Tito Jackson was famous for always smiling but there was a darkness that haunted him to his dying day

WITH his trademark bowler hat and sunny ­disposition, Tito ­Jackson, a member of pop’s greatest dynasty, was just the ­person to get the (disco) party started.

He was an Anglophile who had a special bond with Wolverhampton , where he loved nothing more than to visit the Molineux ­stadium to watch his beloved Wolves or have a curry at Zooma on ­Bridgnorth Road.

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“I enjoy coming here,” said the man who lived in “very hot” American ­cities.

“It’s a place to cool down, get some showers and shade.”

Then there were his royal ­connections.

Tito and elder brother Jackie went to the same school as Meghan Markle’s mother, Doria — Fairfax High School in Los Angeles.

“Well, Tito took her out to dinner a couple of times,” Jackie once informed me, completely deadpan, before adding: “No, I’m just kidding!”

Tito also met the Queen as a ­teenager during a Jackson 5 visit to the UK –– but found it hard to ­convince his schoolmates that he had been in such lofty company.

“We sang I Want You Back and ABC to her, but she really loved Dancing Machine.

“Maybe she got up every morning and did a little jiggle to it,” he said with one of his broad grins.

Most significantly, however, Tito was from the most successful family in pop history, present on dancefloor-primed hits Blame It On The Boogie, Shake Your Body (Down To The Ground) and Can U Feel It.

But the third of ten Jackson children died on Sunday aged 70 with great sadness in his heart for the ­little brother he loved and lost — Michael.

Not long ago, when Covid was still raging, I spoke to Tito and the conversation inevitably drifted towards the King Of Pop. his controversial superstar sibling who succumbed to an overdose of prescription meds.

‘Michael is squeaky clean’

“I know he’s watching over everything,” he said via video call from his (relatively modest) kitchen at home in the LA suburb of Calabasas.

“But ­losing him was devastating — ­absolutely devastating.”

The world outside the Jackson family remains conflicted about Jacko – supremely talented, wildly successful, totally eccentric but tarnished by lurid allegations.

Yet Tito, using the present tense, passionately told me: “We can’t help but support him. He’s my brother. We have the same last name.

“The blood inside him is inside me.”

My brother was so talented and when you’re on top, there are always those who want to destroy you

Tito

Regarding lawsuits filed against Michael before and after his death on June 25, 2009, Tito had this to say: “It’s very simple for me. You’ve got a person being investigated by the highest office, the FBI, for over a decade and they couldn’t find one thing. He’s squeaky clean.

“My brother was so talented and when you’re on top, there are always those who want to destroy you.

“People just couldn’t understand how this one kid could have all this success and keep on coming up with hit records.”

Like his brother (though obviously not quite to the same extent), Tito was part of a hit-making machine, first with The Jackson 5 and then The Jacksons.

Right from the early days, his protective instincts around Michael, whose angelic tones lit up ABC and I Want You Back, came to the fore.

“You always look after your little brothers,” he said.

“We were a gang within ourselves and we had each other’s backs.

“If anyone bothered Michael, they had to deal with his four brothers.”

I asked Tito if he ever felt overshadowed, maybe just a little bit jealous, when MJ became the world’s most successful entertainer.

He replied: “It wasn’t like that. People don’t usually say, ‘I like Michael’, they always go, ‘Michael Jackson’.

I feel that Michael’s success is part of my success. It’s the family’s success. We’re a family of music

Tito

“So we had the Jackson name in there and we couldn’t help but support that.

“I feel that Michael’s success is part of my success. It’s the family’s success. We’re a family of music.”

Toriano “Tito” Adaryll Jackson was born on October 15, 1953, to father Joe, a steel mill worker who performed in an R&B band, and mother Katherine, a Jehovah’s Witness and country music fan who played the piano and clarinet.

They lived in a humble two-room house in Gary, Indiana , not far from Chicago .

The family owned a television but it constantly broke down and, when they couldn’t afford to get it fixed, the children started singing and harmonising with their mum — “all the time, every day”.

