No, but you can’t take away that Michael Jackson brought Black Entertainers into the mainstream.
MTV does not equal the mainstream and as the article’s author points out black artists were in the mainstream by the 1950s, if not earlier.
In any case, the heavily playlisted “top 40″ AM stations that I listened to in the 1960s were ethnically (and musically) diverse, with black artists well represented. Barry Gordy deliberately marketed Motown (“The sound of young America”) to a white audience, and not so much to the chitlin’ and soul circuit. The Supremes’ dream was to play the Copacabana in NYC. In the sense that Diana Ross was a role model for Michael Jackson, it’s not surprising that Jackson aspired to be more than just an R&B performer.
In any case, it’s a disservice to Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Jimi Hendrix to say that Michael Jackson was the first black musician to enter the mainstream.
