A new 32-track, two-disc set focusing on the earliest days of the Jackson 5, to be released the day before Michael Jackson’s 54th birthday, will include the never-before-heard “If The Shoe Don’t Fit.” Check it out here!
Come and Get It: The Rare Pearls, arriving on August 28, 2012, also features the combustible youngster leading his four brothers through versions of “You Can’t Hurry Love” by the Supremes, Jackie DeShannon’s “Movin,'” Traffic’s “Feelin’ Alright,” the Drifters’ “Up On The Roof,” the Stax classic “I Got A Sure Thing,” and “Mama Told Me Not to Come” by Three Dog Night, among others.
But the unquestioned find is this new track, which fits right into a stirring legacy of 1970s-era pop hits that included “ABC,” “I Want You Back,” “I’ll Be There” and “Never Can Say Goodbye.” “I Want You Back,” written and produced by Berry Gordy, Alphonzo Mizell, Deke Richards, and Freddie Perren, became the Jackson 5’s first charttopping single in 1970. Known as “The Corporation,” the same group composed “If The Shoe Don’t Fit.”
“I Want You Back” and “ABC” were honored as two of the 500 songs that helped shape rock by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which inducted the Jackson 5 in 1997.
The original Jackson 5 was rounded out by Jackie, Tito, Jermaine and Marlon Jackson. That remaining foursome just completed a new summer tour, which they said was in honor of Michael, who died suddenly in 2009.
Producer Deke Richards oversaw this new compilation for Hip-O Select which, in cooperation with Motown, is offering the music in a deluxe box with a seven-inch vinyl single, rare photographs, new essays and detailed information on the sessions. Richards is also included an unedited take on “That’s How Love Is,” a rare cut from 2009’s I Want You Back!: The Unreleased Masters, an extended mix of “If I Have To Move A Mountain,” from 1972, and a demo take on “Mama’s Pearl.”
The complete track listing for Come and Get It: The Rare Pearls below.
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Here’s a look back at our recent thoughts on Michael Jackson. Click through the titles for complete reviews …
MICHAEL JACKSON (1958-2009): AN APPRECIATION: Only Michael Jackson could have done so much so quickly to obscure the ass-shaking, barrier-breaking brilliance of his own music. He was that famous. It’s always pissed me off, and never more so than upon his passing — as Jackson finally succumbed to the swirling demons of his own life. I think even his biggest fans wrestle with the same essential dichotomies: Pioneering artist/seriously weird dude. Knee-slapping entertainer/perhaps a pedophile. He was, sadly, most of those things, and more. Instinctively musical, yet boldly self destructive. Devastated by fame, and somehow still captive to its allure. Me, I just like the songs, and I wish the guy himself hadn’t kept getting in the way. Mostly because Michael Jackson, as the cable age dawned from 1979-1985, accomplished more in bringing together black and white America than any politician of the day. More than any treaty could. See, Jackson — more than Miles Davis, or Ray Charles or even Stevie Wonder — was part of a televised revolution. He created a high-tech vista that definitively stretched across race, creed and MTV.
ON SECOND THOUGHT: MICHAEL JACKSON – THIS IS IT (2009): In the genre of concert films, This Is It is an anomaly. Most others document a particular live performance or composite performances from a tour. Michael Jackson doesn’t sing or dance or do anything in this film in front of a live audience. Yet to watch him rehearse for what was to have been a scheduled 50-night residency at London’s O2 Arena is to appreciate — however vicariously — every detail and note of what could have been an extraordinary concert experience.
NEW BOOK DETAILS LOST FREDDIE MERCURY COLLABORATION WITH MICHAEL JACKSON: Lesley-Ann Jones’s new biography Mercury: An Intimate Biography Of Freddie Mercury arrived on July 3, 2012, with a number of interesting musical revelations about the late former Queen frontman — including new details on his lost 1983 collaborations with Michael Jackson. At one point, Mercury and Jackson actually had a trio of finished songs, Jones reports in the book. But busy schedules prevented the two superstars from getting any further, and soon both were on to other projects. Each of the tunes eventually appeared — though in different forms.
ONE TRACK MIND: KENNY LOGGINS WITH MICHAEL JACKSON, “WHO’S RIGHT, WHO’S WRONG” (1979): The track commences with a buttermilk-rich guitar shortly after setting the needle down on the flip side of Loggins’ yacht rock extravaganza, Keep The Fire. Archtypical late seventies blue-eyed soul popularized by Hall and Oates, with an organ-based slow groove that stands in the same company as “Sara Smile.” The background vocals take on a prominent role, too, with the addition of one Michael Jackson. I thought even back in 1979 that it was pretty cool Loggins was able to get a voice of Jackson’s stature to come in behind Kenny and play second fiddle, and today that just seems downright astonishing. A fairly close listen leaves no question that it’s truly the Gloved One crooning back there.
Complete track listing for ‘Come and Get It: The Rare Pearls’:
DISC ONE
(We’re The) Music Makers
If The Shoe Don’t Fit
Come And Get It (Love’s On The Fire)
I Got A Sure Thing
After You Leave Girl
Mama Told Me Not To Come
Iddinit
Since I Lost My Baby
Keep An Eye
Movin’
Feelin’ Alright – Studio Version
You Better Watch Out
I’m Your Sunny One (He’s My Sunny Boy)
Someone’s Standing In My Love Light
DISC TWO
If You Want Heaven
You Can’t Hurry Love
Keep Off The Grass
Going My Way
Makin’ Life A Little Easier For You
Up On The Roof
If I Can’t Nobody Can
Our Love
I Can’t Get Enough Of You
Cupid
Let’s Go Back To Day One
Would Ya Would Ya Baby
Love Trip
Label Me Love
Jumbo Sam
That’s How Love Is – Original Complete Version
If I Have To Move A Mountain – Original Complete Version
Mama’s Pearl – Demo (Guess Who’s Making Whoopee)
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