Takin' Care of Busines withTcB!

TcB! was the first fanzine exclusively devoted to the Jackson 5. Today one of the rarest Jackson collectibles in existence, TcB! began showing up on newsstands throughout the United States in the autumn of 1970, selling for 50 cents. Because it was produced by Motown Records, it was also advertised for sale on the inner sleeve of Jackson 5 albums beginning with the Maybe Tomorrow LP, so that young fans could send away directly to Motown to get a copy in case they had missed it when it was on sale in their neighborhood shops.

In 1970 the acronym "T.C.B." was a popular slang expression, like "far out" and "groovy." The letters stood for "Taking Care of Business" and implied that you were focusing on the things that truly mattered and were important. And that is exactly what the fanzine TcB! did when it devoted its entire first issue to the phenomenal Jackson 5.

Hard as it may be to imagine in today, forty years ago the Jackson 5 was virtually invisible in the mainstream popular print media. Although the group was tearing up the charts in 1970 with four number one singles in a row, were breaking attendance records wherever they appeared in concert, and were nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Performance by a Contemporary Vocal Group (up against The Beatles, The Carpenters, Chicago, and Simon & Garfunkel), teen magazines at the time rarely even mentioned these five incredible young brothers.

Good-looking, clean-cut and talented, The Jackson 5 would appear to be every marketing executive's dream except for one thing: they were Black. And back in 1970 American society did not seem to know what to do with Black teen idols. There had simply never been such a thing up until that time. But times were changing and, by the sheer force of their talent and enormous appeal, The Jackson 5 were destined to break the barriers and clear the path for the young Black performers who would follow them. It would, however, be nearly two years before they were regularly featured in teen fanzines such as 16, Spec, Tiger Beat, Fave, and Flip (and even then the editors of some of these 'zines had a perennial problem with telling Marlon and Michael apart).

While over in the mainstream, The Jackson 5 were being co-opted, white-washed and re-created as a comparatively bland family act known as The Osmonds (who were being plastered across the pages of the afore-mentioned teenie mags), Motown got busy and created its own fan magazine for their hottest young group. By the time TcB! hit the newsstands late in 1970, young J5 fans were hungry for facts, articles, photos and pin-ups of Michael, Marlon, Jermaine, Tito and Jackie. In fact, we were starving for details. We wanted the full story behind those fantastic voices we heard singing to us on the radio. We needed more pictures than the first three LPs offered us: we wanted pictures we could hang on the wall.

TcB! delivered. Against a glossy, vibrant red background, a full-color cover photo of The Jackson 5 stopped the hearts of many a young fan making a routine check of the magazines at the corner store in neighborhoods across America. Bright yellow letters spelled out the words we had dreamed to see in print:


We thought we had died and gone to heaven.

Inside, TcB! was filled with articles, photos and -- gasp! -- PIN-UPS! There was one full-page glossy color pin-up of Michael, one of Jermaine, one of The Jackson 5, and even a double-page color centerfold poster of the whole group. Full-page black-and-white pin-ups accompanied feature stories about each of the five brothers, which revealed such interesting tidbits as the fact that Jackie had a fondness for antique furniture and the color yellow, and that Marlon wanted to trade places with a bank president for 24 hours so he could sit in the vault and "just look at all that bread."


Throughout the magazine there were dozens and dozens of photos of the five Jackson brothers, most never seen before and many never seen since. The camera followed The Jackson 5 to a costume fitting one day, for example, and two pages of TcB! show the J5 trying on and modeling some of the fabulous threads they wore in concert in the early Motown days. On another day, the rigors of rehearsing for an upcoming concert were captured by a TcB! camera. We see Michael and Marlon clowning around during a break and Jermaine and Tito looking very serious about their music once rehearsal resumes, in addition to great shots of The Five practicing all their stunning dance routines in front of floor-to-ceiling mirrors.

One of the articles that seemed the least interesting in 1970 has turned out to be one of the most interesting 25 years later. "The Secrets in The Jackson Five's Handwriting!" called on graphologist Dr. Coleridge Taylor to analyze the J5's signatures. This is what he had to say about Michael:

Now here's a fellow who might have grown up to be very shy and quiet and the kind of kid who always hides in the back of the classroom for fear the teacher will call on him. But just in time, he caught himself and turned into a leader, a fellow who takes the first step and will rock out or break free or do just about what he feels like doing, providing it's okay. I've never talked to Michael but I bet he doesn't plan to get married till he's thirty -- if ever! He's generous too but can be very unpleasant if someone crosses him the wrong way... He wants to know exactly where he's at all the time. You may not realize it, but he's always watching every move someone makes.

