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Joseph Walter Jackson (born July 26, 1929 in Silver Springs, Arkansas) was the manager of the legendary family group The Jacksons and father of pop music legends Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson. Many credit him for discovering and molding his children's talents helping to make the entire family somewhat of an institution.
Born to Samuel and Chrystal Jackson as the eldest of four children in Arkansas, Joseph grew up a lonely and reserved child who hardly had friends in school. Many say that his father's actions on him had a huge impact of how he treated his wife and children. When he was a teenager, his parents divorced with Samuel moving to Los Angeles, California and Chrystal living in Chicago, Illinois. Joseph would live with his father until he turned 18.
In 1947, he moved to Chicago to be close to his mother. It was there that he first met his wife, 17-year-old Katherine Jackson. Even though he had already married someone before his relationship with Katherine, he quickly divorced her and was soon spending all his time with Katherine impressing him with his dreams of being a boxer. He found success in the Golden Gloves and was preparing for a professional career as one until Katherine gave him the news that she was pregnant with the young couple's first child.
Joseph decided to risk his boxing career on November 5, 1949 when he married Katherine, 19, in Crown Point, Illinois. Eventually finding a two-bedroom house in Gary, Indiana in the dawn of the 50s for the tune of $800, their first child, Rebbie, was born on May 29, 1950. She would be the first of ten children.
The nine younger children that followed included Jackie (born May 4, 1951), Tito (born October 15, 1953), Jermaine (born December 11, 1954), La Toya (born May 29, 1956, twins Brandon and Marlon (born March 12, 1957), Michael (born August 29, 1958), Randy (born October 29, 1961, and Janet (born May 16, 1966).
To support his growing family, Jackson spent the next 15 years working full time as a steel mill crane operator in neighboring Chicago making ends meet on whatever he could. The Jackson family were welfare and poverty-ridden by the time the 60s arrived and raising their children in Gary was as tough as growing up in Chicago and Detroit. Jackson had begun his first trek to music forming his own band, the Falcons. The group never got as far as playing local clubs in Indiana. Joseph was the lead singer and guitarist of the band.
His love for music would reach his children. From the time they were old enough to walk and talk, sons Jackie, Tito and Jermaine played around with Joseph's guitar while he went to work. Always seen as a threat to his children, Katherine advised them to put up the guitar at its place before Joseph would return home. And the brothers were careful with the guitar until one day when Tito got into it so much he broke the guitar string. This upsetted his father when he got back to work. An upset Joseph thought of punishing his son but instead decided to challenge his son by having him play it.
Noticing his son's talent as a guitarist and Jackie and Jermaine's talented harmonies - built from witnessing children singing doo-wop in the street corners of Gary, Joseph gave his 8-year-old son a guitar and began a group for his three sons and neighbors Johnny Jackson (not related) and Ronnie Ranceifer playing instruments along with Tito. Joseph called the group the Jackson Brothers and had them play at local shindigs by 1962.
In 1963, his next-to-youngest son Michael first displayed his talents as a singer and dancer. Joseph, after months of "nagging" from family members, especially wife Katherine, decided to bring Michael to the group as its bongo player and somewhat singer and dancer, while Jermaine was still the official lead singer of the group. The next year, with Marlon joining the group, the Jackson brothers began performing at malls and family outings. They entered their first talent shows in 1965.
After winning an important talent show at Gary's Roosevelt High School in 1965 with Michael singing lead, The Jackson Brothers changed their name to the Jackson Five and played their first paying gig at a Gary nightclub in 1966 exposing his young sons to beer-tossling and drunken fights and strippers. Seven-year-old Michael got an eyeful and has often said that his childhood was damaged by the outlook of what he had seen.
By the end of 1967, the Jackson Five were now signed to a local Gary label named Steeltown. The group released their first-ever single, a doo-wop styled R&B romp named "Big Boy". The song became a regional hit in the Midwest and soon with Steeltown record chief Gordon Keith, the single was released as a demo on Atlantic Records. The record company nearly signed with the group until Keith got news that Joseph had moved on to a different manager and had sought out another famed soul music label Motown Records.
In 1968, the Jackson 5 signed with Motown but waited a year before they recorded their first singles for the label because of legal hassles. Finally in 1969, the Jackson 5 released the first of four number one hit recordings titled "I Want You Back" (#1 Pop, #1 R&B). The single, its b-side, the Smokey Robinson-penned "Who's Loving You", and their debut album, Diana Ross Presents the Jackson 5, became big successes and led to them moving to Los Angeles, California though all of the Jacksons didn't move out of Gary until 1970.
With the following singles, "ABC" (#1 Pop, #1 R&B); "The Love You Save"/"I Found That Girl" (#1 Pop, #1 R&B) and "I'll Be There" (#1 Pop, #1 R&B; then the biggest-selling single in the label's long history), the Jackson 5 had exploded to the national stratosphere. And by 1971, Joseph capped off a 20-year odyssey from poverty-ridden family to the most powerful family in music by buying them a gated mansion in Encino, California that March which they labeled Hayvenhurst. Many say hadn't it been for Joseph Jackson's (and Michael's) destiny for stardom, the Jacksons wouldn't have become the cultural icons they would become during much of the 70s and 80s.
By the mid-'70s, however, the Jackson 5's popularity had dimmed, as the case with soul superstars of the time and of teen idols. To help salvage the family's success, Joseph put himself in the position of managing the Jackson daughters La Toya and Janet (Eldest daughter Rebbie was being managed by her husband Nathaniel Brown) and youngest son Randy and began to mold all his nine children into developing themselves into a Las Vegas act. At first, their 1974-75 shows there were a success and Joseph soon found himself another Jackson star in his youngest child Janet who was impersonating Mae West and Cher as well as singing and dancing mostly with brother Randy.
