The Jackson 5 were five brothers from Gary, Indiana, and for most of us they’re the reason we first heard a young Michael Jackson sing. They became stars on Motown, the famous Detroit record label behind so much of the soul music people grew up on. Hit after hit, from “I Want You Back” to “ABC,” they turned a house full of boys into one of the biggest acts in the country.
By 1976 the brothers had made a big decision. They walked away from Motown and signed with a new label called Epic, ready to start a fresh chapter.
So it caught fans off guard when, 50 years ago today, record stores put out a brand-new Jackson 5 album with the Motown name right on it. It was called “Joyful Jukebox Music,” and it arrived on October 26, 1976.
The group wasn’t even there anymore.
Fans that week saw a shiny new Jackson 5 record on the shelf, full of songs they’d never heard, from a label the brothers had just said goodbye to. It didn’t quite add up.
What really makes people shake their heads is the timing. The album hit stores just four days after the brothers released their very first single for Epic. And it landed less than two weeks before their first Epic album, “The Jacksons,” which came out on November 5, 1976. For a short stretch that fall, fans could walk into a store and find the brothers on two different labels at the same time.
Every song on it came from old recording sessions. The tracks were cut between November 1972 and February 1975, then set aside and left on the shelf. It was the first Jackson 5 album made up entirely of songs the public had never heard.
You can still hear the song that gave the record its name.
The title track from that shelved 1976 album
The album didn’t stick around for long. Wikipedia says it was “distributed for a very short period.” Because it came and went so quickly, it turned into one of the hardest Jackson 5 albums to track down. Collectors still hunt for a clean copy.
One of the songs was the brothers’ own version of “Pride and Joy,” a classic by Marvin Gaye, one of the greatest voices Motown ever had.
Here they are putting their spin on it, pulled from that same batch of shelved songs.
The Jackson 5 cover a Marvin Gaye classic
Fifty years on, it’s a sweet little footnote in the family’s story. A record with the boys’ young voices on it, arriving in stores at the exact moment they were stepping into something new. If you ever spot it in a crate of old vinyl, hold onto it. You’re holding one of the rarest things the Jackson 5 ever put out.