All about Michael Jackson

GARY, Indiana (AP) — This gritty steel-making city where Michael Jackson got his start playing on street corners with his brothers and competing in talent shows said goodbye to the King of Pop with a show that featured experienced homegrown talent, as well as youngsters who hope to follow in his footsteps.

More than 6,000 people showed up for Friday’s upbeat memorial event, which included performers singing and dancing to his hits, video montages of Jackson and comments from the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Gary’s mayor and people who knew Michael Jackson when his family lived in the city located 30 miles southeast of Chicago.

People in the crowd said the celebration was fitting for the King of Pop.

“It brought back a lot of memories,” said Betty Nicholson, 52, of Gary, who said she used to perform at some of the same talent shows as Jackson and his brothers. “The show was fantastic.”

Some of the biggest applause came before the three-plus-hour event started, when Jackson’s hits were playing over the public address system at the Steel Yard, Gary’s minor league baseball park, and young children and teenagers went out to the dugout and mimicked his moves.

Two Gary natives — Chester Gregory, who has appeared on Broadway, and Deniece Williams, known for her pop hit “Let’s Hear It For the Boy” from the movie “Footloose” — sang music that wasn’t Jackson’s. Gregory sang Jackie Wilson’s “(Your Love Keeps Liftin’ Me) Higher and Higher” because Wilson was a singer Jackson tried to emulate. Williams sang “Black Butterfly,” a song about a caterpillar’s struggles to change that she recorded in the early 1990s. She said it fit Jackson.

“Because that’s what he did. …

Read the original article at USAToday

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