For young Nita Strauss, seeing Jennifer Batten play with Michael Jackson during his iconic 1993 Super Bowl halftime performance was the catalyst she needed to pursue a career as a shredder. Who would have guessed that, years later, she would be approached to audition for the King of Pop himself?
Fast forward to 2010, and in a true full-circle moment, Strauss was about to have her own brush with the Jackson family.
“Kill Slowly (a band that Strauss had put together) had recorded something that was engineered by a guy named Michael Prince, who worked with Michael Jackson for many, many years,” she recalls.
“At one point, he called and said, ‘Would you have any interest in auditioning for Michael Jackson?’ I was like, ‘Oh my god, yes!’ The audition never happened, but then he called and said Jermaine (Jackson) wanted to do some tribute shows for his brother after he died, and did I want to do it?”
The tribute concerts turned out to be a short African tour that Strauss embarked on with Jermaine, during which she performed a mix of material from The Jackson 5, The Jacksons, as well as Michael Jackson’s repertoire.
“I learned so much about playing funk, and I also got to work indirectly with Tito and Randy (Jackson), who were great,” Strauss told Rolling Stone in a 2015 interview. “And we were playing in these huge soccer stadiums, in places like Gambia and Senegal, where it wasn’t safe to go out unescorted.
“So it was a really eye-opening experience all around. But that’s the amazing thing about this job – you have the opportunity to learn at every turn.”
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