Gilbert Garcia, over at the San Antonio Current, writes a great piece about MJ. Read it here. But what's especially wonderful is Garcia's opening anecdote, telling the story where in 1982 the King of Pop contributes backing vocals on a classic Tex Mex Nuevo Onda single...
There’s a little-known Michael Jackson recording that I’ve been flashing back to ever since MJ’s death last Thursday.
It’s a lilting reggae ballad by Austin Tex-Mex cult hero Joe “King” Carrasco called “Don’t Let A Woman (Make a Fool Out of You).” The story goes that Carrasco, then working on his 1982 album, Synapse Gap, spotted Jackson standing in the corridor outside the recording studio, and lured him in to do some backing vocals. Jackson’s harmonies are wonderfully ethereal on this track, with none of the self-importance that we would come to accept from him over the last two decades of his life.
What I love best about the recording, though, is the story behind it. The fact that Jackson, at the same time he was constructing his monumental Thriller album, willingly lent his golden falsetto to a song with little commercial potential, made by an obscure guy that he barely knew, is somehow reassuring. It suggests that while he was never a “regular guy,” Jackson did have a small window of young adulthood when he was approachable, when he wasn’t yet obsessed with his own myth.
Go here to listen to the song. Badass.
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