TcB! More! More! More!

And there was more.

More.

And still more.

But that's all for now, J5 fans. Hope you had fun!

TcB!: Michael's Love Letter to YOU

Awwww....

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.

TcB!: Jackie and Tito, Teen Idols

It's always been a mystery to me why Tito and Jackie weren't cast early on as the heart-throbs of the group, especially in the days before there was even a hint of Tito having a steady girlfriend, let alone a fiance. When he married his high school sweetheart, Dee Dee Martes, in June of 1972, the news came as a surprise to fans. (In fact, before we got the news, I was pretty sure Tito was engaged to my best friend, Janet.)

Too old, you say? Perhaps in comparison to Michael, Marlon, and Jermaine, but compared to the top teen idols of the day, Jackie was a year younger than David Cassidy and Bobby Sherman had a full decade on Tito. But both Cassidy and Sherman had the effeminate good looks that made them seem "safe" as the objects of pre-teen fantasies. Tito and Jackie both looked more like grown men.

Whatever the logic, in the fall of 1970, TcB! gave us a hint of what teen magazines might have looked like if Jackie and Tito had been given equal treatment.

The article is basically the usual teen magazine nonsense, designed to fuel teen fantasies. But the photos! They were both so gorgeous that when you see these pictures, you can only wonder why they weren't teen idols.

TcB!'s Super Giant Color Pinups!

One of the best features of any teen fan magazine was the color posters they included in each issue. The creators of TcB! must have known how important they were because they highlighted them on the front of the magazine:



There are four color posters inside the issue. Right inside the front cover was an adorable poster of Michael.


And inside the back cover was a beautiful poster of Jermaine.

This marked the first time that any individual Jackson brother was featured in a full-color full-page glossy poster. By the end of 1970, many fans like me felt we should have been getting posters like this in the mainstream fan magazines. But it wasn't until TcB! came out that the brothers got their due. Of course, I wanted to see full-page glossy color posters for each of the brothers, but Michael and Jermaine were at least a start. The others would come in time in Right On! (but never in one of the mainstream mags, which only ever gave Michael and Jermaine the full-page color poster treatment reserved for the big stars).

But for me, the best poster in TcB! was the centerfold.

It was the first full-color glossy centerfold poster I ever had to hang on my wall. Its publication in TcB! marked the first time I had ever seen this photo (or the one that's the same pose where they are holding their gold records, which I use as my avatar on this blog).

The back of the magazine was a fourth color poster with a great photo that was obviously taken at the same time as the centerfold. It shows the brothers in a an adorable pyramid-type pose -- I always felt sorry for Tito and Jackie, bearing all that weight! -- with Michael in the middle blowing a bubble. Although the bubblegum covers up most of Michael's mouth, you can still see the edges of a smile around it. It looks like he was pleased with the pose and quite proud of the bubble.

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.

Coming to J5 Collector Next Week

Love Gifts for Jermaine

Wait! Close that wallet! According to TcB! Jermaine would rather have something you have made yourself.


Off to work on my special prayer for Jermaine...

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.

Dancing Machine

The Jackson brothers must have endured dozens of photo sessions in the early 1970s, both as a group and as individuals. Many of the photos that were taken ended up in teen magazines, including the Motown-produced all-J5 fan magazine TcB!. I have sometimes been lucky enough to find the original photos that were used, and once in a while, I have found the mother lode for photo collectors: contact sheets from an individual shoot.

About twenty years ago, I connected with a dealer who had some of the teen magazine archives, including the original photos from TcB!. I wish I had had the money to buy everything he had, but unfortunately, I didn't so I had to settle for selections. They included this wonderful contact sheet for Jackie's photoshoot for the Jackson 5 dancing pinups. Jackie was fond of fringed vests, and from the photos, it looks like he really got a kick out of the effect his twirling movements had on the fringe. There is an expression of pure delight on his face in these photos.



The contact sheet is dated September 29, 1970. The photo they ultimately selected for the pinup is circled with red grease pencil, and three others, circled in green, were cropped and used as spot photographs in TcB!

And here's the actual J5 Dancing Pinup that was printed in TcB! in the spring of 1971: