TcB! J5 on Tour

In the fall of 1970, only a few fans had had the good fortune to have attended a Jackson 5 concert in person, so we hung on every word of this report from TcB!.



I remember being confused by the mention of songs that didn't yet appear on any of the Jackson 5's LPs, like "It's Your Thing" and "Walk On By." I had already learned to mistrust info in teen magazines by the time TcB! had come out, so I wondered if they had just gotten the song titles wrong. But once I had seen the J5 in concert a few months later, I could see that the description of the concert was fairly accurate -- minus the fantasy element of "you" being along with them.

But some things about this report remain puzzling to me to this day. Like the reference to Canadian Mounties hats. What the hell? I have never seen any of the J5 wearing anything close to a Mounties hat in the 1970s, not even Johnny with his vast store of head adornments. And who is Jesse? Supposedly it was the name of the person who handed them all clean shirts to change into after the concert. (I love the image of the five of them changing their clothes in the aisle of the airplane. I wonder if that part's accurate.)

But the biggest puzzle for me is which concert the writer is describing. The best clues would seem to be the opening acts and the accompanying photos. The Rare Earth and Jerry Butler were their opening acts in June of 1970, when the J5 played at the Cow Palace in San Francisco on June 19 and the Los Angeles Forum on June 20. But as you can see from the photos accompanying my earlier posts linked above, they were wearing different clothes on stage both times.

And you've probably noticed the photos in the TcB! article are not all from the same concert. In the first photo, Michael and Jackie are both wearing overalls, but in the other photos, they are not. I've already identified the first photo as being from their August 19, 1970, concert at the Cobo Arena in Detroit. I'm not sure where the photos on the second, third, and fourth pages come from. I would guess they are from one of their concert appearances in mid-October 1970. I have one additional photo from this set that was part of a TcB! archive I bought several years ago, but it doesn't identify a source.

The only other photo I have in my collection verified as taken at a 1970 concert is a press photo from their October 18 appearance at the Amphitheater in Chicago.

They're all wearing pretty much the same clothes, except for Michael, who's back to wearing his overalls. (They seemed to have about two costume changes apiece for their 1970 concerts.)

While the photos seem to be from one of their October gigs, the concert write-up is not. Their opening acts on October were Little Charles and the Sidewinders, Yvonne Fair, and Blinky Williams -- and so far as I know, Jerry Butler only served in this capacity in June 1970 to fill in for the originally scheduled act, Ike and Tina Turner. The TcB! article is most likely describing either their Cow Palace or their Forum concert. And given that it describes them getting in a plane on a Friday, flying up over the Pacific coastline, buying coats because they didn't know it would be so cold, and then flying home again that night, all evidence points to San Francisco.

But that still leave the mystery of Jesse and the Canadian Mounties hats.