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bags, and cooked a tremendous breakfast for them before Joseph went off
     to work, and the boys and their siblings to school.
    Though thrilled about her sons' growing success, Katherine was uneasy about the family's shifting priorities. Suddenly, the
     emphasis was not only on making music for fun, but also to make a living. It was as if earning money made it all right to
     want
more
money. However, as a Jehovah's Witness Katherine valued good works over money. Therefore, she was concerned about how jubilant
     the boys were when they'd come home from a concert date with their pockets full of change. ‘Remember, that's not the important
     thing,’ she would tell them. But what kid would believe her, especially when she herself was encouraging them to win more
     talent shows – and, as a consequence, make more money?
    It was in the inauspicious surroundings of a shopping mall in Gary, Indiana, that The Jackson Five got their name. ‘I got
     to talking with a lady, a model named Evelyn Leahy,’ Joseph once told me. ‘The boys were performing in a department store,
     and she said to me after the show, “Joseph, I think The Jackson Brothers sounds old-fashioned, like The Mills Brothers. Why
     don't you just call them The Jackson Five?” Well, that sounded like a good name to me, The Jackson Five. So that's what we
     called them from then on. The Jackson Five.’
    The group soon found themselves doing more club dates out of town on weekends. Joseph put a luggage rack on top of the family's
     Volkswagen bus for their equipment before hitting the so-called ‘chitlin’ (as in chitterling) circuit: two-thousand-seat theatres
     in downtown, inner-city areas like Cleveland, Ohio; Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, DC. There would always be many other
     acts on the bill, all diligently vying for the audience's favour. Sometimes these entertainers would be established artists – like
     The Four Tops – but often they would be unknowns, like The Jackson Five. This arrangement gave the upstarts an opportunity to
     learn from the experienced players. After their act, Michael's brothers would go off on their own, but Michael would stay
     behind and observe the other performers on the bill. Whenever anyone wanted to find eight-year-old Michael, they always knew
     where to look: he'd be in the wings, watching, studying and, as he remembered, ‘really taking note of every step, every move,
     every twist, every turn, every grind, every emotion. It was the best education for me.’
    It wasn't long began Michael began to appropriate routines and
shtick
from the best of the acts on the same bill with the brothers, like James Brown, whom Michael would watch, repeatedly. (Diana
     Ross used to do the same thing before The Supremes were famous. She stole from everyone on the Motown Revue!)
    ‘James Brown taught me a few things he does on stage,’ Michael remembered back in 1970. ‘It was a couple years ago. He taught
     me how to drop the mike and then catch it before it hits the stage floor. It only took me about thirty minutes to learn. It
     looks hard, but it's easy. All I want now is a pair of patent leather shoes like James Brown's. But they don't make them in
     kids' sizes.’
    The Jackson Five won the amateur talent show at the Regal, a theatre in Chicago, for three consecutive weeks, a major coup
     for the family. The Jackson boys were becoming more experienced and polished, their lead singer, Michael, more poised and
     professional. They played St Louis, Kansas City, Boston, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. Not only did they open for The Temptations,
     The Emotions, The O'Jays, Jackie Wilson, Sam and Dave, and Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers, but they formed friendships with
     these artists and learned first-hand from many of them what to expect of the entertainment world.
    Before one talent show, one performer remarked to another that they'd better watch out for The Jackson Five, ‘because they
     got this midget they're using as a