Watch the Jackson 5’s First Appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show (1969)

Who dis­cov­ered the Jack­son 5?

Motown founder Berry Gordy?

Empress of Soul Gladys Knight?

Diva Diana Ross?

Every­one in atten­dance for Ama­teur Night at the Apol­lo on August 13, 1967?

For many unsus­pect­ing Amer­i­cans, the answer may as well have been tele­vi­sion host Ed Sul­li­van, who intro­duced the “sen­sa­tion­al group” of five young broth­ers from Gary, Indi­ana to view­ers in Decem­ber 1969, two years after their Ama­teur Night tri­umph. Thir­teen years ear­li­er, a wall of sound ema­nat­ing from a live in-stu­dio audi­ence of teenage girls told Sullivan’s home view­ers that anoth­er young sen­sa­tion — Elvis Pres­ley — must be some­thing spe­cial.

The Jack­son 5 need­ed no such help.

While there are many close-ups of their fresh young faces, the con­trol room wise­ly chose to zoom out much of the time, in appre­ci­a­tion of the broth­ers’ pre­ci­sion chore­og­ra­phy.

The bright­est star was the youngest, eleven-year-old Michael, tak­ing lead vocals in pur­ple fedo­ra and fringed vest on a cov­er of Sly and the Fam­i­ly Stone’s “Stand.”

Jack­ie, Tito, Jer­maine, and Mar­lon pro­vide sup­port for a bit of hokum that posi­tions Michael at the cen­ter of an ele­men­tary school romance, by way of intro­duc­tion to a full throat­ed cov­er of Smokey Robinson’s “Who’s Lov­ing You”:

We toast­ed our love dur­ing milk break. I gave her my cook­ies! We fell out dur­ing fin­ger­paint­ing. 

Author Carvell Wal­lace reflects on this moment in his 2015 New York­er review of Steve Knopper’s biog­ra­phy MJ: The Genius of Michael Jack­son:

Halfway through, he for­gets his lines and freezes, look­ing back at his old­er broth­ers for help. It’s an alarm­ing­ly vul­ner­a­ble moment, one only pos­si­ble in the era of live tele­vi­sion. You feel bad for him. It sud­den­ly doesn’t seem right that a kid should be made to per­form live in front of an entire coun­try. Yet he some­how finds his way back and stum­bles through.

When the music starts, we see some­thing else entire­ly. The first note he sings is as con­fi­dent, sure, and pur­pose­ful as any adult could ever be. He trans­forms from ner­vous child at a tal­ent show into time­less embod­i­ment of long­ing. Not only does he sing exact­ly on key but he appears to sing from the very bot­tom of his heart. He stares into the cam­era, shakes his head, and blinks back tears in per­fect imi­ta­tion of a six­ties soul man. And it feels, for a moment, as though there are two dif­fer­ent beings here. One is a child—a smart kid, to be sure, and cute, but not more spe­cial than any oth­er child. He is sub­ject to the same laws of life—pain, age, con­fu­sion, fear—as we all are. The oth­er being seems to be a spir­it of sorts, one who knows only the truest expres­sion of human feel­ing. And this spir­it appears to have ran­dom­ly inhab­it­ed the body of this par­tic­u­lar mor­tal kid. In so doing, it has sen­tenced him to a life­time of inde­scrib­able enchant­ment and con­sum­mate suf­fer­ing.

Michael’s explo­sive per­for­mance of the Jack­son 5’s first nation­al sin­gle, “I Want You Back,” released just two months before their Sul­li­van Show appear­ance, gives us that “spir­it” in full force.

It’s also not hard to imag­ine that the broth­ers’ thrilling­ly exe­cut­ed chore­og­ra­phy is the result of a lit­er­al­ly pun­ish­ing rehearsal reg­i­men, a fac­tor of the King of Pop’s trou­bled lega­cy.

The Sul­li­van Show appear­ance ensured that there would be no stop­ping this train. Five months lat­er, when the Jack­sons returned to the Sul­li­van Show, “I Want You Back” had sold over a mil­lion copies, as had “ABC,” which they per­formed as a med­ley.

Boy­hood is fleet­ing, mak­ing Jack­son­ma­nia a carpe diem type sit­u­a­tion.

The peri­od from 1969 to 1972 saw an onslaught of Jack­son 5‑related merch and a funky Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toon whose pilot tart­ed up the Diana Ross ori­gin sto­ry with an escaped pet snake.

It was good while it last­ed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Elvis’ Three Appear­ances on The Ed Sul­li­van Show: Watch His­to­ry in the Mak­ing and from the Waist Up (1956)

The Ori­gins of Michael Jackson’s Moon­walk: Vin­tage Footage of Cab Cal­loway, Sam­my Davis Jr., Fred Astaire & More

The Cho­rus Project Fea­tures Teenagers Per­form­ing Hits by the Kinks, David Byrne, the Jack­son 5 & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­maol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.