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Steeltown's Story - Jackson 5 Start

Broadway Ave., downtown Gary, Ind:
Still within reach of Chicago radio waves as we drive, jaws agape, deeper into the bowels of what may be the scariest city I'll ever see.

Stopping for a red light, four blocks south of I-90 exit 14B, my speakers spit the lyrically apropos:

So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell, blue skies from pain
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

The morning sunlight filters through smog from the U.S. Steel Plant on the lakeshore, drenching the city in a pale, grayish hue. Aside from a convention center and a few buildings near the Interstate, business on Gary's main drag is in shocking decay. Many storefronts aren't merely vacant, they've been smashed and looted, left doorless and tattered â?? exhibits of an ugly steel town, a museum of Midwestern poverty. At its worst, this city looks like a war zone. At its best, it makes the South Side feel like south Evanston. We're an hour from Northwestern, three from my home in Wisconsin, and I think I can tell â?? that I'm as near to comprehending Floyd's cold steel as I'll ever be, under the smoggy veil of Gary.

And all this for a travel story, about a pilgrimage most parents wouldn't encourage their children to make: A quest to find the landmarks of Gary's most famous non-metallic export, the Jackson Family. Problem is, there isn't a real landmark list; no Jackson Historical Society in Gary, no self-guided tour maps for sale at the city's tourist bureau, just some residual animosity toward the Jacksons' departure, speculation about a return, and a rather forbidding setting for two wide-eyed NU seniors.

Richard Grey, a columnist for the Post-Tribune's Gary bureau, told me this: "You could catch hell coming to Gary to find something about the Jacksons."

Gordon Keith, the Jackson Five's first manager and owner of the defunct Steeltown Records label, asked me if I knew what I was getting in to, to what sort of place I was coming. He recommended exiting Gary before dusk. "You're bringing someone with you, right?" he asked.

Warnings aside, Grey and Keith helped me draft a meager itinerary, which included the Jacksons' home, schools, performance venues and record label. The family â?? father Joseph, a crane operator at the steelworks, mother Katherine, children Maureen, Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, La toya, Marlon, Michael, Randy and Janet â?? grew up at 2300 Jackson Street in Gary. Their first paying gig was there, at Mr. Lucky's Lounge. Their first release wasn't on Motown Records, it was "Big Boy" on Keith's Steeltown label in 1967.

En route to the original Jackson home, we see something we hadn't heard about â?? the Palace Theater. It stands on the east side of Broadway Ave., bearing a cruel joke of sorts about the Jacksons leaving town for greener pastures. Closed and boarded up like much of its surroundings, the Palace's marquee reads: JACKSON FIVE - TONITE, only minus the O in Jackson and with the F in Five dangling at an angle, nearly upside-down. The Jackson Five changed its name, at the urging of Motown's Berry Gordy Jr., to The Jackson 5 soon after leaving Gary in 1969.

We figured no one had bothered to take down the marquee, judging by the town's disregard for the rest of the strip. However, according to Grey, the sign was put up last year when Gary hosted the Miss USA pageant. "They did that [during the pageant] to make Broadway look like it had some activity," he said. The theater itself, we were later told, once showed movies and never played host to the Jacksons. An eerie painting of a suited ticket-taker still stares at street-level passersby. The Palace has been closed for nearly 20 years.

A right turn onto West 23rd Avenue, past abandoned homes and vacant lots with tall, browned grass brings us to a neighborhood nicer than most. The houses, although small and squarish, are mostly well-kept, and none appear to be deserted. The original Jackson home stands, unmarked and unassuming, at the corner of West 23rd and Jackson. 2300 Jackson St. is the address, revered in the title track from The Jacksons' (Jackie, Tito, Marlon and Randy) 1989 album, "2300 Jackson Street":

Memories of growing up/and working hard/Our childhood passed us by â?¦
2300 Jackson Street/Always home/2300 Jackson Street/Always home

A 90s-model Buick LeSabre sits in the driveway. Two bare trees in the yard dwarf the white house, which itself is about the width and length of one and one-half Buick LeSabres. An iron-barred gate acts as a screen door, a staple Gary security measure. The edge of the Roosevelt High School grounds nearly touches the backyard, and the bleachers of the football field loom in the distance. The shrub in front is well trimmed, and the siding bears no marks of decay, almost defying the ugliness of the schoolyard beyond. The fact that an 11-person family fit into a structure that small is astonishing. The fact that the King of Pop made it from here to there, well, that's downright staggering.

Grey told me that an uncle of the Jacksons now lives there, and he isn't cooperative about answering the door. True to form, he chooses not to respond to our house call, preferring to exist incognito. Apparently there was a push to make 2300 Jackson a national landmark in the 1980s, during the term of Mayor Richard G. Hatcher, but like much else in Gary, it seems to have fallen by the wayside.

Two blocks south and one block west of the Jackson home, on West 25th Avenue, sits the front of Roosevelt High School. This landmark, too, suffers from a lack of signage, despite being lamented in a 1971 Jackson 5 Motown release, the title track from "Goin' Back to Indiana":

Ha! Ha! Sis boom bah!
One more time for Roosevelt High!
Every soul that passes by
This one's for you from the Jackson 5!
I'm comin' home
It's plain to see
I still got Indiana soul in me!

