An Experiment in Passivity -- Day 14 -- Michael Jackson & His Influences
Great artists don't develop in a vacuum, they stand on a foundation build by those who came before them, and Michael Jackson was no exception.
If you are a true fan of an artist, it is always worthwhile to discover some of the artists who influenced your hero. Interviews are a great way to discover an artist's influences, but you can also develop an eye and ear for it -- in Michael Jackson's case that is a very effective method.
Once you discover who influenced your favorite artists, a whole new world can open up for you.
Dancing
This was a great surprise as I was preparing this post. I thought I would need to dig deep into YouTube to find clips from several dancers to show the foundation upon which Michael Jackson created his magnificent artistry. It turned out some wonderful YouTuber had already done a fantastic job! I suspect some of you will be quite surprised.
Singing
Micheal Jackson was born in 1958, and as we know he had a house full of older brothers and a father who was determined to get them into the music business. Clearly they were studying what worked, and trying to master it -- as you can see in the above clip of Michael's audition tape dancing like James Brown.
In 1964 he would have been 5 or 6 when both of these hits by Little Anthony and the Imperials came out -- at a time when music and entertaining were coming alive for him. Listen to the voice, but also notice hand and arm gestures for dramatic impact.
Little Anthony
Jackie Wilson
Here we know the Jackson Five covered his songs & there's this from Michael himself
Micheal Jackson, like a true artist, internalized those influences and made them his own special amalgam.
I've interviewed three great session musicians who recorded with Michael Jackson, and I want to share something I think you Michael Jackson fans will appreciate. Here is a bit of my interview with the great guitarist Louie Shelton. How many people can say they recorded with Elvis, John Lennon, Micheal Jackson, and Marvin Gaye? We had just finished speaking about Elvis, the King of Rock and Roll, and I then asked him about...
Early Michael Jackson
Alan Bryson: Of course he was the king of rock & roll, but you also got to meet Michael Jackson, the king of pop, back when he was a little kid. What kind of impression did he make on you?
Louie Shelton: He blew me away. For the Motown sessions the artists generally weren't there, it was just the writers and the producers. So we'd put the tracks together without even hearing how the song went. But I was fortunate because they had called me down to do a guitar overdub and Michael was there doing the vocal on "I Want You Back." So, other than the producer, I was probably one of the only people who got to see him sing that live in the studio.
And I was absolutely blown away by what I was seeing. He was out there on the mic and I think he was 11 years old at the time, and he was singing so great, with such energy, conviction, feel, pitch—everything, and doing it with every ounce of his little body. I was already stoked to be able to play on the Motown sessions anyway, because I was such a big fan of all their other artists, we'd played their music in the clubs all those years. There was a certain groove and feel that always came out on the Motown stuff. It came from a deep place because I had such an appreciation for that Motown sound, and now I could come up with some licks and be part of the groove—it was a unique pleasure for me. Michael was an incredible talent right through all the records we made with the Jackson Five, and later on the stuff he did with Quincy, you put that stuff on now, man, and it will still get a crowd going in a second. Great stuff.
Alan Bryson: Quincy did an amazing job on Thriller and Bad.
Louie Shelton: Again, that was this new crop of musicians, like Greg Phillinganes. And then bringing Eddie Van Halen in to do a guitar solo on "Beat It," it was outrageous, one of the best I've ever heard on record.
Alan Bryson: And on "Bad," I think Quincy had Jimmy Smith come in.
Louie Shelton: Really? I didn't know about that!
Hi roused, ich mag deine Beiträge so sehr, da es durch sie so viel Neues zu entdecken gibt bzw. du damit oft eine neue Sichtweise auf vermeintlich Bekanntes zeigst :)
Die Ähnlichkeit der Bewegungsmuster bzw. Tanzstile von Michael Jackson mit denen von James Brown bzw. Fred Astaire ist verblüffend.
Dass Eddie van Halen bei Beat It mitgemacht hat, war mir auch neu.
Hi Vienna! I thought his first 3 solo albums: Off the Wall, Thriller, Bad were classics. Quincy Jones did a fantastic job for him as a producer. Eddie van Halen was amazing, and on the longer version of Bad you can hear the great jazz organist Jimmy Smith.
Glad you stopped by and thank you so much for the resteem! Have a cozy relaxing Sunday.
:-)
Der Ausschnitt mit Jimmy Smith an der Orgel ist super!
Auf der Suche nach der längeren Version von Bad bin ich jetzt beim Jimmy Smith Quartett hängen geblieben. Groovy!
Herzlichen Dank für deinen boost :) Hab mich sehr darüber gefreut!
If you get a chance here is Jimmy Smith playing and singing blues, I love this.
Danke, ich mag Blues total gerne :)
Die Orgel macht den Song zu etwas ganz Besonderem, wobei die Originalversion von Muddy Waters natürlich zu den Blues-Klassikern schlechthin zählt.
Oh man, I love Muddy Waters, glad you do too!!!!! And Howlin' Wolf!!!
As always very valuable and insightful information. Michael was really one of it's kind and he influenced so many others.
It must be really great to talk to a person, who got to know Elvis, John Lennon, Micheal Jackson, and Marvin Gaye.
Today I saw your new sketches on Twitter before I saw them on Steemit! That rarely happens. I wish I could draw, but I am thankful that digital art allows those of us who lack talent to express ourselves too -- but I would much prefer being able to draw ;-)
I agree about Michael, what an extraordinary performer. Over the years things took such a tragic turn... so sad.
About Louie, yes those interviews with session players are some of my very favorites -- their day job is often amazing. It's one thing to be in a popular band touring and playing your regular set list all the time, but mixing it up everyday with some of the greatest singers and musicians on the planet -- that's pretty amazing. I'll have more to share about Louie if my passivity experiment survives.