The Vegas success led into the family's own television show which ran from June, 1976 to March, 1977 on CBS. But as the 70s dragged on, family tension was brewing within the Jackson compound. By 1975, the family's relationship with Motown Records had fallen apart. In 1976, upset that his sons couldn't write and produce their own material, Joseph convinced Epic Records, at the time run by CBS Records, to sign the Jackson 5 to a recording contract with them. Jackie, Tito, Marlon and Michael accepted the contract but Jermaine, who had married Motown chief Berry Gordy's daughter Hazel two years prior, decided to stay causing conflict between Jermaine and his family for nearly a decade. Randy, who was then the Jackson 5's bongo player, was positioned as the new member of the group bringing in the musical outlet of the group transforming them from a group of singers to a group of musicians where all brothers played instruments (Tito, as usual, played guitar, Randy played piano, keyboards and percussion while Jackie, Marlon and Michael played percussion and keyboards each)
In May, 1976, after a near eight-year tenure as Motown recording artists, the Jackson 5, now known as The Jacksons after Motown claimed that the Jackson 5 moniker was now part of Motown's copyright though they had been known as The Jackson 5 as far back as 1965, signed with Epic and they released their self-titled debut for the label the next year, which became a Gold success with the group finding hit success with the singles "Enjoy Yourself" (#5 Pop, #2 R&B) and "Show You The Way To Go" (which to date has become the group's only #1 hit in the UK).
But Joseph was already engulfed in his own personal controversy having cheated on his wife and having a daughter with a young woman named Cheryl Tiegs, who gave birth to Joh'Vonnie Jackson on August 30, 1974, a day after Michael's sixteenth birthday. A year prior, Katherine wanted a divorce but dropped her claim trying to stick to what she had promised to herself to stay married to her husband no matter what the problem was. Katherine would ask for divorce again in 1982 but that was eventually dropped also. Katherine got herself into an altercation with a woman who was allegedly going out with Joseph. She brought along her children Randy and Janet to the scene.
By the early 80s, the Jackson brothers were as successful again with their Epic albums like Destiny (1978) and Triumph, both of which reached Gold and Platinum success and had scored their biggest hit ever with 1979's "Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)" (#7 Pop, #3 R&B). Meanwhile Michael had found huger solo success in Epic than he had in Motown when his 1979 album, Off The Wall transformed him into the prince of pop music with his records "Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough" and "Rock With You" becoming #1 Billboard pop hits; the album eventually sold more than fifteen million copies worldwide. After a successful tour supporting their Triumph album, Michael left the group to release the 1982 blockbuster, Thriller which helped confirm his trek from superstar to megastar. Thanks to his legendary Moonwalk dance move (which he presented to the world on Motown 25) and his smash singles "Billie Jean" (#1 Pop, #1 R&B), "Beat It" (#1 Pop, #1 R&B) and "Thriller" (#4 Pop, #3 R&B) as well as the accompanying music videos on MTV helped the album sell over 50 million copies worldwide making it the biggest-selling album of all new material of all time.
After the success of the record and accompanied by his brothers, Michael left his father's management. With the rest of his brothers leaving Joseph, he and Katherine thought outside managers were trying to separate the kids from their father. After her mega mid-'80s success as a singer, Janet left his father's management company also. The only one of his children Joseph managed was daughter La Toya but thanks to the commanding hand of Jack Gordon, whom La Toya eventually married because of an alleged threat on her life by her parents, La Toya left her father and the family in 1988 leading to an estangement that lasted until 1997 when La Toya divorced Jack. By then, two biographies - one from La Toya and another from Michael, had exposed Joseph of beating and torturing them when they were kids.
In 1992, Jermaine's common-law wife Margaret Maldonado had been responsible for producing the hit mini-series, The Jacksons: An American Dream. The mini-series portrayed Joseph as a violent tyrant, dictator and abusive father to his children. The scene where he confronted Tito for playing his guitar without his permission was being miscontrued as if Joseph had beaten Tito soon after. Joseph would deny ever hitting his children, often saying that he whipped them if they ever acted wrong. Janet, Jermaine and Rebbie defended their father saying whippings were ongoing not only in their family but in most Black families in the 50s and 60s.
As the years dragged on, Joseph's children's recounts of their father over the years dwindled especially after La Toya's reunion with her family. But Michael's 2003 documentary, Living With Michael Jackson tried to bring back the accounts of abuse with interviewer Martin Bashir while overlooking what Michael had said about his father being a genius. "He used to beat me with everything he could but despite that, he is a genius at what he did", referring to Joseph helping Michael and his brothers find success in the late 60s.
Today, Joseph no longer is an active manager and lives with Katherine at both their Hayvenhurst mansion and their Las Vegas home. In 2004, he opened up a restaurant in his wife's name, Katherine's and he released his own autobiography where he defended Michael as a person, his love for children and his relationships with women. Still, Joseph can't escape controversy for his alleged actions as the brother known as "the silent one", Marlon, is on bill to release an autobiography telling of both his father and mother's actions on him and his brothers and sisters. Joseph has gone on TV defending his son Michael's child molestation case and his daughter Janet's mishap at the Super Bowl and has even said that of his kids, the most talented were Michael, Jermaine and Janet.
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