When I first performed with my brothers, we were known as the Jacksons. We
would later become the Jackson 5. Still later, after we left Motown, we
would reclaim the Jacksons name again.
Every one of my albums or the group's albums has been dedicated to our
mother, Katherine Jackson, since we took over our own careers and began to
produce our own music. My first memories are of her holding me and singing
songs like "You Are My Sunshine" and "Cotton Fields." She sang to me and to
my brothers and sisters often. Even though she had lived in Indiana for some
time, my mother grew up in Alabama, and in that part of the country it was
just as common for black people to be raised with country and western music
on the radio as it was for them to hear spirituals in church. She likes
Willie Nelson to this day. She has always had a beautiful voice and I
suppose I got my singing ability from my mother and, of course, from God.
Mom played the clarinet and the piano, which she taught my oldest sister,
Maureen, whom we call Rebbie, to play, just as she'd teach my other older
sister, LaToya. My mother knew, from an early age, that she would never
perform the music she loved in front of others, not because she didn't have
the talent and the ability, but because she was crippled by polio as a
child. She got over the disease, but not without a permanent limp in her
walk. She had to miss a great deal of school as a child, but she told us
that she was lucky to recover at a time when many died from the disease. I
remember how important it was to her that we got the sugar-cube vaccine. She
even made us miss a youth club show one Saturday afternoon - that's how
important it was in our family.