Tito Jackson, who along with brothers Michael, Jermaine, Jackie and Marlon was a founding member of the iconic family group the Jackson 5, died Sunday at age 70.
News of the death was first reported by Entertainment Tonight, which said word of Tito’s passing came from Steve Manning, a longtime friend and associate of the Jackson family. Manning told ET that he believed Tito suffered a heart attack while driving on a road trip, adding that the cause of death was officially undetermined. People magazine confirmed the news with Tito’s nephew, SIggy Jackson.
He had recently been performing with brothers Marlon and Jackie under the aegis of the Jacksons, including a date as recently as one week ago in England. In recent years he had also recorded and done many shows as a blues guitarist, under his own name or with the B.B. King Blues Band.
Tito Jackson played guitar, sang and, of course, danced his way into homes worldwide as the Jackson 5 became an international sensation in the late ’60s and early ’70s, with a string of smashes hits that included four straight No. 1 hits: “I Want You Back” in 1969 and “ABC,” “The Love You Save” and “I’ll Be There” in 1970. “Dancing Machine,” released in 1974, did nearly as well, peaking at No. 2. During this initial burst of glory, young Michael was the primary focus of attention, but the chemistry and choreography of the less prominent brothers was an essential part of their success as a top act on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and other TV variety series.
After a label change from Motown to Epic, and a name change from the Jackson 5 to the Jacksons —and the addition of Randy into the fold — the group further made it into the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 with “Enjoy Yourself” in 1976, “Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)” in 1979, and finally, in 1984, “State of Shock,” a collaboration with Mick Jagger that was more a Michael solo project than true group effort. The group’s Victory Tour hit stadiums in ’84, providing the brothers one final hurrah as a superstar act in their own right after the ascent of “Thriller” made it clear Michael’s full-time future was as a solo act. Michael left the Jacksons at the end of that tour, taking most of the attention with him, but different permutations of the family group continued to perform and record in intervals thereafter.
Tito was inducted with the rest of the Jackson 5 into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. Michael, who died in 2009, is the only member from the original lineup of five brothers to have preceded Tito in death.
Tito knew that, as one of the less prominently featured members of the family combo, his name was sometimes used as a punchline. “I’ve always been the quietest member of the group, so people make jokes about me,” he said in a 2018 interview with the Jitney. “One of my favorite 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.”
Initially, Tito’s guitar playing was limited to the Jackson 5’s live shows, as the brothers were not allowed by Motown to write or play instruments on their initial run of smashes. But Tito began to add his guitar parts to their recordings when the brothers broke with Motown and signed with Epic in the mid-’70s.
Tito was the last sibling from the original lineup to release a solo album — a moment that did not arrive until 2016, at which point he finally released his first record of his own, “Tito Time.” It demonstrated his interest in the blues, the form that Tito returned to and emphasized in the last part of his life.
“I got married at 18. I wanted to be around my three sons, so I didn’t pursue a solo career then,” Tito said, explaining his lack of a discography to the Jitney. “But this record “(‘Tito Time’), the first single I did with Big Daddy Kane (“Get It Baby”) did pretty good. The Alabama band plays it at halftime during their football games. Seeing the band and the cheerleaders dance to it was pretty enjoyable.”
In 2021, Tito released another blues-oriented album, “Under Your Spell,” and toured behind it. That recording included guests like Stevie Wonder, George Benson, Joe Bonamassa and his brother Marlon.
He told the Boise Beat in an interview at that time that the Jackson 5 had little-publicized blues origins, noting that he “started playing guitar and playing blues stuff before the brothers were even singing as a group. We had been doing some little harmonizing with our mom when she she was washing dishes and such. As far as having a band, the Jackson 5 or the three of us, we hadn’t organized it at that point. My father and my uncle would come over and I would jam with them.
“That’s basically how we started the Jackson 5; prior to going to the Motown sound we’d be playing a lot of blues sets. We’d include about five or six blues numbers every time we did a show. Once we made it to Motown, we didn’t do any more blues because we started having all these records and our audiences wasn’t a blues audience, so we wrote out our blues songs. We didn’t have that many, we would cover other artist’s songs. The only other time I got to play blues at that time and point is (if) there was an accident on stage (and) one of the other brothers were playing when the microphones went out. He hollered out, ‘Tito, play some blues!’ That hardly happened, but it happened a few times.”
Born on Oct. 15, 1953 in Gary, Indiana, Tito was the third child of Joe and Katherine Jackson. He started playing guitar at 10, and after his father caught him one day fooling around with one of his guitars, Joe bought him one of his own.
Tito encouraged his own three sons to go into the business, as Taj, Taryll and TJ formed the group 3T, with their father as their manager. The sons’ group released a debut albm, “Brotherhood,” that sold several million copies.
