TO Kevin Kimble Tommy Williams Thomas McDermott Jr. Dinahlynn Biggs Curtis Allen SOULPEOPLES FRIENDSHIP! picture yesterday by Albert Chester Copyright 2014 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED My longtime friend KNOWN AS THE FIRST RECORDING PRODUCER & THE DISCOVER OF MICHAEL JACKSON* BIG BOY* IM A BIG BOY NOW Gordon Keith and I, Robert J. Austin COMING TOGETHER IN SOULPEOPLES FRINDSHIP SUPPORTING ALL RACES CREEDS AND COLOR OF OUR RAINBOW OF ONELOVE! SUPPORTING A MAN OF THE PEOPLE COL. RICHARD LIGON SHERIFF LAKE COUNTY INDIANA!......... OF COURSE NOT BEFORE JOSEPH JACKSON.............AND WHAT PART DID REYNAUD D. JONES PLAY BESIDES PLAYING GUITAR ON THE FIRST PERFORMANE OF THE JACKSON FIVE///////keep up with the untold complete story from Roosevelt High start, to Steeltown start, to Motown start, TILL THE START OF ONE OF THE GREATEST EVENTS IN ENTERTAIMENT HISTORY....STARTING TODAY....right here! • Here is a brief ‘unfinished first draft’ of a ‘never before’ un-told “tidbit” of how 1370 AM WLTH RADIO and Radio SMOK’IN99.COM Station owners Marion Williams’ and Tommy Williams’ *THE 1967 CITYWIDE TALENT SHOW AT THE GARY MEMORIAL AUDITORIUM* was and is a part of much bigger STORY about the day long summer of unending funny and funny ‘HIS STORY of a long and many days alone impasse that ends in VICTORY & TRUUMPH that travels the backstage roads all across this nation from Gary, Indiana to Encino California to Los Angeles and the many non-fiction tales of happy and tears of a winding road that runs concurrent through the lives and lifesong but “GARY IND LOVESONG” only told in the past in part ABOUT UN-PREDICTABLE MONUMENTAL EVENTS THAT BRING US TO TODAY 2014-2015 along the path of the epic of Robert J. Smith’s aka Robert J. Austin’s AND Reynaud D. Jones’ *ALIAS SMITH & Jones VS. MICHAEL JACKSON / THE KING OF POP AND WORLDWIDE PHLANTHROPY: THE FOREVER WITH LOVE “TRILLION DOLLAR MARCH” OF FOREVER DAY OF SUMMER* ….THAT LEADS TO TODAY 2014-2015 as it relates to the music History of Roosevelt High School and Gary, IND. Looking forward to seeing each you my friends very soon in person… mum & music is the word..Because “U & Me Are the World.” • Robert J. Austin From the earliest of our Gary. Indiana., Roosevelt High School-2300 Jackson Street Days of Midtown Little League right out in back of the Jacksons home and Roosevelts poor sand lot football field .. Days that I can always remember to remember that seems like our playing time was just a string of one long happy day of neighbor summer games and singing stuck on endless fun and funny, I have known Joseph Jackson for that many decades and I have never viewed him any different than any other of all of our fathers and step fathers. As some of us have known the both. Joe Jackson was just an ordinary Black father of the 1960s..Except he had an uncanny ability to stand tall up against any one or anything that would come against him and his wife, sons and daughters. Somehow, Joseph was blessed to have just a little bit of a measure more of determination and vision and knowhow and more talented children and mouths to feed than the rest of the field. One thing for certain, I never saw a lack of protection nor love for not only his whole family but love for his friends too. Here is a good example of Josephs vision and loyalty for a friend. I was just beginning to write songs for a young group out of Chicago called the 21st Creation on Golden Tone/ Motown Records. Because of the difficulty in breaking into the business I didnt get any songs on the 21st Creations Motown LP. It was Joe Jackson, who lent a leg up and gave me and Reynaud D. Jones my song partner our first real breakthrough professional opportunity at songwriting in Los Angeles. • • Tommy Williams, Dinahlynn Biggs, Tommy Redmond Hicks, Siggy Jackson, MJ Brookins, Curtis Allen.. .. I left Roosevelt High School in November 2, 1966. It was my senior year. My best friend John Scott and I (2561 Jackson St.) whom I sang with in a popular Roosevelt High School singing group called the Novels decided to join the U.S. Army. The List of guys that left Gary at the same time ( Robert Amos, the El Juan ‘s, Tobe Chester the Lyrics, John Truttling, Curtis Brown, Robert Buchannan the Les Reynaud’s, Ronald Kimbrough, ‘the Novels’ and many more reads like whos who list graduates of the Roosevelt Class’ of 1963, 1964, 1965 & 1966 including Frobel High School). These young men are for sure the names of some of the very best entertainer ever to sing in Gary, Indiana. We all were each part-time professional singers even in high school. We sang professionally all over the Midwest on our weekends. At that time it was called going on RIFFS. One weekend we would sing as the Artistic’s, or the Marvellos’s or the Dells or Maurice and the Radiant’s, or the Jive Five or the Spellbinders or the Chi-lites or the Five Dutones, from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Indy. We’d be every any entertainer in the Midwest ‘chittl’in’ circuit entertainment world. We were really good enough to perform any hit song that several under-ground club promoters not quite on the up&up would book us as the actual current Hit record recording group’. This would happen fairly often for many artist around the country. Whenever, advantageously the real recording group was booked somewhere out of town, out of sight, out of mind far away from the gig that we were booked. It was a good enough and exciting experience in those days for us impersonate them and to take their place for the sake of gaining stage presence and for a little extra cash. Most people never knew the difference or didn’t really care, that is if you put on a good enough show. We would become them, the real artist (the hit recording group) for a one night stand. I was amazed to find years later that a number well known singing groups “in their leaner days” before their stardom shined white hot; singing groups like the OJays did the exactly same thing to take care of their families and bring home the bread. Going out on RIFFS to earn a little extra money. (Just for the record, so no one will think that I was content to be a total high school dropout I much later graduated high school and went on to go to college and became well trained in electronic to data communications, etc. My education became a must, as I later found out the importance of high tech education in this ultra highly competitive world working at United State Steel Corporation. I made and mandated to be an able bodied mind able to fix some of the most advanced equipment in the free world. I was trained in five areas of very high technical work ranging from electronics to data voice communications telephone systems. We left for the Army just in time for Reynaud D. Jones to organize a little group of guys, all brothers in ages ranging from near to kind garden to Junior High from my old 2300 neighborhood to perform on the Class of 1966’s annual Roosevelt High ”Mask & Gavel” Talent Show. A talent show that at least “one” out of the several groups that I sang with would automatically always win every year. The group organized by Reynaud Jones was named the La Juan and the Toreados. The name of the group should have been named Jajuan ‘high- lighted’ for Jermaine, the only lead singer in the group then. But Reynaud had made a mistake in the name pronunciation Jermaine’s name. La Juan and the Toreadors (Tito’s name) which actually sounded like the El Jauns the group I formed. Beyond my wildest imagination, La Juan and the Toreados would later become “the soon to be world famous” dancing machine professional renown touring group, the JACKSON FIVE.Reynaud, Jackie, Jermaine, Tito, Marlon and Michael had pulled off the town upset at Roosevelt high and at the Novel‘s expense at least at the time, we thought so. And I might add my guys the Novels were hot in the collar and just could hardly wait to beat their little “behinds” With the same sneak type of attack tactic because Reynaud had secretly practiced in his basement. The Novels decided to do the exact same thing. And opportunity soon knocked at our secret door. Talent contests had become the end thing in Gary because of the talent here and the sharp interest in music. Within months of the Roosevelt talent show Tommy Williams, Marion William’s brother who would become principal of Roosevelt High School, decided to put together a talent show for the entire City of Gary. Everyone thought we were still away in the Army and that gave the Novels the perfect alibi to hide a return match of wit and talent. We soon met once again, the both of Reynaud’s two groups that simultaneously played guitar with. Sweet revenge was soon to be ours. It was the