All that insight and accurate forecasting from just 14 letters scrawled by an 11-year-old kid? Amazing!

While Issue #1 (dated Spring 1971) of TcB! was a one-of-a-kind publication, it did seem to inspire the creation of Right On! magazine, the first issue of which was published in October 1971. The latter was a monthly teen fanzine devoted exclusively to Black stars which is still being published today (and which still occasionally features a Jackson on its cover). In its early years, Right On! was filled with news and photos of the Jackson 5 and, before long, many young fans forgot the hunger they used to feel in 1970.

For those of us who were lucky enough to find TcB! back then, we'll never forget the feast it provided for our eyes and our souls. We consumed it -- quite literally -- clipping out all the photos to put on our walls or share with friends or paste into scrapbooks. That's what makes it such a rarity among collectors today. Most collectors, even of the long-time, die-hard variety, have never seen it themselves first-hand. It shows up only occasionally on eBay. One of my collector friends recalls having seen a copy of TcB! advertised for sale several years ago for $250.00 and today he regrets that he didn't buy it, because he has never seen it advertised for any price since then.

If you are one of the fortunate few to own a copy of TcB!, rest assured that you have one of the rarest Jackson collectibles in the world, not to mention a proud relic of Black American entertainment history. But if, like the vast majority of fans, you have never even seen it, we I will be sharing highlights from TcB! over the coming week.


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First published in a slightly different version in Jackson Magazine in 1995. Special thanks to Chris Cadman for his encouragement and friendship.

Christmas Album Art

I've always loved the original album cover for the Jackson 5 Christmas Album. Each of the individual shots of the brothers are superb -- it doesn't hurt that they were taken on a day when all five were at a cuteness peak.

It's obvious that the pictures were also taken on the same day as the cover art that was used for the Jackson 5 Third Album -- not surprising since the two albums were recorded around the same time, and even have similar names.


Although I've seen plenty of outtakes for the Third Album's group pose, I've only ever come across one for one of the individual shots:


It's a nice solo shot of Marlon, but nothing beats the one they chose for the cover of the Christmas Album.

Marlon's Own Little Corner of the Sky

I've always felt "Corner of the Sky" was an underrated Jackson 5 single. Sure, it's kind of a corny Broadway song, but I love the way they trade leads. And it was the first J5 single where Marlon got his own line.

Here they are performing it on Soul Train in November of 1972. Unfortunately, they only performed the first half of the song, but it does give us a taste of the great choreography. I'd love to see the whole song performed. And Marlon really milks his line for all it's worth!

Marlon's Secret Marriage

Today marks the 35th anniversary of Marlon's secret marriage to Carol Parker, a lucky fan who caught Marlon's attention during a concert appearance in New Orleans. Marlon and Carol carried on a secret long-distance relationship for years, and when they married, no one in the Jackson family knew about it -- except maybe for Tito and Dee Dee, with whom Carol had been living prior to the marriage.

So secret was their wedding that Soul didn't find out about it until six months later -- they broke the news in their January 19, 1976 issue. When they called Marlon to corroborate, his response was, "Did you call my office? I have to go by what the office says." But then the Soul reporter got the bright idea of congratulating him on his marriage, and Marlon essentially confirmed the news by replying, "Oh, thank you!"

Of all the brothers, Marlon has had the longest and most stable marriage. Maybe they all should have picked fans out of the audience.

The Planet of Marlon Jackson

Virginia Hamilton is my all-time favorite author. She won the Newbery Medal in 1975 for M. C. Higgins, the Great, but I didn't discover her books until 1980 when I was in college and studying children's literature. I read all of her published work at that time, and I remember thinking that the kid on the cover of her 1971 novel The Planet of Junior Brown looked kind of like Marlon Jackson.

In fact, I thought I knew exactly which photo of Marlon the jacket illustrator had used as a reference.


It's a stunning photo of Marlon taken from the 1971 book The Jackson 5 TV Book, and it's one of the solo shots of each brother that was taken at the same time as the group photo that appeared on the cover of the Jackson 5's Greatest Hits LP.

Some of the features in the illustration are a bit different: the lips are fuller, the nose is not quite as broad. But the tilt of the head, shape of the face, hairline, eyebrows, eyes, upper lip, and chin are all so close that it's hard to imagine it was purely coincidental. And what's especially striking seeing them side by side like this is the color palette -- the successive layers of blue, green, and pink are identical.

