Had it not been for Joseph Jackson, who has died aged 89, the world would almost certainly never have experienced the pop music phenomena of the Jackson 5 and Michael Jackson, nor seen the success of La Toya Jackson and Janet Jackson. As the father of this remarkable brood of talented children, Joe raised them and guided their careers with unbending single-mindedness.
Though he achieved extraordinary results, the process was often painful and controversial. In 1993 Michael told Oprah Winfrey that he had been physically and emotionally abused by his father, and would literally be sick at the sight of him. Michael had sacked Joe as his manager in 1979, and the other Jackson brothers followed suit in 1983. Janet recalled that she had once tried to call Joe “dad”, but was instructed always to address him as “Joseph”. Appearing on Piers Morgan’s CNN talk show in 2013, Joe argued that “my kids was brought up in a way so they respect people, and they never was on drugs. They never went to jail, wasn’t in no gangs or nothing. They were brought up professionally.”
Born in Fountain Hill, Arkansas, Joe was the eldest of five children of Samuel Jackson, a teacher, and his wife, Crystal (nee King). Evidently Joe learned the idea of strict parenting from his own parents. As Joe’s future wife, Katherine, wrote in her memoir, My Family, the Jacksons (1990): “Judging by the times that I heard Sam and Crystal Jackson utter the words ‘I love you’ – zero – Joe didn’t hear them often, if ever, when he was growing up.”
Joe later described his childhood as “lonely”. His parents split up when he was 12, and Joe moved to Oakland, California, with his father, while his mother went to live in East Chicago, Indiana. At 18 he moved to East Chicago and began to show promise as a boxer. He was already married, but began an affair with 17-year-old Katherine Scruse. He swiftly had his first marriage annulled and married Katherine in November 1949. The couple moved into a two-bedroom house in Gary, Indiana, and when their first child, Maureen (known as Rebbie), was born in May 1950, Joe abandoned boxing for the security of a full-time job as a crane operator at US Steel.
Joe also harboured ambitions as a musician, and during the 50s he and his brother Luther played guitar in a blues band, the Falcons, which never took off commercially and eventually split up. Meanwhile, by 1957 Joe and Katherine had four sons, Jackie, Tito, Jermaine and Marlon, as well as another daughter, La Toya. Michael arrived in 1958 and Randy in 1961, with Janet, the youngest, born in 1966.
It was when he heard Tito playing the guitar that Joe became aware of the family’s latent musical talent. In 1963, Tito, Jermaine and Jackie formed a group, the Jackson Brothers, with their father as their manager. Joe purchased microphones and amplifiers so they could rehearse at home. They were joined by Ronnie Rancifer on keyboards and Johnny Jackson (no relation) on drums, and Joe put the group out on a gruelling schedule of talent shows, mostly playing covers of Motown hits.
With the addition of Marlon and Michael, the group became the Jackson 5. After winning talent competitions at such prestigious venues as the Regal theatre, Chicago, and the Apollo theatre, Harlem, New York, they released a couple of singles on Steeltown Records before signing to Motown Records in March 1969. Their first four singles for the label topped the Billboard Hot 100, and they scored seven top 10 singles in a two-year period. With the group becoming Motown’s top priority and enjoying international chart success, Joe moved the family to a mansion in Encino, California.
In 1971 Michael launched his solo career, and the following year had his first chart-topping hit with Ben. Jermaine also branched out into solo work. But the stellar chart performance of the Jackson 5 was beginning to tail off, and Joe became dissatisfied with Motown’s efforts on behalf of his boys, as well as with the label’s poor royalty rate. Having masterminded a nightclub act in Las Vegas involving all the Jackson siblings, he negotiated a new and vastly more lucrative deal for the Jackson 5 with Epic Records in 1975, though Jermaine chose to remain at Motown. He was replaced in the group – now called the Jacksons, since Motown owned the Jackson 5 name – by Randy.
After a sluggish start, the Jacksons enjoyed a string of hit albums on Epic, including Destiny (1978) and Triumph (1980), but they were eclipsed by Michael’s solo success. In 1982 he released Thriller, which would become the biggest-selling album in pop history, and after the Jacksons’ Victory album and tour in 1984, announced he was leaving. 2300 Jackson Street (1989), released by the remaining quartet, was the end of the band, apart from a couple of reunion shows in 2001 and the shambolic Unity tour in 2012.
No longer involved in managing his sons, Joe put his skills to work on behalf of his daughters, Rebbie, La Toya and Janet, but all of them dispensed with his services in due course. Janet, who parted company with Joe after her album Dream Street (1984), said: “I just wanted to get out of the house, get out from under my father, which was one of the most difficult things that I had to do.”
Joe’s public image became tarnished by revelations about the way he had treated his children, although Jermaine, Tito, Marlon and Jackie insisted he had not been abusive. In her autobiography Growing Up in the Jackson Family (1991), La Toya accused Joe of child abuse, though she was later reconciled with him. In 2003, Joe told the documentary maker Louis Theroux that he used to hit Michael when he was a child (“I whipped him with a switch and a belt”), but claimed that this was different from “beating” him. “I never beat him,” he said. “You beat someone with a stick.” He repeated it to Oprah Winfrey in 2010, but said: “No, I don’t regret it.”
Joe’s infidelities during his marriage also became public knowledge. In 1974 he had a daughter, Joh’Vonnie, with Cheryl Terrell, with whom he conducted a 25-year affair. However, despite stories that he was estranged from Katherine and that she had filed for divorce, the couple continued to maintain publicly that their marriage remained intact.
When Michael died in 2009, his will named his mother as guardian of his three children, and he left nothing to Joe. However, in an eloquent speech to the Oxford Union in 2001 to launch his Heal the Kids charity, Michael had described how he had been able to forgive his father. Noting that Joe had endured a hard upbringing during the Depression and had then struggled to support his own large family, he said: “I have begun to see that even my father’s harshness was a kind of love, an imperfect love, to be sure, but love nonetheless. He pushed me because he loved me. Because he wanted no man ever to look down at his offspring. And now with time, rather than bitterness, I feel blessing. In the place of anger, I have found absolution. And in the place of revenge, I have found reconciliation. And my initial fury has slowly given way to forgiveness.”
In 2014, Joe accepted on Michael’s behalf a posthumous Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame award. At the same ceremony, Joe received a Lifetime Achievement award.
He is survived by Katherine and their children Rebbie, Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, La Toya, Marlon, Randy and Janet; and by Joh’Vonnie.