Epics and the Jackson Five against the over the hill Novels. And we were over the hill” in more ways than one. We, the three of us; John Scott, Ronnie Kimbrough and I were AWOL from Uncle Sams U.S. Army but we didn’t care we decide to face the music fool heartedly and cavalier. On a perfectly warm spring night, not too long after the 1966 Mask & Gavel Talent Show at Roosevelt high school, at the City of Gary’s major concert and basketball venue, dance on and actually off the stage winning the Memorial Auditoriums City Wide Talent Show. We set all of them all the fledging would be entertainers in the whole Cit of Gary and the entire auditorium on “fire” with two Temptation songs The Way You Do the Things You Do and Dream Come True. It was no fluke that “We WON” being older and well more seasoned singers and dancers, we had secretly practiced everything over and over again; it seems like My Forever Came, the light of both night and day. I had the dance routines down, as I was the “step man” of that day and we, the Novels, being somewhat semi-professionals were capable of “dancing the audience’s socks off their feet” with every type splits and acrobatic dance routines seen & done at night clubs around the country. After we had finished performing I remember laughing Florida Bryant’s remark, telling Reynaud: Man, the stage is on fire and furthermore, he didn’t want to even come up out of the basement of “The Memorial.” We had kept it a total secret that we were even going to perform and when Tommy Williams called our name the crowd hollered loud “THE NOVELS” are back. We ran from the ‘out of the audience’ on to the stage and never missed a step, smiling all the way home! Reynaud D. Jones and I have seen and been with the Jackson Five around the country where they preformed so impressively that they would have literally “run off the stage” right in the middle of their last major closing hit song just in order to escape their egger fans. We would then travel nonstop by police escort, stopping for not one stop light, until we would all reach the safe haven of the Jackson Five’s undisclosed hotel rooms. But on the tip of my mind of that “child like night” in Gary of the one night stand at the Memorial Auditorium in the spring of early 1967 in our hands was delivered one of my fondest young heart memories out of the past and hopefully I’m sure, one of Florida “Babo” Bryant, Reynaud Jones and Joe Jackson’s “BEST BAD DREAMS ever given show at the Memorial Auditorium.” (SMILE!) They say truth is stranger than fiction boy do I agree. This, may read like a fairytale but its all 100% true…..and the rest is Gary, Indiana.” HOMETOWN HISTORY in the Makings. “ In response to the new Facebook guidelines I hereby declare that my copyright is attached to all of my personal details, writing - published and unpublished, personal/professional photos and videos, etc. (as a result of the Berne Convention). For commercial use of the above my written consent is needed at all times! (Anyone reading this can copy this text and paste it on their Facebook Wall. This will place them under protection of copyright laws. By the present communiqué, I notify Facebook that it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, disseminate, or take any other action against me on the basis of this profile and/or its contents. The aforementioned prohibited actions also apply to employees, students, agents and/or any staff under Facebooks direction or control. The content of this profile is private and confidential information. The violation of my privacy is punished by law (UCC 1 1-308-308 1-103 and the Rome Statute). Facebook is now an open capital entity. All members are recommended to publish a notice like this, or if you prefer, you may copy and paste this version. If you do not publish a statement at least once, you will be tacitly allowing the use of elements such as your photos as well as the information contained in your profile status updates.. All Rights Reserved(C)2014ACJ — at The Aquatorium. TO Kevin Kimble Tommy Williams Thomas McDermott Jr. Dinahlynn Biggs Curtis Allen SOULPEOPLES FRIENDSHIP! picture yesterday by Albert Chester Copyright 2014 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Posted on: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 17:41:55 +0000
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