If we can celebrate the anniversary
of man's first landing on the moon, why not also commemorate the first time
Michael Jackson landed his signature move, the moonwalk?
It was over 35 years ago on May 16th, nineteen eighty three
that Jackson shimmied backwards across the stage at Motown.
Twenty five taping
a few scant seconds of showmanship that may have marked the critical turning
point from him being a superstar to being the superstar of his era.
But to believe that Jackson invented
the moonwalk is like believing that Kylie Jenner invented have written
welcome to the detail.
And in this video we are investigating
the origins of the moonwalk and how it evolved over time,
as well as the cultural impact of Michael Jackson's famous first
televised backslide that shook the world all those years ago.
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shipped worldwide now trying to determine the exact creator of the moonwalk dance.
It's like trying to pin the invention of rock and roll to one artist.
It is as Darius as showing a Freeman has
said, the product of more than 70 years of dance revolution.
Cab Calloway like to say that he'd been
doing pretty much the same moves since the 1930s.
The earliest footage that portrays someone
doing something nearly identical to Jackson's fancy footwork belongs
to the dancer Bill Bailey from nineteen fifty five.
But if you want to know where Jackson got
it, the historical guesswork can come
to an end and the answer can be summed up in one word.
Shalimar.
No, it wasn't Jody Watley who was taking
that early 80s Soul Train trips to the moon.
It was the group's designated dancer,
Jeffrey Daniel, a former solid gold performer who was
renowned in the RMV dance community, who attracted attention to what was
referred to the backslide before it was taught to Michael.
And apparently Jackson held them both in his back pocket for months or years
before he decided the Motown special was the place to bust out.
Naturally, there were some variations
that go into the myth making around what happened at that March fifth nineteen
eighty three taping everything that you saw him do.
He made it up on the spot, Jermaine Jackson said in a statement.
That gives Michael far more credit, the spontaneous genius than he gave himself.
Latoya's version gives credit where credit is due.
The moonwalk was a dance that the kids were doing in the streets, she said.
And Michael came along later and he had
a guy by the name of Jeffrey Daniel teach him the moves.
And when he did it,
everybody saw it and just thought it was the most wonderful thing they'd ever seen.
Not really knowing that it was a dance that was already out there.
Michael was a little stingy
with the credit in his autobiography, although he was quite open to the fact
that his key move that the fateful taping of Motown 25 yesterday, today and forever,
which was that two months later, was not his own innovation.
I'd be practicing the moonwalk for some
time, he wrote in his 1998 memoir, which tellingly was called Moonwalker.
And it dawned on me in our kitchen on the night before the taping that I
would finally do the moonwalk in public on Motown.
Twenty five.
Now, the moonwalk was already on the streets by this time, by enhanced little.
When I did it,
it was born as a bright dance step, a popping type thing that black kids had
created dancing on the street corners in the ghetto.
So I said, this is my chance to do it and I did it.
These three kids taught me to do it.
They gave me the basics and I have been doing it a lot and probably that.
I have practiced it together with certain
other steps, all that I was really sure of was
that on the bridge to Billie Jean, I was going to walk backwards and forwards
at the same time, like walking on the moon.
The three kids to whom Jackson alluded
to was apparently Daniel and his companions, Casper and Cooling.
Daniel was a seasoned professional.
It was actually three years older than Jackson, who was then twenty four.
So you can judge for yourself whether Jackson was crediting kids as a term
of endearment or deflection meant to bolster his street cred.
Jackson had been a fan of Daniel's.
He used to watch me dance and Soul Train, Daniel recalled on a TV interview.
I had no idea back then when I was
watching the Jackson five that they were watching me in nineteen eighty.
Shalamar were doing a run at Disneyland
and people were making a fuss about my dancing, said Michael.
Both his little sister Janet Daniel caught in a TV interview backstage.
They met for the first time and that began a friendship that would lead not only
to the moonwalk lessons, but also the choreography credits
that Daniel on the bad and smooth criminal music videos.
The best existing footage of Daniel doing
the moonwalk comes from a nineteen eighty two Top of the Pops appearance that wowed
the UK annual does not take credit for inventing the dance,
saying that naturally emerged from the developing,
popping and locking style, which emphasize certain hultz impulses
and a performance out of sheer fluidity of motion.
In the mid eighties, shortly after Jackson
made it The Rage, one of the most legendary black
entertainers of the first half of the 20th century, Cab Calloway,
was reported to have gone into the move while performing in Manhattan,
according to a nineteen eighty five article in the crisis.
Asked if his teenage son had taught him the move, Calloway said, Shoot,
we did that back in the 30s only it was called the bus.
Back then, footage of Summer Colorways,
astonishing footwork from the nineteen thirties shows a lot of movies that would
definitely count as part of the evolution that led to the popping and locking style.
Perhaps the oddest thing about
Jackson's Motown 25 performance is that his first reaction at the conclusion
of his appearance was to feel insecure about it.
We worked with him in nineteen eighty, but didn't do the moonwalk publicly
until nineteen eighty three, Daniel remembered in Time magazine after
Jackson's death and after he did it he asked me how was it?
And I said, Why did you wait so long?
He said, well, it still didn't come out right.
I'm like, huh, this is the performance that totally blew everyone away.
And he said something didn't come out
right or whatever was going on in his mind, we would never know it.
We all know that it was a mind blowing
performance and it just took him to another level.
In his autobiography,
Jackson went into detail about the reasons for his dissatisfaction with the Motown 25
performance, which apparently didn't have anything to do with the moonwalk.
I just remember opening my eyes at the end
and saying a sea of people standing up and applauding, he said.
And I felt so many conflicting emotions.
I knew I had done my best and felt good, so good.
But at the same time, I felt really disappointed in myself.
I had planned to do this one really long spin and then stop on my toes.
Suspended for a moment.
I didn't stay on my toes for as long as I wanted.
I did the spin and I landed on one toe.
I wanted to just stay there, just freeze there.
But it didn't work as quite as I'd imagined.
When I got backstage, the people back,
they were congratulating me and I was still disappointed about the spin.
I had been concentrating so hard and I'm such a perfectionist.
At the same time, I knew it was one of the happiest moments of my life.
Although he never forgot that insecurity
about his performance of Billie Jean, he had some good help getting over it.
The day after it aired in nineteen eighty
three, Fred Astaire called me on the phone.
Jackson wrote in Moonwalker.
He said, You're a hell of a movie, man.
You really put them on their asses last night.
You're an angry dancer. I'm the same way.
I used to do the same thing with my cane.
I had met him once or twice in the past,
but this was the first time he had ever called me.
It was the greatest compliment I've ever
received in my life and the only one I had ever wanted to believe.
Later he invited me to his house
and there were more compliments from him until I really last.
He went over my Billie Jean performance
step by step, and the great choreographer Hermes Pan
that choreographed Photostats dance moves in.
The movies came over and I showed them both the moonwalk.
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