Before he arranged Marvin Gaye's hit Sexual Healing.
Before he sat in the control room with The Four Tops, The Temptations and Aretha Franklin.
Before he became the quiet power behind some of soul's most beloved records…
McKinley Jackson was a teenager with a talent for trombone and an ear nobody could explain.
“I didn’t know the rules,” he says. “But I already knew how to break them. I could transpose by ear before I ever learned what that meant.”
Now 87, McKinley lives in Royal Oak. And after a lifetime arranging music that shaped America’s soundscape—and its soul—he’s still trying to answer the same question:
What does this song need?
Learning to Listen
McKinley didn’t come from a family of musicians. He came from a Detroit neighborhood and a moment of peer pressure.
“All my buddies were in band class,” he says. “So I joined.”
He picked the trombone because it felt right in his hands. A year later, he was the best player in class. That’s when his teacher, Gordon Allen, pulled him aside and sent him to the Detroit Settlement School of Music, where McKinley paid for theory lessons—sweeping floors for 50 cents an hour.
“They didn’t teach me how to hear,” McKinley says. “I already knew how to do that.”
The Door to Motown
Motown wasn’t something you applied for. It was a club you were invited into—if you had the sound.
McKinley’s invitation came from Paul Riser, who had recently traded his trombone for an arranging pencil. McKinley took his place—and stepped into Studio O.
“It was frightful,” he remembers. “You walk in, and the Funk Brothers are sitting there. You’re young, and green, and you feel every inch of it. But once they knew you belonged, it was family.”
At Motown, ego took a backseat to precision. Tracks were built like blueprints, one player at a time. There were no jam sessions. No improvisations. It was art by assembly line.
“Motown taught me how to serve the song,” he says. “And how to disappear into it.”
An Invisible Signature
Ask McKinley if there’s a famous song that only sounds the way it does because of him, and he’ll give you a sideways smile.
“I’ve added something to every song I’ve arranged,” he says. “But I never needed it to sound like me.”
Instead, he listens. He listens for what’s missing. For the tension. For the silence. For the shape of the song that hasn’t been drawn yet.
“You give ten arrangers the same vocal and chords,” he says, “and you’ll get ten different landscapes. I hear the whole thing in my head—drums, horns, background vocals—before I write a single note. I know I’m gonna use three guitars. One on melody, one on rhythm, one doubling the bassline. I might use percussion playing a 6/8 groove over a 4/4 drumbeat to give it that African lope. I don’t know how I know—I just do.”
When Marvin Gaye was creating Midnight Love, it was McKinley who received the rhythm tracks and found a way to finish them. Gaye worked loosely—he’d lay down a vocal, then go walk the beach.
“Marvin asked me once, ‘Where do your ideas come from?’” McKinley says. “I told him—I listen. I become part of the music.”
Music and Meaning
Over a six-decade career, McKinley arranged for everyone from Aretha Franklin to Parliament. But he’s most interested in how music feels—not how it’s credited.
“You don’t write an arrangement,” he says. “You discover it. It’s already in the room.”
His sound was forged in the calculated discipline of Motown—not the loose, vibe-driven feel of Muscle Shoals. “They made magic down there,” he says. “But it was a different magic. In Detroit, we weren’t chasing a moment. We were building a machine that made moments. That precision got in your bones.”
Still, the soul came from somewhere. His earliest influences include Ray Charles, Clyde McPhatter, and the gospel power of Clara Ward and Aretha Franklin. He snuck records past his mother. He lived inside the voices. He listened.
“Music taught me everything—discipline, math, emotion, how to survive racism, how to survive myself.”
He remembers touring through the Jim Crow South, playing shows where Black audiences were forced to sit behind rope lines. He remembers being refused service at diners. Threats. Warnings. Police escorts.
But the music always played.
“Everybody’s a victim when there’s racism—even the ones doing it,” McKinley observes. “But the music? The music broke through that. You couldn’t segregate sound. Music exposes people’s hearts, whether they want it to or not.”
Still Listening
Now in Royal Oak, McKinley keeps a low profile. He watches, listens, remembers. Streaming may have changed the business, but not the calling.
“The hip-hop guys? I give them credit,” McKinley observes. “They changed the game. They made sure they got paid. So I appreciate them for that. But this new music…well, a lot of it is clever, but we’ll see if it lasts. Real music—music made with heart—outlives us all.”
Ask him what he’d be without music, and he doesn’t hesitate:
“Nothing,” he says. “Music is life. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
[Working for] Motown taught me how to serve the song…and how to disappear into it.
“Marvin [Gaye] asked me once, ‘Where do your ideas come from?' I told him—I listen. I become part of the music.”