Michael Jackson's ascent to King of Pop owes plenty to his keen study of the music's biggest stars. The moonwalk has Fred Astaire's combo of smooth vocals and gravity-defying footwork in its DNA, Diana Ross' spirited soprano coloured his expressive approach to singing, and James Brown's bandleading mastery and ecstatic hiccups and shouts informed the military-grade precision of Jackson's musicianship and his singular extra-lingual vocalisations.