The Moonwalk. The rhinestone glove. The “Smooth Criminal” lean.
Underneath every single one of those iconic Michael Jackson moments—every gravity-defying spin, every hip thrust, every perfectly choreographed performance, every track that made your parents lose their minds—was the same drummer. And most of us have never heard his name.
He’s Jonathan “Sugarfoot” Moffett, and over the past four decades, he’s been the live drummer for Michael Jackson, Madonna, Elton John, George Michael, and Janet Jackson. For those counting at home, that’s 23 world tours in all. He’s also something of an Internet darling: a clip of him performing “Smooth Criminal” has been watched more than 72 million times online. And most of the people sharing it still can’t name the man behind the drum kit.
If you’re thinking, ‘How have I never heard of this guy?’ Trust us, you’re not alone.
A nine-year-old in New Orleans night clubs
Moffett was born in 1954 in New Orleans, the youngest of three brothers in a musical family. His older siblings played guitar and bass; his father nudged him toward the drums. By age eight, he had a scrappy full drum kit and was playing school dances and neighborhood parties with his brothers’ band, The Cavaliers. By nine, he was playing local nightclubs, snuck in through the back door, rocking the full set, then falling asleep across his brothers’ laps in the back seat of the car on the ride home. He’d wake up the next morning and go to school.
The sweet nickname came a few years later, when a new band told him every member needed one. Moffett lobbied hard for something tough, but the bandleader wasn’t having it. “You’ve got that fast sweet foot,” he told the teenager. “SUGARFOOT!”
“I hated it,” Moffett told the Cornell Daily Sun earlier this year. “That didn’t sound cool at all.” But audiences started chanting it at gigs around town, and eventually it stuck: a name born in the New Orleans clubs that would later be embraced by the King of Pop himself.
The audition that almost didn’t happen
Moffett learned drums the way a lot of great players have: by wearing out records. He trained himself on Ringo Starr, Charlie Watts, and New Orleans funk legends like Zigaboo Modeliste. He’d play along until the parts lived in his hands. And while Moffett can’t read sheet music, that unconventional ear-trained method gave him a unique gift: the ability to hear a song once and lock into it almost immediately.
A recent video of Moffett performing “Thriller” received mountains of praise, with one commenter writing: “You can see him go into a zone. Your focus is wild! Salute, sir.”
His big break came in early 1979, when he drove 3,200 miles from New Orleans to Los Angeles, chasing a possible gig with Jermaine Jackson. But when he got there, all hope seemed to be lost. Sugarfoot waited and waited. He practiced. He tapped on everything in sight until he ran out of options.
Then, on what turned out to be the last day of auditions for the new Jacksons drummer, he ran into an old friend, James McField, the group’s musical director, who convinced the band to extend auditions one more day.
Moffett got the call that same evening. He was in. Now, he had three days to learn the entire show: music, choreography, everything. This was the moment where everything started; Sugarfoot continued to work with the Jackson family for 30 years.
What “Sugarfoot” actually sounds like
Most drummers treat the bass drum like a heartbeat: steady thumps anchoring the beat.
Moffett, on the other hand, plays like he’s engaged in conversation, weaving fast, intricate patterns that respond naturally to what the rest of the band is doing.
In the 1980s, when producers were replacing live drummers with drum machines on nearly every major record, Moffett offered something nobody else could: the mechanical precision of a programmed beat with the feel and spontaneity of a living, breathing musician. As Drumeo noted in a 2023 analysis, it was his “adaptability—his ability to emulate drum machine parts and add his unique touch to each performance” that made him irreplaceable.
Michael Jackson noticed immediately. After Moffett’s very first show, Jackson marveled at how perfectly the new drummer could shadow his movement, accenting every spin and stop with a deliciously timed kick or crash. As DRUM! Magazine puts it, Moffett’s drumming imbued Michael Jackson’s dancing with “more visual power.” And after that fateful debut, Jackson made Sugarfoot his first-call live drummer and kept him there for three decades.
A new generation is finally learning his name
The Michael biopic, starring Jaafar Jackson in the titular role, has sent a new wave of fans to YouTube, eager to devour videos of Jackson’s live footage. And the algorithm keeps surfacing Moffett’s performances alongside it.
Moffett, who is now 71, is quite active on social media. On Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, he posts drum covers of the iconic songs he once backed, live. There’s “Smooth Criminal,” “Beat It,” and “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” and beneath every video, lies a comment section full of starry-eyed fans. “I’ve been on a run of ‘Jonathan Moffett performs’ today and I regret nothing,” wrote one viewer. “I had to make sure I wasn’t watching this at 1.5x speed,” joked another.
Want to hear Sugarfoot right now? Open Spotify and play Madonna’s “Like a Prayer.” That drum fill in the first three seconds—the one you’ve heard a thousand times without thinking about it—is Jonathan Moffett.
He’s been the pulse under some of the most watched, most replayed, most loved performances in modern music. And for most of his career, the reward for doing that job perfectly was that nobody noticed. The groove was so locked, so seamless, that it disappeared into the spectacle…which, if you think about it, might be the highest compliment a drummer can get.
But picture this: a nine-year-old kid in New Orleans, sneaking into a nightclub through the back door, playing a full set on a kit he can barely reach, then falling asleep in his brothers’ arms on the ride home. That kid had no idea he’d spend the next five decades powering the biggest shows on the planet. He just knew he wanted to play.
He’s still playing. And now, finally, you know his name.
