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Michael Jackson was born in 1958 in Gary, Indiana, a steel town near Chicago.
He was the seventh of nine children, and the small house was always full of music.
Their father worked at the steel mill but dreamed of a bigger life for his sons.
He started a family band and made the boys practice every day after school.
The practice was hard, and Michael later said he never really had a childhood.
But when little Michael began to sing, people stopped and listened.
The band was called the Jackson 5, and Michael, the youngest, became its lead singer.
In 1969 they signed with Motown, the famous music company.
Their first four songs for Motown all went to number one in America — no group had ever done that before.
Michael was eleven years old.
As a young man, he began to make his own music.
In 1982 he released a new album called Thriller.
It sold more copies than any other album in history.
A year later, on a television show, he performed a dance step that looked like magic.
He slid backward while his feet seemed to walk forward.
People called it the moonwalk.
That night he wore one sparkling white glove.
In 1984 he won eight Grammy Awards in a single night.
Fans called him the King of Pop.
Michael also used his fame to help people.
In 1985 he wrote the song We Are the World with the singer Lionel Richie.
More than forty stars sang it, and it raised millions of dollars for hungry people in Africa.
Michael Jackson died suddenly in 2009, at the age of fifty.
Millions of people around the world cried for him.
But the music never stopped.
His songs still play every day, in every country — and somewhere, right now, someone is practicing the moonwalk.
