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without any major hits, lacked the resources to give the Jacksons a breakthrough record. The label’s founders filed thesession away, and the Jackson 5’s One-derful single, “Big Boy,” written by Eddie Silvers with fifteen-year-old hotshotLarry Blasingaine on guitar, never came out. This version of the song was unknown to the public until Austen told the story in 2009, after Michael’s death.
    Not long after theOne-derful sessions, the phone rang at 2300 Jackson Street. The caller was a young Gary singer, producer, and raconteur named Gordon Keith. He’d heard about the Jacksons through Shirley Cartman, Tito’s junior high orchestra teacher. Inspired by Motown, Keith and three of his best friends had formed Steeltown Records in Gary.“It was tough,” recalls Mo Rodgers, one of Steeltown’s early principals. “[As] black entrepreneurs, we went up against the typical walls, and the banks and stuff.” But Keith knew a phenomenon when he saw one, especially after witnessing Jackson 5 posters all over Gary.Cartman invited Keith to her house, where the boys sang two of her own songs, “The Scrub” and “Lonely Heart,” although Keith didn’t show up. Instead, he went later to the Jackson’s home, where he watched in disbelief as Michaelhigh-jumped Tito’s guitar cord, stretched chest-high between a guitar and an amp.
    Despite the Jacksons’ One-derful contract, Keith signed the band to Steeltown and began recording the band after school days inNovember 1967. His instinct was to use his usual Gary studio, but he had a feeling about the sessions, so he relocated to a more accomplished one on West Sixty-Ninth Street in Chicago.Morrison Sound Studio was an enclave for African-American musicians in the heart of a white neighborhood. “Most sessions were done late—midnight till two in the morning,” recalls Jerry Mundo, a studio singer, organist, and guitarist. “A lot of cats would come in late, get blasted. We’d live on White Castle hamburgers. They’d have a bottle of gin on the floor, and an hour later they’d be gone, and the drummer would get into an argument with the bass player, and they’d get into a fistfight.” The nightly ruckus eventually cost the owner his lease, and he’d soon have to relocate the studio to a black neighborhood on the East Side.
    The Jacksons, says Delroy Bridgeman, a Gary singer who worked onthe sessions, were“very quiet, well-mannered kids.” It took about four hours to record a song they’d learned at One-derful and had incorporated into their club sets: “Big Boy.” They also came up with “You’ve Changed,” “We Don’t Have to Be Over 21,” and “Some Girls Want Me for Their Lover,” all written by local artists, R&B songs designed for adult listeners. Michael was an accomplished mimic, sounding as smooth as a grown-up. The sessions were long and difficult, and the boys stayed until ten or eleven nightly.
    The Steeltown version of “Big Boy” was Michael Jackson’s formal introduction to the world. He comes in after thirty seconds, following drums, bass, a trebly blues-guitar riff, and backup harmonies that sound too polished to be Jackie or Jermaine. (Because they weren’t—after the Jacksons had finished recording, Keith and his colleagues decided to overdub the boys’vocals, other than Michael, with professionals.)
    “Big Boy” is like a house built out of fine materials by a not-terribly-proficient work crew. (Tito plays guitar and Jermaine plays bass, but Keith beefed up their contributions with four or five session musicians.) The song is lazy and flat, with no dynamism—until Michael comes in, effortlessly brassy, stretching out the syllables to the first words: “ faaaaairy-taaaaaalessssssss .” The single, with its flip side, “You’ve Changed,” came out onJanuary 31, 1968. The Jacksons couldn’t believe they finally had a record.
    Back then, South Side blues label Chess Records owned an AM radio station whose call letters,WVON,