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"Blues Away"

Date range confirmed in Kit O’Toole’s “Michael Jackson FAQ” (“recorded October 1976”)

Michael Jackson, writer/singer, “Moonwalk” autobiography (1988)

“Blues Away” was one of my first songs, and though I don’t sing it any more, I’m not embarrassed to hear it. I couldn’t have gone on in this business if I had ended up hating my own records after all that work. It’s a light song about overcoming a deep depression—I was going for the Jackie Wilson “Lonely Teardrops” way of laughing on the outside to stop the churning inside.

Kenny Gamble, album producer, The Philadelphia Tribune (August 28, 2012)

"Michael wrote that song, and I think McFadden & Whitehead and myself," said Gamble. "He needed help with it, so we all got in the studio with him because he played piano a little bit. So when he played the song on the piano and he was telling me how he wanted it to go, I said, 'You do it,' and I left the studio and let him do it, and he did an excellent job!

"I came back in when he started to overdub his voice, and he had all these great ideas about how to record his voice, like doubling his voice, doing all kinds of little ad libs and whatever. He had it all thought out in his head… Michael wrote 'Blues Away' by himself.