Once, when Katherine was doing the ironing, she said: “Joe, listen — they can really sing.”

Encouraged by such obvious talent, their father started buying instruments for his kids.

In Tito’s case, it was a guitar, even if he had secretly been playing one already, as he explained to me.

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“My father played the blues with his brother, Uncle Luther, every weekend and I was very interested in that,” he said.

“When he went back to work, he’d put his guitar away and say, ‘Don’t you boys touch my guitar’. It was his pride and joy.

“That was the worst thing you could tell a young kid and my mom actually let me play it — but when I broke a string, my father found out.”

No doubt Tito was subject to some of his strict father’s notorious wrath.

In a candid moment, he remembered how Joe would whip his sons with belts and that he was so afraid of him that he would “start to regurgitate”.

But Tito also insisted that he had “the best dad in the world”, who saved him from a life of crime, just when kids of his age, in his neighbourhood, began running with gangs.

‘Clothes torn off me’

It wasn’t long before Tito and his brothers started performing shows and, by 1964, when he was 11 and Michael was just six, they became The Jackson 5.

When they signed for Berry Gordy’s Detroit-based Motown — home to Marvin Gaye , Stevie Wonder, The Supremes and The Temptations — there was disbelief in the Jackson family’s neighbourhood.

Tito said: “People said to us, ‘You’re making all that noise in the house . . .  that ain’t going nowhere!’.”

How wrong they were.

As the original boyband, they were trailblazers for those who followed down the decades . . . Backstreet Boys, Take That, Boyz II Men, One Direction and countless others.

“I was the first kid to get my clothes torn off me by screaming, crazy girls,” said Tito, recalling Jacksonmania.

“I had hundreds and thousands of girlfriends and didn’t even know it.”

The Jackson brothers had hit on a winning formula . . . joyous, danceable, life-affirming songs performed with gorgeous harmonies, silky dance moves and effortless style.

I could turn on my car radio, listen to a Jacksons song and hear myself playing guitar as well. That felt like a great accomplishment and a great feeling

Tito

They enjoyed four consecutive US No1 singles, I Want You Back, ABC, The Love You Save and I’ll Be Back.

But in 1976, they were ready to spread their wings and left the Motown machine.

As The Jacksons, they gradually took control of writing and production, with everything coming together perfectly on 1978’s Destiny album, with its disco banger opener Blame It On The Boogie.

For Tito, it was the culmination of all his hard work, including learning an instrument.

He said: “I could turn on my car radio, listen to a Jacksons song and hear myself playing guitar as well. That felt like a great accomplishment and a great feeling.”

But now it’s time to rewind a bit and catch up with Tito’s life outside music.

In 1972, when he was 18 and already a seasoned professional in the business, he married Dolores “Dee Dee” Martes, who became the mother of his three sons Taj, Tarill and TJ. (They formed R&B band 3T).

Kim to the rescue

In 1994, six years after they had divorced, Delores was found dead floating in a swimming pool.

At first, it was regarded as accidental death, but thanks to a tireless campaign by Tito and his boys, Dee Dee’s boyfriend, Donald Bohana, was convicted of second degree murder.

During the trial, a 14-year-old Kim Kardashian was called to testify because she was dating TJ at the time.

“My boyfriend’s mother, whom I was really close with, was murdered and I had to be part of that trial,” she said later.

“I was there every day with my boyfriend. I was just 14 — to have that experience at such a young age was insane.”

In the years since the heyday of The Jacksons, Tito, along with Jackie and Marlon, has continued to tour the world, belting out those timeless songs, many of them once performed with Michael.

Also brother to singers Janet, La Toya, Jermaine, Rebbie and Randy, he was the last of the siblings to release a solo album, Tito Time, in 2016.

Tito’s final Jacksons appearance was in Munich last week and he died from a heart attack on his way from New Mexico to Oklahoma .

The Jackson dynasty has lost one of its favourite sons.

He will be missed around the world, nowhere more so than in Wolverhampton.

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