Get ready for more Michael. As the opening salvo of what’s sure to be a headline frenzy during Friday’s one-year anniversary of The King of Pop’s death, a Canadian man has announced that he has unearthed 273 unreleased Michael Jackson songs.
Howard Mann, a Toronto entrepreneur and confidante to family matriarch Katherine Jackson, purchased an entire warehouse of the Jacksons’ mementos after the family failed to pay the storage bill and sold the warehouse to a businessman who later went bankrupt. Along with thousands of photos and assorted paraphernalia, the haul contained a trove of master tapes that Mann asserts were recorded in 1975, when the Jacksons were between labels.
But Howard Weitzman, Michael Jackson’s estate lawyer, says the songs, which feature the Jackson 5 as well as guests like Tina Turner, don’t belong to Mann or Katherine Jackson, but to Michael’s estate. Weitzman tells TMZ, Mann “may be using his relationship with Mrs. Jackson to infringe upon Michael Jackson’s copyrights … to the detriment of, among others, Michael’s three kids.”
Mann, who helped write Never Can Say Goodbye: The Katherine Jackson Story, says the songs belonged to the Jackson family, not just Michael, and now they belong to him and Katherine.
The conflict has all the trappings of a drawn out court battle, which means the songs won’t be available any time soon. But they’re out there.
Photo by the White House Photo Office via Wikimedia Commons.
