J5 and Dancing Machine - what happened?

[midnightman]

Easy, Motown was being run by too many people, with their eyes on everything but the real prize. Remember at this point Motown was firmly a Hollywood record company. Detroit was a thing of the past. And with new locations sometimes comes new priorities. Motown had clearly moved on from being a hit song focused label. There was movies and all kinds of crap that the company had it's hands in. In the 60s, a group like the J5 would have been allowed to capitalize on a reinvention. The Marvelettes are famous among us diehards as the once label darlings who fell- rather quickly it seems- to C level status. Yet even they were allowed to reinvent themselves from the girlish, immature, I'm in love, I'm out of love, group to the more mature and sophisticated danger beware, don't mess with my man, on the hunt for a man grown ass women they became. And when "Bill" hit, the label pushed the next couple of grown women cuts. And all of that was the C level treatment.

So it should boggle the mind that in the 70s as an A level act, that the J5 would be allowed to flounder and then exit without the label pulling out all of the stops to keep the A level act a consistent hit maker. 1960s Motown understood this kind of stuff. 1970s Motown rarely seems to know what the hell they were doing for anybody. Their biggest acts like Marvin and Stevie would've never been what they were in the 70s had they not had creative control. One look at Diana Ross' discography during the 70s with more misses than hits and it's obvious that without someone stepping in and forcing a hit, she would've floundered too. It's like suddenly no one at the company knew what the hell they were doing.

Right. It was a different Motown.

[marv2]

This is the single directly following "Get It Together". A cover of the Supremes "Reflections" which should give you a clear indication that Motown was dropping the ball all over the place where the Jackson 5 were concerned It didn't even chart and I don't remember ever hearing it on the radio either:

[marv2]

As Jr. High kids at the time, we would have never bought or played "Reflections" by the Jackson 5.

[mowsville]

Reflections was never released as a single by The Jackson Five

[marv2]

Reflections was never released as a single by The Jackson Five

It's just listed as an uncharted released single on the list of Jackson 5 singles on Wikipedia. I don't know if it ever really was released as a single.