My Michael Jackson story contains no shattering news about seeing him fondle someone, as is the custom, lately, for those who tell their stories of Michael. Mine is from the much more innocent and positive Michael days, circa 1969.
My old band, The Morning Reign, had a recording date set up at Don Costa Studios, in Los Angeles, to do vocals on a few tracks, most notably, a song titled “Can I Believe In You”, written by Dennis Lambert, who already had many hit records to his credit. We were excited to be doing a project with him. We met in the morning, and recorded for most of the day. As vocal sessions go, we sang, sang, and then sang some more, trying to get it just right. I sang the flip side of the record, which was called “Tomorrow Morning’s Love” (Nelson-Fink), and our guitarist Gene, with his a great sounding pop music voice, sang the Lambert song, which we were certain was our ticket to stardom. Or one-hit wonderness anyway.
When Gene was singing his part, over and over, I went from room to room in the building, checking it out, trying to stay out of trouble, but snooping nonetheless. In one room, which was about about 12’x12 ‘, I came upon a music stand, holding a large piece of poster board, with a passage from the Jackson 5 song, "ABC". It was the verse where Michael, as a boy, sang the part that went “TEE-TEE-Teacher”. It was written out, by hand, in large print, so someone could read it easily from a distance, five feet or so. I was dying to know what exactly had gone on there, and later asked one of the engineers. “Oh yeah”, he said, matter of factly, “Michael did the vocals for that song here." I probably could have taken home that crummy poster board with a polite request.
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