Who Invented the Moonwalk?

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

It was 30 years ago, on March 25, 1983, that Jackson shimmied backward across the stage at the Motown 25 taping, a few scant seconds of showmanship that may have marked the critical turning point from his being a superstar to being the mega-superstar of his era. 

photo: Getty Images

Cab Calloway liked to say that he had been doing the same moves since the 1930s. The earliest footage to portray someone's moves that were nearly identical to Jackson's fancy footwork in 1983 belongs to the dancer Bill Bailey.



Jackson's inspiration is summed up in one word: Shalamar.

The group's designated dancer, Jeffrey Daniel - a former "Solid Gold" hoofer - was renowned in the R&B/dance community and had attracted attention for what was then referred to as "the backslide" before he taught it to Michael Jackson.



And apparently Jackson had incubated his dance move for years before deciding to do his famous slide at the Motown special.

Michael was reserved in crediting his inspiration but in his autobiography, was quite open in stating that his key move at that fateful taping for Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever which aired two months later, was not his own innovation.

" ... These three kids taught it to me. They gave me the basics - and I had been doing it a lot in private. I had practiced it together with certain other steps. All I was really sure of was that on the bridge to 'Billie Jean' I was going to walk backward and forward at the same time, like walking on the moon."

The "three kids" to whom Jackson alluded were Daniel and his compatriots, Geron "Casper" Candidate and Derek "Cooly" Jackson. Daniel was a seasoned professional and three years older than Jackson, who was 24.

Jackson had been a fan of Daniel's. "He used to watch me dance on 'Soul Train," Daniel recalled in a TV interview. "I had no idea back then when I was watching the Jackson Five that they were watching me." In 1980, "Shalamar were doing a run at Disneyland and people were making a fuss about my dancing, so Michael brought little Janet," Daniel recalled in a TV interview. Backstage, they met for the first time, and that began a friendship that led to not only the moonwalk lessons but co-choreography credit for Daniel on the "Bad" and "Smooth Criminal" music videos.

The best existing footage of Daniel doing the moonwalk comes from a 1982 "Top Of The Pops" appearance that wowed England. Daniel does not take credit for inventing the dance, saying it naturally emerged out of the developing popping and locking style, which emphasized sudden halts or pauses in a performance over sheer fluidity of motion.

"Michael called it the moonwalk," Daniel said, but "actually the moonwalk is another dance." Or was, anyway. "The moonwalk is actually a dance that we do that makes it look like you’re on the moon and it’s less gravity than you would have on earth. Michel somehow called the backslide the moonwalk. And commercially, I think, maybe, it worked," he added, chuckling at the understatement of that remark.

In the mid-'80s, shortly after Jackson's historic performance, one of the most legendary black entertainers of the first half of the 20th century, Cab Calloway, was quoted in a 1985 article in The Crisis: "Asked if his teenaged grandson taught him the move, Calloway said, 'Shoot…we did that back in the ‘30s! Only it was called The Buzz back then.'"



Footage of some of Calloway's astounding footwork from the '30s shows moves that count as part of the evolution that led to popping and locking. Other performers of that era also had slippery moves that involved illusions of moving while staying in place, if not the backwards-as-forwards magic of the backslide.

When watching recordings of Bill Bailey in the '50s, it is all there, at least that "escalator" illusion that Daniel spoke of is. He does it for almost 15 seconds in the relevant clip, as opposed to the five or so that Jackson spent moonwalking at Motown 25. Although Jackson did add some signature arm and shoulder moves to his version of the dance.

David Bowie also did something akin to the moonwalk in the opening moments of a performance of "Aladdin Sane," and although the term had not been coined at the time, he had the added benefit of seeming like he was from the moon.