Roosevelt High, a red-brick, white-spired school with a ragged grounds to its rear, appears both grand and menacing as we drive by. It used to play host to an annual city-wide talent show, which the Jackson Five won when Michael was just five years old. Motown facilitated the family's move to Hollywood in 1969, when Michael was 11, so he never attended Roosevelt, but Maureen, Tito and Jermaine are all said to have been enrolled while living at 2300 Jackson.

According to Keith, the young Michael did attend school in the shadows of the Roosevelt High grounds, at the now non-existent Garnett Elementary School. The Garnett school, once located at 2131 Jackson St., two and a half blocks north of the Jackson home, was closed in the 1980s, according to a spokeswoman from the Gary Community School Corporation. It was later converted into Martin Luther King Jr. Academy, an adult education center that shared Garnett's fate, closing its doors in September 2001.

Drive approximately 20 blocks northwest from the Jackson home, to the corner of West 11th Avenue and Grant Street, and you'll see a one-story brick building where every window is covered, some with boards, some with paper, some with a combination of both. A strip-like white sign near the top reads "Mr. Lucky's Liquor" in painted black letters. Along the north side of the structure is a second door and a sign for Mr. Lucky's Lounge, a bar and restaurant at which, according to Grey, Keith and local legend, the Jackson family had its first real gig. The venue was reportedly the usual home of comics and striptease acts, and when the Jackson Five played, the place was packed. "The scene at Mr. Lucky's was real tight, and not in a slang sense," Keith said.

"Joseph used to bring them in there to perform, and then he'd pass the hat around for money," Grey told me. "The shows were technically illegal, because you had minors performing where they served alcohol."

The confusing thing Grey said about Mr. Lucky's Lounge was that it was an upstairs establishment in a barn-like structure. Our tour brings us to a one-story business. Why? Because there was a fire there six months ago, and the roof â?? and the second floor with it â?? was removed. Grey told me a new, flatter roof had been added three months later. Mr. Lucky's didn't appear to be opening any time soon, however. Keith even warned me that the historic venue's neighborhood â?? right near a railroad crossing â?? had fallen on some "hard times" and might not be so safe to drive in. We take our photos from the car.

Only eight more blocks west, through a residential neighborhood near the tracks, is our final Gary destination. This was the record label â?? or, more appropriately, house â?? where the Jacksons' recording career began. Near the corner of West 10th Avenue and Taney Street is Keith's home, once the headquarters for Steeltown Records. Keith still occupies the two-story residence, made of brick in colors ranging from reddish- to sooty-brown. Keith inked the Jackson Family to a contract in 1967, acted as their first manager/producer and released a pair of 7" singles, "Big Boy" in 1967 and "Some Girls Want Me for Their Love" in 1968.

The Jacksons' relationship with Steeltown Records and the house on Taney Street would be short-lived, however. In 1968, at the urging of Gladys Knight and Bobby Taylor (from the Vancouvers), Motown's Berry Gordy Jr. signed the Jackson Five to a one-year contract. In 1969, Motown bought out the Jacksons' entire contract with Steeltown, and helped the family relocate to Hollywood.

More than 30 years after the fact, Keith still claims the Jacksons' contract buyout wasn't exactly cut and dry. He's currently suing the Jacksons, Brunswick Records and possibly Motown as well for multi-million dollar damages.

"The Jacksons have not only double-crossed me, they've crossed me three- or four-fold," Keith claims. "They took a lot of [Steeltown's] intellectual property as well as a lot of our identity."

Keith was reluctant to reveal details surrounding the pending lawsuit, Steeltown Records' property, or specifics of his original contract with the family. However, he pointed to a 1996 Brunswick Records release as an example of property theft from Steeltown. The record, entitled "Pre-History: The Lost Steeltown Recordings", featured, among others, "Big Boy" and "Some Girls Want Me for Their Love."

"The Jacksons have projected themselves to the world as one thing, but they're some lying and knifing people," Keith says.

Grey could only speculate on the situation between Keith and the Jacksons. "I think [in 1968] Motown scurried in, picked them up, and swept them off," he said. "Back in those days, Gordon Keith didn't have an ironclad contract. Was it verbal or written? It may have been both. Was it brief? It may very well have been."

Post-1969 Jackson venues in Gary are almost impossible to find. The last Jackson Five gig Grey can recall in the city was one dear to his heart â?? they played at his junior prom in 1968. The setting was San Remo's Restaurant, which once stood on the Industrial Highway near the Gary/Chicago Airport. Grey remembers that Michael had already invented one dance by then â?? the Camel Walk.

Having run out of landmarks, the only thing to do is put Gary behind us, and backtrack towards I-90.

We make one last trip on Broadway Avenue, past empty businesses, past the office of the Post-Tribune, past the Palace Theater and its disheartening facade. Grey told me that residents often speculate whether there will be a Michael Jackson homecoming; some even claim to have seen him around town. Grey wrote a column about it in January. Said it's a two-way street, that it isn't all Michael's fault â?? the town hasn't done anything to lure him back. "There is no street, no museum, no annual day, no celebration, no information, no legitimate invitations," Grey wrote.

That is, except for those letters on the Palace marquee, growing smaller and smaller in my rearview mirror. One year, and even those will have fallen down. Would you go back?

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