Have a great Sunday!!!
Yes, I noticed your like and retweet on twitter. Thanks a lot, much apprecitated :-) I know, I should put some more efforts into marketing my posts outside of steemit, but the day has only 24h...
It sometimes makes me sad to see, that some posts here get $20 for posting not more than a youtube video while your posts have so much more value and are often overseen. Maybe you should change one of the tags to #danceweekend ?
On the other hand, I guess that your experiment in passivity somehow lacks the possibilty to build a strong network (which is essential here for reasonable rewards). All I can say is, that I'm still hoping you will stay for the long run.
Keep it up!
I'm afraid my retweets don't mean much. I'm almost completely passive on Twitter. Generally I only tweet after I publish something, so the artists can catch it and retweet it, or post it on their Facebook page. So it is somewhat useful to me, but only in connection with artists.
I still think (for me) the only meaningful way to have some success on steemit would be if artists begin to come to steemit and bring their fans. My last interview from 12 days ago already has 17k views. Imagine if the artist had been here on steemit and had liked and reteemed my article (and I had published it on steemit.) That for me seems like the model that would work.
I was hoping to keep the experiment going for 365 days, now I wonder if I'll make it to 30 days. But I am still having fun, so fingers crossed. Your support has been a true moral booster for me, thanks so much for your support and feedback on my posts, it means a lot.
Wow as I was writing you were extending a helping hand. Just saw the boost, man that's so nice of you!!!!
I don't think that your retweets doesn't mean very much. Remember last time when Gary Husband liked my pencil drawings ;-)
Congrats on those 17k views of your interview! That's a really great achievement. I absolutely agree, that having some artists at steemit bringing over their fanbase would really boost your success (and the success of steemit at the same time).
I just think, that steemit is still in a very early stage and I remember, when 1 Steem was worth just about 15 cents. It wasn't always easy to keep my faith in it, but on the other hand I've never met you without steemit. That alone makes it worth for me :-)
I'm not very used to using boosters yet, because I use them rarely but anything I could do, to let you stick here a few more days is well worth the try.
I also thought about translating some of your music-posts (or interviews) into German for you. I've already translated the Comic of @katharsisdrill before, so I have some experience with this. Maybe that will bring up the german whales again...
Ah yes, you're right, that was great about Gary. What an amazing musician, he's a world class drummer and a world class keyboard player. And he liked you art, that was pretty cool.
The legendary guitarist Allan Holdsworth (died this year) used to tour with Gary playing drums, otherwise Gary was touring with John McLaughlin playing keyboards-- amazing, can you imagine that!
I had considered doing German versions of the Beatles Made in Germany posts -- I mean, if the Beatles sang in German I should have done those posts in German too ;-)
The der, die, das makes it so tedious -- wish they had an auto-correct for that! As you know, if you make a mistake with the gender, then the mistakes snowball with the case, adjective agreement etc. So I have to constantly check the gender when I write. When I speak I usually just slur the articles ;-)
Anyway, I still think Steemit is a great user friendly blog, with tremendous potential. I suppose as long as the viewership is as low as it is, I need to find a sweet-spot for my posts -- not too long and labor intensive. This Michael Jackson post is a good example of what seems to work. It would have been fairly easy to do a German version, I should indeed consider that with posts like this one.
About boosting, @Pawos last post really made me see that it makes a lot of sense. Not boosting is a missed opportunity.
It's like the butterfly-wing theory: You never know how large the impact of what you're doing actually will be. Even if there are only a few readers of an article/tweet, it might be exactly the one, you've been waiting for ;-)
So, if you're able to make a german version of that Beatles series in a reasonable time, you should definitely go for it! Personally I think the gender mistakes would not harm your message in general. It even may give your posts a personal touch (when you mention you're not a native speaker).
Thanks for the tip regarding boosters. As I consider myself being an dolphin, I just didn't want to drain the reward pool too much (so that minnows can also get a piece of the pie). As everybody else is using boosters these days and as I want to support some overlooked posts, I will have to look deeper into it, though.
Looking forward to your German posts and have a great day!
Well, after two weeks of English, today I posted in German. I wonder how it will go...
@roused, my friend - das hat sich zu einer ganz fantastischen serie entwickelt, richtig richtig cool! hab schon die beatles von dir resteemed, so für mich. wo ich die doch so mag. MJ ist auch der hammer! das sieht mir ganz danach aus, als wäre jemand da in seinem element :-) greetings
Hi Pawos, so glad you enjoyed the Beatles posts. I actually have few more really interesting "Neuigkeiten" about the Beatles -- hard to believe, but it's true. But I thought I should mix things up a bit -- a whole week of Beatles might have been too much ;-) Thanks so much for the resteem, that's a big help, and I really appreciate it.
Also your last post about minnowbooster was a big help, I think that is about the only way I'll survive on steemit. I wanted to use it on this post, but I have to wait until the 24 hrs limit from my post yesterday is up. In any case, that was very useful info, I'm so glad you convinced me to boost again.
Stay tuned for more music
:-)
I was a huge fan! And I still love his music ;-)
Grüsse
Lucas
P.S. hast du "Searching for Sugar Man" gesehen? Ev. was denkst du von der ganzen Story?
Hi Lucas, Glad you stopped by. I saw your Italian intro, that's great that we have such an active Italian community on steemit!
I remember "Searching for Sugar Man." It won an Oscar for best documentary, and got a lot of praise. We rented it years ago, but it moved so slow in the beginning my wife lost interest -- so no, I never really saw it, just the beginning. Is it really good?
Sugar Man is one of the best documentaries I've ever seen. You should try again ;-)
This post has received a 2.44 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @shortcut.
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