But why would the illustrator use Marlon as a model? I can remember 1971, and I recall that it wasn't easy to find color photographs of African American children in those years. Even Ebony magazine, the go-to source, usually carried photos of adults (especially Richard Roundtree who was a ubiquitous model in Jet and Ebony before he starred in Shaft). Unless an artist was African American, or knew a lot of African American people who could volunteer their kids as models, he or she had few options.

The Jackson 5 TV Book would have come along at exactly the right time, offering the perfect photograph of a young, attractive adolescent boy with a pensive, soulful expression. It was just serendipity that the buttons and studs on his satin overalls could model for the planets in the solar system swirling around him.

J5 Fashion Friday: Hair and Make Up

Most of the photos we have of the Jackson 5 show them posing in very carefully planned photo sessions, but we rarely get a look of the Five behind the scenes, making themselves beautiful for their close ups. Here are some rare shots of Michael, Marlon and Jermaine getting ready for photos shoots.

First up is Michael, getting his make up applied, followed by a captioned photo that makes it seems as if he is seeing make up for the first time in his life.





Next is Marlon, being helped into his snakeskin suit for the African-inspired suits the brothers posed in in 1970.



Here's Marlon having his make up applied. If you look behind him, you'll see a rack of shirts for the brothers to change into during the course of the photo session.





Marlon's ready to go but Papa Joe has to put a few finishing touches on his hair.



Jermaine puts on his own finishing touches...



...and admires himself in the mirror.

Darlin' Marlon

Here's another contact sheet from the TcB! archives, showing portrait shots of adorable Marlon at about age 14. Most of these pictures found their way into pin-ups and solo shots printed in TcB! or Right On! magazine in 1971. Even one of the ones where he's making the funny face found its way into TcB!

I'm always interested in seeing the shots from famous poses that didn't make the cut. Seeing these leads me to conclude that Marlon may have been the most photogenic brother. He even looks good in the shots where he has his eyes closed.

Mischievous Marlon

Many years ago, I bought an autographed copy of Maybe Tomorrow. The dealer's ad indicated that it had only been signed by Michael, Jackie, and Tito, the three brothers pictured on the front of the gatefold sleeve. (Jermaine and Marlon's pictures appeared on the back of the album.) While I was disappointed that it wasn't signed by all five brothers, early autographs are hard to come by, especially with both first and last names included in the signatures. So I bought it anyway.



I got a surprise when the LP arrived in the mail, and I opened it up to find that Marlon had, indeed, signed it on the inside of the gatefold sleeve.



And then I got another surprise: Marlon had not only signed it, but it appears that he also he had drawn a mustache on Michael. I assume it was Marlon's work because it was done with the same pen and Marlon is the only one who opened the LP to sign, -- besides what fan would draw a mustache on Michael? It looks like he had also started to draw horns on Jackie but was apparently interrupted since Jackie only got one completed horn on the right side of his head and a mere squiggle on the left side. I wonder if the album was snatched out of Marlon's hands before he could do more damage.



Maybe if Marlon hadn't spent time enhancing his brothers' photographs, Jermaine would have gotten a chance to add his signature. All things being equal, I guess I'd rather have the mustache and horn.

J5 in the Studio

In the spring of 1974, Rock & Soul Songs sent reporter Lisa Robinson to the Motown Studios to observe a Jackson 5 recording session first-hand. As it turned out, Jermaine had the flu that day, so what she witnessed was a two-hour session of Michael, Marlon, and Jackie recording the backing vocals for "It All Begins and Ends with Love," a cut that appeared on the Dancing Machine LP. I'm sure the whole experience would have been more exciting for the young reporter if the lead singer had been been laying down vocal tracks, but she did manage to make her account interesting, in any case, and offered rare insight into the day-to-day studio work of two of the group's frequently unsung members, Marlon and Jackie.

Fashion Friday

Marlon proudly models a hot pink bolero hat and a hot pink suede vest that includes both beads and fringe, two mainstays of early '70s fashion. His colorful striped shirt with matching sash was raided from Michael's closet -- he wore them with blue pants and vest at the May 2, 1970, concert in Philly. Marlon wore it well, though. Here he looks like a junior Superfly, dressed to the nines and ready for action. And as an added bonus, Right On! even color coordinated their stamp of provenance in the upper left corner.