HK-based soul singer remembers the 1970s Jackson

Amid all the one-gloved moonwalking imitators, singer Howard McCrary is one person who knew the real Michael before he turned into the world-famous thriller. The now Hong Kong-based singer met Jackson when his own McCrary family musical group started opening for the Jackson 5 in the late 1970s.

'I first met Michael at a party in the summer of 1979,' the soul singer said. 'He came to me and asked if I was married. At the time I was separated from my wife and Michael put his hands together in a prayer gesture and said to me that he would be praying for me.'

Jackson wanted to set McCrary up with his cousin Jackie. 'He said she is very beautiful, drop-dead gorgeous and repeated again that he would pray for me and bowed his head. He repeated it six, seven times at the party. Even when we were at a distance, he would whisper to me across the ballroom, 'I am praying for you'. The thing was, I didn't think Jackie liked me.'

Despite all of later Michael's bizarre antics and troubles, McCrary prefers to remember the funny, shy entertainer he knew. 'He had an amazing child-like sense of humour and I just laughed so much because he was so funny ... his appearance might have been changed by cosmetic surgery, but the soul and the spirit of Michael Jackson never changed. He is a beautiful angel, a child-like man.'