In the spring of 1974 the hottest young act in America walked into the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Five brothers in matching suits, a showroom packed with grown-ups, and a city that had come to see the kids off the radio.
The Jackson 5 were supposed to be the whole show.
Then the little ones showed up.
For fifteen nights the family turned their set into something warmer and stranger than a concert. Randy wandered out. La Toya joined a tap number with the brothers. And trailing behind them came the baby of the house, seven years old, ready to do a bit nobody saw coming.
She did Mae West.
A first-grader with her hand on her hip, playing a full-grown Hollywood bombshell for a room full of Vegas regulars. They lost it. That tiny girl was Janet.
Most people know her as the woman who’d rule pop music a decade later. Hardly anyone remembers she got her start right here, tucked into her brothers’ nightclub act, learning how to work a stage before she’d lost all her baby teeth.
This was the family’s variety years. There was singing, sure. But also comedy, costumes and impressions, the whole clan goofing around together between the hits. It’s a side of the Jacksons that got buried under everything Michael would do next.
You almost have to see how young she was to believe it.
Here’s the family in full variety mode, with little Janet right in the middle of it next to her brothers.
The Jackson 5 & Little Janet Jackson In 1975 on TV
Watch how comfortable she already is. No nerves at all. She’s a kid who clearly grew up in the wings, and it shows in every little move she makes.
A few weeks before the Vegas run, the brothers were doing the same thing on prime-time television, trading jokes with Sonny and Cher. If you want to see where a seven-year-old picked up that kind of timing, start with the big brothers she was copying every night.
The Jackson 5 – The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour January 30, 1974 – Hilarious Moments!
It’s hard to picture now. The kid doing the Mae West bit in that showroom grew up to sell out arenas on her own, and it all began crammed into her brothers’ act in a Las Vegas hotel. Everyone in that room had come for Michael. The rest of the family’s future was standing right beside him, hamming it up.