Jaafar Jackson stars as his late uncle in the new biopic, “Michael,” exploring Michael Jackson’s journey toward superstardom.
Speaking of the pop star’s beginnings, did you know the Jackson 5 played in Tampa? In fact, Michael Jackson had a number of connections to Tampa Bay and central Florida.
On Aug. 10, 1971, as Michael and his brothers went on stage, screams filled Curtis Hixon Hall, which once was a premier music venue and convention center in Tampa’s downtown. It stood adjacent to where Curtis Hixon Park is today.
“The star of the show was Michael Joe Jackson, 11, who was a motion of spins, whirls and dances as he sang the top hits that have made the Jackson 5 so famous,” wrote the St. Petersburg Times’ Peggy Peterman.
Unlike the time Janis Joplin played Curtis Hixon Hall in 1969 (and was dragged offstage in handcuffs for “vulgar and indecent language”), not much was documented in the papers about the Jackson 5’s 1971 performance.
The band returned to the same venue a few months later in March 1972.
“Tampa’s Curtis Hixon Hall was where the action could be found in the Tampa Bay Area Thursday night,” wrote the Times on that occasion. “The reason: That’s where the Jackson Five were sending the young audience into a frenzy of excitement. A barrier was erected in front of the state to keep over-excited fans away from the performers.”
A $6 ticket was what it took to watch one of the most popular bands at the time. It doesn’t seem 180,000 BTS fans got a bargain like that for their concerts at Raymond James Stadium last month, where the lowest ticket prices ranged from $134 to $221.
Michael Jackson’s ties to the Tampa Bay area and Florida aren’t limited to concerts.
Let’s fast forward to the 1980s.
Jackson hired a crew of local balloon pilots in 1984, including Clearwater artist and balloonist Roger Bansemer, to tour the Orlando area. Bansemer said Jackson sang to children playing outside an elementary school, and they didn’t recognize the singer in the sky, according to the Tampa Bay Times archive.
Clearwater’s Tatiana Thumbtzen was the leading lady in Jackson’s “The Way You Make Me Feel” music video a few years later.
In a note to a Times reporter in 1988, the actress wrote filming with Jackson “was truly a dream come true … I consider him the ‘legend’ of our time.”
Over in Orlando, Jackson did a photoshoot in the Rainbow Corridor in the Imagination Pavilion at Disney’s Epcot.
Does “Captain EO” ring a bell? Jackson’s short film, played exclusively at the park from 1986 through 1994. Disney brought it back to play there after Jackson’s death in 2009. And though his final years had been marked by a high-profile trial for sexual abuse against a child, fans continued to enjoy “Captain EO” until it wrapped its revival run in 2015.
Florida has one other big connection to Jackson that endures: his companion, Bubbles.
Bubbles the Chimp had a big presence during the “Bad” era. The famous pet now resides at a Wauchula sanctuary where he paints, watches TV and gives piggyback rides to smaller chimps.
Times culture and nostalgia reporter Gabrielle Calise contributed to this report.