little baby..."

...As the years rolled back, more and more family secrets came out as Mrs. Jackson, immaculately dressed in pink sat in her spotlessly clean Encino kitchen drinking in the down-home smell of mustard greens cooking on the stove. "They always liked chili and sweet potato pie the best, and still do."

..."Randy was about six when he showed musical interest. He would beat on bongos, at the time we had the little ones which fit between the legs. Michael used to play those before we got a drummer--when he was just a mere baby."

...According to Mrs. Jackson, five-year-old Michael was the choreographer who got some of his ideas from watching James Brown and The Temptations on TV. Jermaine did all the leading until Michael turned seven. "No one was ever jealous, or anything like that", she said firmly. "They were really good kids; they didn't even fight--or at least not when I was around. After they got older, they told me about the fights they used to have."

GLADYS KNIGHT BELIEVED IN THEM!

The boys were so excited when they entered their first talent show at the local high school and even more excited when they got their picture taken. Never once did they complain when their father and a friend of theirs Jack Richardson took them to gigs in Chicago, Philly, and Harlem.

"But they were crushed once when we got a check for $400 and it bounced. I still have that check in my bedroom as a reminder of their beginnings. Of course, now they're worth a lot more than $400 per night."

Looking back on the phenomenon of The Jackson Five, now known as The Jacksons at Epic Records. Mrs. Jackson credits their togetherness for their success. "They were lucky too. They got good bookings with people such as Gladys Knight who wanted to take them to Motown where he was signed at the time. All the kids in Gary dreamed of getting to Motown... to do the things The Jackson Five ended up doing."...