50 years ago today, the Jacksons made their Epic debut with “The Jacksons”

Fifty years ago today, on 5 November 1976, Epic Records and Philadelphia International put out The Jacksons. It was the brothers' first album since leaving Motown and the first under their new name. The line-up had changed as well. Randy, the youngest, was standing where Jermaine used to.

The break had been coming for a while. By 1975 the group had worked out that Motown was paying them a royalty of about 2.8 per cent, and in six years at the label they had never been allowed to record a song of their own. Joe Jackson shopped them around and landed at Epic, part of CBS, which offered a rate of around 20 per cent. The deal was signed in June 1975, but the Motown contract still had until March 1976 to run. Motown sued, and it kept the name. The Jackson 5 became the Jacksons.

Jermaine stayed behind. He had married Berry Gordy's daughter Hazel in December 1973 and carried on at Motown as a solo artist. Randy, who had been playing congas on stage with his brothers since the early 1970s, took his place. Motown kept selling the old act regardless, and Joyful Jukebox Music, a set of unreleased Jackson 5 recordings, came out the same year.

The irony was that the brothers left for creative control and Epic's first move was to hand the controls to someone else. Ron Alexenburg, the Epic executive who signed them, wanted "only two guys" for the record, according to Rolling Stone: Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, the Philadelphia team behind the O'Jays' "Back Stabbers" and Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes' "If You Don't Know Me by Now". At the same time CBS gave the family a summer variety show, The Jacksons, which first aired on 16 June 1976. That meant a year split between Philadelphia studios and Los Angeles TV sets.

Sessions ran from June to September 1976, mostly at Sigma Sound in Philadelphia, with some work at Paragon Studios in Chicago. Gamble and Huff wrote and produced five of the ten songs, "Enjoy Yourself", "Think Happy", "Good Times", "Show You the Way to Go" and "Dreamer" among them. Dexter Wansel wrote and produced "Keep on Dancing" and "Living Together". Gene McFadden, John Whitehead and Victor Carstarphen, three years before "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now", gave them "Strength of One Man". MFSB played, with Tito on guitar and Randy in the band. Bobby Martin, Jack Faith and Wansel arranged, and Joe Tarsia recorded and mixed.

The brothers did get two songs of their own on the record. Michael wrote "Blues Away" by himself, the first song of his to be released, and wrote "Style of Life" with Tito. The Jacksons shared production on both with the Philadelphia staff. Michael was also taking notes. In his 1988 memoir Moonwalk he described Gamble and Huff coming to the group's hotel to play them a whole album's worth of songs.

“Just watching Huff play the piano while Gamble sang taught me more about the anatomy of a song than anything else. Kenny Gamble is a master melody man. He made me pay closer attention to the melody because of watching him create. And I would watch, too. I'd sit there like a hawk, observing every decision, listening to every note.”

— Michael Jackson, Moonwalk (1988)

Michael was the obvious star, but Gamble says the producers spread the vocals around on purpose. "We didn't just use Michael, we had Jackie, we had Marlon, we had them all singing so that all the weight didn't just fall on Michael," he told the Philadelphia Tribune. "Our whole thing was messages," he added, and he said Michael wanted the same.

Released

Nov 5, 1976 · Epic / Philadelphia International (US Epic 34229)

Recorded

June–Sept 1976 · Sigma Sound, Philadelphia; Paragon, Chicago

Producers

Gamble & Huff; Dexter Wansel; McFadden & Whitehead; Victor Carstarphen; the Jacksons

Peaks

No. 36 Billboard Top LPs · No. 6 Soul LPs · No. 53 UK

Singles

Enjoy Yourself (US No. 6) · Show You the Way to Go (UK No. 1) · Dreamer (UK No. 22)

"Enjoy Yourself" went out first, on 22 October 1976, with Michael and Jackie trading the lead over a clipped guitar figure and MFSB horns. Record World called it "down right funky and tasteful enough to go all the way". It reached No. 6 on the Hot 100 in February 1977 and No. 2 on Billboard's soul singles chart, and the RIAA certified it platinum in 1989. A player from the Gamble and Huff house band later said guitarist T.J. Tindall came up with the riff that started the song. Its promo clip, the five brothers in white suits on a bare stage, was the group's first music video.

Tap to play · YouTube

The Jacksons: Enjoy Yourself (Official Video)

"Show You the Way to Go" followed in March 1977, a slow Gamble and Huff song with Michael alone on lead and "Blues Away" on the B-side. Record World called it "a smooth ballad". America was lukewarm: No. 28 on the Hot 100, No. 6 R&B. Britain was not. It entered the UK chart at No. 23 on 4 June 1977, climbed to 6 and then 3, and hit No. 1 on the chart dated 25 June. It held the top for a week and spent ten weeks on the chart. It remains the brothers' only UK No. 1 as a group. "Enjoy Yourself" had only managed No. 42 in Britain that April, and "Dreamer" made No. 22 in August.

The album peaked at No. 36 on Billboard's Top LPs & Tape and No. 6 on the soul albums chart, and in Britain it got to No. 53 in July 1977, months after release. It went gold, the group's first RIAA gold album. That detail says as much about Motown as Epic, since Motown did not submit its sales to the RIAA for audit until 1976, so the Jackson 5's earlier hits had gone uncertified. Critics were cooler. Robert Christgau gave it a C+, and AllMusic later scored it two and a half stars.

The Philadelphia arrangement lasted one more album, Goin' Places, in 1977. After that Epic gave the brothers full creative control, and they produced Destiny themselves, released in December 1978. "Good Times" was never a single but found a second life on quiet storm radio. "Show You the Way to Go" came back to the UK chart in 1992, when Dannii Minogue's cover reached No. 30.

For a first listen, go to side two, track one. The album version of "Show You the Way to Go" runs five and a half minutes, Michael out front and MFSB in no hurry behind him.