Tito Jackson, who has died aged 70 of a heart attack, remembered his first visit to Britain as a member of the Jackson 5, in 1972. He described how “we had something like 10,000 screaming fans to greet us at the airport. I got lost in the airport and had 1,000 fans chasing me, pulling everywhere. It was crazy.”
The group’s glittering run of success included four successive US No 1 singles in 1969-70, I Want You Back, ABC, The Love You Save and I’ll Be There, and they amassed 17 Top 40 singles in five years as well as a string of successful albums.
During their time with Motown, Tito would play guitar with the group onstage as well as singing background vocals, but Motown insisted that only session players should be used on their recordings. In 1976 they left Motown and signed to Epic Records, calling themselves the Jacksons since Motown owned the Jackson 5 name. Tito was now able to add his guitar parts to their recordings and began writing songs.
The group enjoyed success with the albums Destiny (1978) and Triumph (1980) but were steadily eclipsed by the burgeoning solo career of Michael Jackson, the youngest brother of the original lineup, which really lifted off with the huge success of his 1979 album Off the Wall.
Tito was conscious of the fact that he was one of the lower-profile group members. “One of my favourite basketball players, Charles Barkley, said ‘if Tito wasn’t in the Jackson 5, would we miss him?’ That hit me in the heart. It crushed me.”
In 1984 the group embarked on the Victory tour, but despite this being named after their latest album (on which Tito wrote the song We Can Change the World), Michael would not perform any of the songs from it. The concerts were heavily weighted towards his solo material, especially songs from his global smash, Thriller, which had been released at the end of 1982.
Despite the ill-feeling this caused – and Michael was to leave the Jacksons shortly afterwards, along with Marlon – in 2001 Tito joined his brothers (as well as a host of guest stars) in two concerts at Madison Square Garden to celebrate Michael’s 30 years as a solo artist, which were subsequently broadcast as a CBS television special.
He was born Toriano Adaryll Jackson in Gary, Indiana, the third of Katherine and Joe Jackson’s 10 children. Joe was a steel worker and also played guitar in an R&B band, the Falcons, with his brother Luther. His mother, not only a Jehovah’s Witness but also a country music fan, played guitar and clarinet.
Tito would surreptitiously play his father’s guitar when he was out at work, but one day he angered Joe by breaking a string. Tito would later comment about his father that “none of us can remember him holding us or cuddling us or telling us ‘I love you’”. After his rage had subsided, Joe commanded Tito to show him what he could do on the instrument, and he liked what he heard enough to give him the guitar.
“It was the blues that got me interested in the guitar,” Tito recalled, and described how he had “started playing guitar and playing blues stuff before the brothers were even singing as a group. We had been doing some little harmonising with our mom when she was washing dishes and such.”
The entrepreneurial Joe then cajoled Tito and his brothers Jermaine and Jackie to form a singing group, subsequently joined by their younger siblings Marlon and five-year-old Michael, who initially played congas. Their mother would also sing with the boys, and it was she who first recognised the prodigious singing gifts of Michael.
When Joe formed the Jackson 5 in 1964 he made Michael the lead singer, and after intensive home coaching the group began playing concerts and talent shows at schools and theatres. After a brief liaison with the local Gary record label Steeltown Records, which released their single Big Boy, the group signed to Motown in 1969.
The Jacksons’ final album was 2300 Jackson Street (1989). Tito commenced a solo career, playing club dates with his own blues band. “I was living in Oxnard, California. It’s not a huge city like LA. So I started a little blues band with some of my buddies … the kinda guys that play the drums on the weekend and have regular jobs during the week.”
In the mid-1990s, Tito encouraged the musical ambitions of his sons Taj, Taryll and TJ, who formed the band 3T, managed by their father. Their debut album Brotherhood (1995) was co-produced by Michael Jackson and released on his MJJ Music label. It sold 3m copies internationally, and generated several hit singles in Europe.
It was not until 2016 that Tito released his debut solo album, Tito Time, at the age of 62. This featured contributions by his three sons and delivered the hit Get It Baby, on which he collaborated with the rapper Big Daddy Kane. It reached No 20 on the US R&B chart. He released a second album, Under Your Spell, in 2021, which featured guest artists including George Benson, Stevie Wonder and Joe Bonamassa.
This summer, Tito had been performing live in Europe and the US with his brothers Jackie and Marlon as the Jacksons, including an appearance at the Boogietown festival in Surrey on 8 September. When they played in Munich two days later, they visited the city’s memorial to Michael, who died in 2009. Tito was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the Jackson 5 in 1997.
In 1972 Jackson married Delores Martes, with whom he had his three sons; the marriage ended in divorce in 1988. (In 1994 she drowned in the swimming pool of her then partner, Donald Bohana, who was later jailed after being convicted of second-degree murder.)
Tito is survived by Taj, Taryll and TJ, by his mother, and by his siblings Rebbie, Jackie, Jermaine, La Toya, Marlon, Randy and Janet.