MJ Aug 29th 1958

Today, august 29th 2012, Michael Jackson should be 54 years old.
This is a biography of RollingStone magazine. Good one about Michael, to remember this pop-star (king).

No single artist – indeed, no movement or force – has eclipsed what Michael Jackson accomplished in the first years of his adult solo career. Jackson changed the balance in the pop world in a way that nobody has since. He forced rock & roll and the mainstream press to acknowledge that the biggest pop star in the world could be young and black, and in doing so he broke down more barriers than anybody. But he is also among the best proofs in living memory of poet William Carlos Williams' famous verse: "The pure products of America/go crazy."

When Jackson died on June 25th, 2009, of apparent cardiac arrest in Los Angeles at age 50, the outpouring of first shock, then grief, was the largest, most instantaneous of its kind the world had ever known, short of the events of September 11th, 2001. What immediately became obvious in all the coverage is that despite the dishonor that had come upon him, the world still respected Michael Jackson for his music – for the singles he made as a Motown prodigy, for the visionary disco he made as a young adult, for Thriller, a stunningly vibrant album that blew up around the world on a scale we'll never see again, for his less impactful but still one-of-kind later work, even for his cheesy ballads. In 2009 Jackson was the biggest-selling artist in the world.

Michael's father, Joe Jackson, was a crane operator during the 1950s, in Gary, Indiana – a place in which, according to Dave Marsh's Trapped: Michael Jackson and the Crossover Dream, quotas were imposed on how many black workers were allowed to advance into skilled trades in the city's mills. Michael's mother, Katherine Scruse, was from Alabama but was living in East Chicago, Indiana, when she met Joe. She had grown up hearing country & western music, and although she entertained her own dreams of singing and playing music, a bout of polio had left her with a permanent limp. Joe and Katherine were a young couple, married in 1949, and began a large family immediately. Their first child, Maureen (Rebbie), was born in 1950, followed by Sigmund (Jackie) in 1951, Toriano (Tito) in 1953, Jermaine in 1954, La Toya in 1956 and Marlon in 1957. Michael was born on August 29th, 1958, and Randy was born in 1961. Janet, the last born, wouldn't arrive until 1966.

Michael and his siblings heard music all the time. Joe had a strong inclination toward the rowdy electric urban blues that had developed in nearby Chicago, and also for early rock & roll. Along with his brothers, Joe formed a band, the Falcons, and made some modest extra income from playing bars and college dances around Gary. When the Falcons folded, Joe retired his guitar to a bedroom closet, and he guarded it jealously, just as he did everything in his domain. Katherine, though, sometimes led her children in country-music singalongs, during which she taught them to harmonize.

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The King of Pop - Official Web Page