Founding member of the Jackson 5 was 70

Tito Jackson, who was a founding member of the legendary family group Jackson 5 along with his brothers Michael, Jermaine, Jackie and Marlon, died on Sunday at the age of 70.

News of Tito's death was first reported by Entertainment Tonight, which said news of Tito's death came from Steve Manning, a longtime friend and confidant of the Jackson family. Manning told ET he believes Tito suffered a heart attack while driving, adding that the cause of death is officially undetermined. People magazine confirmed the news through Tito's nephew Siggie Jackson.

He had recently performed with brothers Marlon and Jackie under the renewed Jacksons' sponsorship, including a performance in England just a week ago. A Los Angeles audience saw the Jacksons perform a set at the Fool in Love Festival in Hollywood Park on August 31. Tito had also made many recordings and shows as a blues guitarist over the past 20 years, under his own banner or with the BB King Blues Band.

Tito Jackson played guitar, sang and, of course, danced his way into homes around the world as the Jackson 5 became an international sensation in the late '60s and early '70s, with a string of huge hits, including four consecutive No. 1s: “I Want You Back” in 1969 and “ABC,” “The Love You Save” and “I'll Be There” in 1970. 1974's “Dancing Machine” was almost as successful, peaking at No. 2. During this initial wave of success, young Michael was the center of attention, but the lesser-known brothers' chemistry and choreography were crucial to their success as top acts on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and other TV variety series.

After a label switch from Motown to Epic and a name change from the Jackson 5 to the Jacksons — and the addition of Randy — the group continued to make the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 with “Enjoy Yourself” in 1976, “Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)” in 1979, and finally “State of Shock” in 1984, a collaboration with Mick Jagger that was more of a Michael solo project than a true group effort. The group's Victory Tour conquered stadiums in 1984, giving the brothers one last hurrah as superstars in their own right after the rise of “Thriller” made it clear that Michael's future was as a solo artist. Michael left the Jacksons at the end of that tour, taking most of the attention with him, but various configurations of the family group continued to perform and record at intervals thereafter.

Tito was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997 along with the rest of the Jackson 5. Michael, who died in 2009, is the only member of the original line-up of the five brothers to die before Tito.

Tito knew that as one of the less prominent members of the family combo, his name was sometimes used as a punchline. “I was always 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 right in the heart. It destroyed me.”

Initially, Tito's guitar playing was limited to the Jackson 5's live performances, as the brothers were banned by Motown from writing or playing instruments on their first series of hits. But when the brothers broke with Motown in the mid-'70s and signed with Epic, Tito began contributing his guitar parts to their recordings.

Tito was the last of the original lineup to release a solo album – a moment that didn't come until 2016, when he finally released his first solo record, Tito Time. It showed his interest in the blues, the form that Tito returned to and emphasized in the latter part of his life.

“I got married at 18. I wanted to be with my three sons, so I wasn't pursuing a solo career at the time,” Tito explained to the Jitney about why he didn't have a discography yet. “But that record ('Tito Time'), the first single I did with Big Daddy Kane ('Get It Baby'), was pretty good. The Alabama band plays it at halftime of their football games. It was pretty entertaining to see the band and the cheerleaders dancing to it.”

In 2021, Tito released and toured another blues-oriented album, Under Your Spell, which featured guests such as Stevie Wonder, George Benson, Joe Bonamassa, and his brother Marlon.

In an interview with the Boise Beat at the time, he said that the Jackson 5's blues origins are little known, noting that he “started playing guitar and blues stuff before the brothers even sang as a group. We had sung a little with our mother when she was washing dishes and stuff. Forming a band, the Jackson 5 or the three of us, was not something we had organized at that time. My dad and my uncle would come over and I would jam with them.

“That's basically how we formed the Jackson 5. Before we went to the Motown sound, we played a lot of blues sets. At every gig, we played about five or six blues numbers. Once we made it to Motown, we stopped playing blues because we had all these records and our audience wasn't a blues audience, so we wrote down our blues songs. We didn't have that many, we covered other artists' songs. The only other time I got to play blues at that time was when there was an accident on stage and one of the other brothers was playing when the microphones went out. He'd yell, 'Tito, play blues!' That hardly ever happened, but a couple of times.”

Tito was born on October 15, 1953, in Gary, Indiana, the third child of Joe and Katherine Jackson. He started playing guitar at age 10, and when his father caught him fiddling with one of his guitars one day, Joe bought him one of his own.

Tito encouraged his own three sons to enter the business. Taj, Taryll and TJ, his sons, formed the group 3T with his wife Delores “Dee Dee” Jackson, with their father as their manager. 3T released a debut album called “Brotherhood”, co-produced by Michael Jackson and released through his label MJJ Music, which was certified gold in several countries, including the UK. Subsequent albums by 3T were released independently in 2004 and 2015.

Tito explained his own quiet return to music in a cover interview with Blues Blast magazine in 2021.

“I decided to take a little break after the Victory Tour, but the break lasted so long that I couldn't stand it anymore! I wanted to make music again and I wanted to be on stage again. I had played the Jackson 5 stuff practically my whole life, but in my family the blues was the main music. I just wanted to jambut I couldn't get any professionals to do something like that.

“I was living in Oxnard, California at the time. It's not as big a city as LA. So I started a little blues band with a couple of buddies. Music was their side job though… the kind of guys who play drums on the weekends and have a day job during the week. I couldn't do much with those guys because I didn't want to pull them out of their jobs and take away the advantages they'd built up over 15-20 years.” He said he played mostly weddings and church charity events for quite a while before making a name for himself as a blues musician, which got him gigs in Japan and France, and finally recorded his first album 11 years ago.

Tito told the magazine he was torn between R&B and blues, so he first made the album “Tito Time,” which leaned more toward the classic styles of the Jacksons — including collaborations with Big Daddy Kane. “I said I can always do blues because blues is a music that really has no age. The older you are, the more acceptable it probably is. But I decided, 'I'll do this 'Jackson' album first.' … But in the back of my mind, I wanted to do a blues album,” which turned out to be his second and final solo release, “Under Your Spell.” “My love really lies with that genre of music.”

Tito Jackson also served as a judge on the BBC celebrity singing competition show “Just the Two of Us” and as an executive producer of the reality series “The Jacksons: A Family Dynasty”, which focused on a reunion of the brothers.

Below is footage of the Jacksons performing at the Fool in Love Festival in LA, just over two weeks before Tito's death.