Jeffrey Daniel from hit band Shalamar is the man behind the Moonwalk, with the iconic singer and dancer known for having created the backslide which would later become the Moonwalk

Shalamar’s Jeffrey Daniel is the man who taught Michael Jackson the Moonwalk. Yes, really.

Although the late, great King of Pop made the Moonwalk famous when he wowed the crowd at Motown 25 in 1983, it was Shalamar’s Jeffrey who came up with the famous backslide before performing it on Top of the Pops way before the Motown 25 event and getting asked by MJ himself to teach him it.

As Shalamar gears up for their Greatest Hits Tour, Jeffrey sat down for an exclusive chat with The Mirror, where he spilled on everything from how audiences in the United Kingdom are the greatest, to how it felt to meet Michael Jackson and teach him the iconic dance move he coined.

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Jeffrey Daniel is the man behind the Moonwalk ( Image: Getty Images)

Michael Jackson performed the Moonwalk after Jeffrey taught him the backslide ( Image: Paul Drinkwater/NBC via Getty Images)
“I did a couple of exhibition dances on Soul Train. Little did I know that Michael Jackson was watching. I was watching the Jackson Five, of course, but I never would have dreamt that Michael Jackson was watching me. I was his favorite dancer on Soul Train. And eventually, he made me a call to teach him how to do the dance,” Jeffrey told us.

“When I came to the UK in 1982,” Jeffrey explained, because current band member Jody Wately was pregnant at the time and only he flew to England for a performance, “I did something that had never been done before. I did a solo dance to our song. I wasn’t lip-syncing, I wasn’t singing it. I just danced through the whole song and that was so unprecedented and it had never been done before and it just caught everybody by surprise, and it captured their hearts that moment on and it actually introduced street dancing into Europe and the UK.”

And it was this performance that saw Jeffrey do the famous backslide which sparked Michael to give him a call. After getting the life-changing call, Jeffrey then met with the King of Pop. Recalling meeting with him, he told us: “The first four or five times that I went to his house, just to give him dancing instructions, and I’m just one-on-one with Michael Jackson… I’m pinching myself, you know, when it’s time to wrap up and leave and I’m walking to my car going ‘I was with Michael Jackson, I was with Michael Jackson, I was with Michael Jackson’, it took a while to get over that because he was so elusive He was so, you know, far away. You only saw him on TV,” he explained.

Michael Jackson made the Moonwalk famous ( Image: Redferns)
Jeffrey is known for being in band Shalamar ( Image: Getty Images)
Jeffrey then expressed his amazement for being “one on one with the greatest entertainer on the planet”, adding: “It took some getting used to.”

“I worked with him over a 20-year-period,” he went on to reveal, noting how he appeared in the Beat It music video before co-choreographing the Bad and Smooth Criminal music videos. Jeffrey also spoke of how he creatively consulted on the short Ghost movie, as well as flying to Brazil for the They Don’t Really Care About Us music video.

“I’m ever grateful that he even just took me into his fold and allowed me to work with him. And I learned a lot from him too, I learned things about, you know, dynamics and storyboarding, and this and that, he was a very creative person, and he’s like a sponge, he just soaked up everything and that’s what made him such a great entertainer.”

Jeffrey then told us how after he worked with Michael, he became an “in demand” choreographer in the industry, with him going on to work on several famous star’s music videos such as Vanessa Williams’ debut video The Right Stuff.

Shalamar’s Greatest Hits Tour will see Jeffrey Daniel, Howard Hewett, and Carolyn Griffey take to the stage up and down the United Kingdom. With the band also set to perform at the Fool in Love Festival, which will be presented at the Hollywood Park Grounds at SoFi Stadium, in Los Angeles, CA on August 31, 2024.