Michael Jackson’s premature death in 2009 at the age of 50 shocked the world. Beloved by millions and maybe even billions of fans, Jackson had first risen to fame as part of the Jackson 5, the late ‘60s-early ‘70s pop group that captured ears and hearts across the country and whose story was told in an Emmy-nominated 1992 miniseries that was seen by nearly 40 million people. This month, 15 years after Michael Jackson’s tragic death, the music world lost the second of the original founding members of the Jackson 5: Michael’s older brother Tito, who died of an apparent heart attack on Sept. 15 at the age of 70.
Born as Toriano Adaryll Jackson in Gary, Indiana, on Oct. 15, 1953, Tito Jackson was the second of 10 children born to Katherine and Joe Jackson, who themselves were avid and accomplished musicians. Joe was a blues-loving guitarist in an R&B band. Katherine preferred country music and played the guitar and clarinet. Tito, who had begun singing and appearing in talent shows at 9, later recounted that his father and his blues-playing uncle had inspired him to pick up the guitar when he was 10. When the enterprising Joe realized that his younger children were also blessed with musical gifts, in 1964, he formed them into a five-child band, with Michael as lead singer and Tito as the group’s lead guitarist. He secured a deal for them with the Indiana-based label Steeltown Records in 1967 and, one year later, landed them a deal with Motown Records. The Motown deal and their three No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 hits that followed in quick succession, “ABC,” “I’ll Be There,” and “The Love You Save,” catapulted the Jackson 5 to national stardom.
By the end of the next decade, the Jacksons would become something akin to the Kennedys of music, an American pop and R&B royal family, but not all members of the burgeoning musical dynasty shared in the crown equally. Although Tito was the group’s best guitarist, the terms of their Motown deal prohibited him from playing guitar for the band — a head-scratching contractual term that would be the equivalent of a baseball team signing Aaron Judge to play right field but prohibiting him from batting. The vocal-centric nature of the Jackson 5 naturally led to the group’s best vocalist, Michael, becoming its featured performer and, inevitably, its first member to break away from the family band and embark upon a solo performance career.
Tito, who was the last of the Jackson 5 siblings to go solo, was able to play guitar again when the family left its Motown deal to sign with Epic Records in 1976, but the family had to rename the band, as Motown had retained the rights to the name “the Jackson 5.” Now simply “the Jacksons,” Tito co-wrote several hit singles for the rechristened group, but with Michael’s star rising above the others, the breakup of the family band was, at that point, only a matter of time.
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Although Tito never achieved the mega-stardom of Michael or the superstardom of his sister Janet, by any measure, he had one of the most accomplished careers of any major R&B musician. In addition to the smash hits that he recorded with the Jackson 5, he wrote 17 other top-40 singles, was nominated for three Grammys, earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and, in 1997, was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. And, perhaps even more significantly, it was Tito, and not his more famous siblings, who ensured that the Jackson family musical dynasty would continue into the next generation. In 1995, Tito helped his sons Taj, TJ, and Taryll form the band 3T, which has since sold millions of records worldwide and was featured in a 2015 Lifetime channel reality series appropriately titled The Jacksons: Next Generation.
Though Tito had been working to ensure the Jackson dynasty’s continuity, he never showed any signs of stepping down from the family throne anytime soon. “We love it. I still love the traveling. This type of thing, it’s great,” he said in August, speaking of his recent performances with his brothers Jackie and Marlon. After COVID restrictions were lifted, he resumed an active touring schedule, performing this past summer in California and the United Kingdom and as recently as Sept. 8 at the Boogietown festival in Surrey, England, and had shows scheduled for this fall in Cincinnati and Atlantic City. His last single, “Love One Another” (2021), in which he pleads, “Why don’t we love one another?/ Why won’t we trust one another?/ Why don’t we walk with one another/ If only we’d love one another,” now resonates even more strongly in this time of national division and mutual suspicion. The world would be a better place if we spent less time listening to hate-mongering pundits and more time listening to Tito Jackson.
Daniel Ross Goodman is a Washington Examiner contributing writer and the author, most recently, of Soloveitchik’s Children: Irving Greenberg, David Hartman, Jonathan Sacks, and the Future of Jewish Theology in America.