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recalls giving a brief congratulatory speech at the audition, after they’d finished the Temptations’ “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” and “I Wish It Would Rain” and Michael’s road-tested version of “Tobacco Road.” But the boys were confused.“Uh, Mr. Gordy, does that mean you’re gonna sign us?” Jermaine asked. “Yes, yes, it does,” Gordy said. They cheered.
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    There were contracts. Seltzer, the label’s legal specialist, met for nearly two hours with Joe Jackson at Motown’s Detroit offices onJuly 26,1968. After haggling over the number of years the band would be signed to the label, Joseph signed. He didn’t read the contracts. He didn’t have a lawyer. He let Seltzer explain everything. Joe wanted a one-year deal. Motown wanted seven years. Seltzer made a show of granting Joe his wish. It was a mirage. Joe didn’t realize the contract forbade the Jacksons from recording for another label for seven years. This type of subterfuge was the way record executives did business in those days, especially with poor and desperate artists who couldn’t afford to hire their own attorneys. And Joe wasn’t far removed from Gary’s steel-mill hell. He saw to it that all the boys signed, too.
    Seltzer credited Jackson 5’s father on one level.“Most of our artists, we supervised and managed completely, and Joe Jackson, with very good reason, didn’t feel he wanted some strangers he’d never met before to walk in and have one hundred percent say about everything,” he recalls. He also believed Joe was a rube: “I didn’t have gigantic respect for him. Because I thought he thought he knew a lot more about the music business than he actually did.”
    Bobby Taylor houndedGordy to let him take over the Jacksons’ career. Gordy agreed. Taylor succumbed to the irresistible novelty of Michael Jackson—he could sing like an adult, so Taylor connected the band with adult songs, such as Smokey Robinson’s simmering blues “Who’s Lovin’ You” and Ray Charles’s ballad “A Fool for You,” as well as a slow burner from their Steeltown Records days, “You’ve Changed,” and Sly and the Family Stone’s funky hit “Stand!,” which would be something of a blueprint for the Jackson 5’s Motown career.
    The Jacksons spent weekdays attending school in Gary, then drove the laborious four or five hours to Detroit during weekends and summers, plopping mattresses and sleeping bags onto the floor ofTaylor’s small apartment. He taught the group how to properly use microphones and not to worry about“projecting” over built-in amplification.
    Taylor cut fifteen tracks in all, and when the Jacksons finally joined him in the studio to sing, the revelation was Michael’s voice. He couldembody the blues just as Ray Charles did, and he had an extra gear that none of his brothers had, an inspired brightness that could overwhelm a song, like when he shouted “I love you!” in the background of the Philly soul classic “Can You Remember.”“He got it,” Taylor said. “I didn’t have to explain, didn’t have to analyze. I went in and sang it for him, then got out the way while Michael tore it up. When he got through, there were tears in my eyes.”
    Contractual issues—mostly thanks to Steeltown, which insisted on waiting for the Jacksons’ original agreement to expire—prevented the band from putting out Motown singles until 1969. While they waited,they continued performing, at the Apollo in New York, the Twenty Grand Club in Detroit, and familiar Chicago hot spots such as Guys and Gals and the High Chaparral. To add to all this work, Gordy paraded the Jacksons around Motown. Back then, he lived in a million-dollar mansion on Boston Boulevard in Detroit and brought in the Jackson 5 for a charity event. On this night, Motown stars Smokey Robinson, the Temptations, the Four Tops, and Diana Ross were like kings and queens in Gordy’s royal court. And then there was ten-year-old Michael