Everybody remembers the sparkly black jacket Michael Jackson wore the first time he did the moonwalk on TV, back in 1983. What almost nobody knows is where that jacket came from.
Michael didn’t buy it. He didn’t have it made either.
His brother Jermaine Jackson told the story years later. Jermaine is one of Michael’s older brothers and sang beside him in the Jackson 5, so he was around for most of these moments. He went on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” in 2012 and explained how the jacket turned up at the last second.
Michael, he said, “didn’t know what he was gonna wear so he went to my mother’s closet.”
Their mother is Katherine Jackson, the woman who raised all nine of the Jackson children. She had something hanging up that caught Michael’s eye. Jermaine said she “had this shiny thing that she wore, this black sequin thing,” and Michael looked at it and asked, “I like that. Can I wear it on the show?”
So the jacket millions of people picture belonged to his mom.
“That’s what he did the moonwalk in,” Jermaine said. “That was my mother’s throw.”
A throw is something you drape over your shoulders at home. Michael borrowed it, wore it in front of the whole country, and turned it into one of the most famous looks in music.
The jacket’s story didn’t stop there.
Michael held onto it for a while, then he gave it away. In his 1988 book “Moonwalk,” Michael wrote that he handed the jacket to Sammy Davis Jr. Sammy was one of the biggest entertainers of his day, a singer and dancer who had been on stage since he was a small boy and was part of the famous group of stars known as the Rat Pack.
Sammy wanted to do a Michael Jackson impression in his own act. So Michael offered him the real thing. Michael wrote that he said, “Here, you want to wear this when you do it?”
A jacket that started in his mother’s closet went out to the world, then came to rest on the shoulders of a star Michael had admired since he was little.
Sammy Davis Jr. passed away in 1990. The jacket, and the warm gesture behind the gift, is one more reason people still smile when they remember him.
We tracked down the real footage from that 1983 night so you can see the jacket catch the light for yourself.
Here’s Michael wearing it during “Billie Jean.”
Michael Jackson performing “Billie Jean” in the sequined jacket, 1983
Watch his mother’s shiny throw sparkle under the lights, and it’s hard not to grin at the little secret behind it.