Song of the Week: Listen I'll Tell You How

by Corey Sheppard

"Listen I’ll Tell You How" is a song recorded by the Jackson 5 in May 1969. It is one of the first recordings the boys did at Motown and, wow, what a great recording! I first heard this record on Motown’s official Jackson 5 webpage. They were having a listening party for some of the songs that were on last year’s I Want You Back! Unreleased Masters a few weeks before it was released in stores. From the first opening seconds, I knew immediately that this was a record from the 1969 Detroit sessions, and I took comfort in the fact that I was in the safe hands of producer Bobby Taylor.

An incredible producer, Taylor brought out the best in the growing group. The Jackson 5 (at the time) had very little experience in the recording studio, but he surrounded the boys with the original terrific “snake pit” musicians, and great cover songs by Motown’s hottest artists. He gave them a confidence that helped prepared their transition to stardom. Bobby Taylor stopped producing the boys in early 1970, and what a shame. Michael has said in interviews about how much they loved working with Taylor . There was even talk about the boys reuniting with Taylor for their first album for CBS, and while songs were recorded, none have seen the light of day. I’m sure the Jackson brothers would have totally loved if Taylor would’ve continued producing a couple of records for not only the boys, but Jermaine and Michael solo.

I feel that this record has one of Michael’s best early vocal performances ever. This ten-year-old totally throws himself into this bombastic production. What amazes me is how many vocal runs he fits into each verse and hook. I also love the background vocals on the track. Jermaine’s early vocals are clearly audible on the hook section of the song.

The instrumentation on this track is dynamite. Nothing beats the sound of late 60’s soul music, in my opinion, and this track carries it to the max. The intro is totally outrageous with the horns and the strings wailing away. I loved it from the first time I heard it. The hook section on this track is incredible. The buildup to the chorus takes the anticipation up a notch. And the drummer is in a league of his own, providing the track with pretty much all of runs and improvisation that Motown was famous for. The song had a very inspirational, uplifting vibe to it, along with soul horns and breakdowns that only James Brown could have bested.


The main reason I feel that this song was not released on the Diana Ross Presents the Jackson 5 LP is because of the message in the lyrics. In my opinion, the message in the song is about people looking after another, and helping your fellow brother. This is not the direction that Berry Gordy wanted the Jackson 5 to go in. He wanted the Jackson 5 to sing only of things kids think about: girls, girls, and girls! To me, that’s the main reason that records like this and “I’ll Try You’ll Try (Maybe We’ll All Get By),” also from the Unreleased Masters cd, never were released, until now.

Overall, I enjoyed this record a lot, and was very appreciate that Motown decided to finally release it 40 years later. Once again it shows a lot of versatility for the (at the time) very, very young group. I hope more unreleased Bobby Taylor productions get released in the future. It has been said that the J5 recorded about 30 tracks with Taylor , so I hope that means more records from that summer will be released in the future, which truly gives me a reason to live every day!!!


Next Week’s Song Hint: This record was Jermaine’s first solo lead on a Jackson 5 track.

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Corey Sheppard, 20, has been a Jackson 5 fan since 1993. His favorite hobbies are listening to music, playing racquetball at the YMCA, and hanging out with friends. Corey’s life passion is centered on music. His latest project is an all-new production company shared with Robert White Jr. entitled "Ask About It Productions."

Bobby Taylor Discovers the Jackson 5

It's not news to fans that Bobby Taylor (leader of another Motown group, Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers) discovered the Jackson 5 when he saw them performing at the Regal Theater in Chicago.


We all know the back story: Diana Ross got credit for the discovery because Berry Gordy asked her to "present" the Jackson 5 to the public, thereby launching their career and Ross's solo career in one fell swoop. Immediately -- and it may have had something to do with the language Motown used in their promotional materials, such as "the Jackson 5 were discovered by Diana Ross" -- the story began to circulate that Ross had discovered them while doing a benefit show for Mayor Richard Hatcher in Gary, Indiana. I suppose it was a more romantic story than the truth -- that they were performing on a gritty Chicago stage during a 10-night run when they were discovered by another struggling singer who just happened to have a recording contract and connections.

For years the story swirled around that it wasn't Diana Ross but Gladys Knight who discovered the Jackson 5. And sure enough Knight has gone on record saying that she had called the Motown office when she had seen the Jackson 5 on stage some months earlier and she suggested they might want to send someone down from Detroit to see them. But at the time she was new to the label and, by her own admission, didn't have much clout, so her suggestion was ignored. The Diana Ross discovery story stuck, even though many were suspicious of its veracity.

I always thought the truth came out about Bobby Taylor's role with getting the group to Motown in the 1988 documentary, Michael Jackson: The Legend Continues. During an interview, Marlon sets the record straight by telling us that it was Bobby Taylor who had discovered them. I always thought that was the first time Taylor was given credit. that is, until I found this article in the New York Amsterdam News from August 20, 1975: