Jacksons’ fearsome dad dies at 89
His superstar brood said he was hard and abusive but Joe Jackson was the driving force behind their success
Joe Jackson, the fearsome stage dad of Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson and their talented siblings, who took his family from poverty and launched a musical dynasty, died yesterday. He was 89.
Clark County Coroner John Fudenberg said Joe Jackson died at Nathan Adelson Hospice in Las Vegas. Fudenberg said he did not have full details, and a determination had not been made on whether his office would handle the case.
“We are reviewing the circumstances surrounding the death, but there is no reason to believe it’s anything other than a natural death,” the coroner said.
Jackson was a guitarist who put his own musical ambitions aside to work in the steel mills to support his wife and nine children in Gary, Indiana. But he far surpassed his own dreams through his children, particularly Michael.
Fronted by the then-pint-sized wonder and brothers Jermaine, Marlon, Tito and Jackie, the Jackson 5 was an instant sensation in 1969, the first phase of superstardom for the family. In the following decades, millions would listen to both group and solo recordings by the Jackson 5 (who later became known as The Jacksons) and Michael would become one of the most popular entertainers in history.
Michael Jackson’s estate released a statement mourning the death.
“We are deeply saddened by Mr Jackson’s passing and extend our heartfelt condolences to Mrs Katherine Jackson and the family. Joe was a strong man who acknowledged his own imperfections and heroically delivered his sons and daughters from the steel mills of Gary, Indiana, to worldwide pop superstardom,” said John Branca and John McClain, co-executors of the estate.
“Papa Joe”, as he would become known, ruled through his stern, intimidating and unflinching presence, which became so indelible it was part of black popular culture, even referenced in song and on TV.
“This is bad, real bad Michael Jackson, Now I’m mad, real mad Joe Jackson,” Kanye West rhymed in Keri Hilson’s 2009 hit, Knock You Down.
Michael and other siblings would allege physical abuse at their father’s hands.
“We’d perform for him and he’d critique us. If you messed up, you got hit, sometimes with a belt, sometimes with a switch. My father was real strict with us — real strict,” Michael Jackson wrote in his 1985 autobiography Moonwalk.
LaToya Jackson would go as far as to accuse him of sexual abuse in the early 1990s, when she was estranged from her entire family, but she later recanted, saying her former husband had coerced her to make such claims. She and her father later reconciled.
By the time they were adults, most of the Jackson siblings had dismissed him as their manager; Michael and Joseph’s relationship was famously fractured; Michael Jackson revered his mother Katherine but kept his distance from Joseph.
However, during some of his son’s most difficult times, including his 2004 molestation trial, Joseph was by his side, and Michael acknowledged their complicated relationship in a 2001 speech about healthy relationships between parents and their children: “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,” he said.
“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 his autobiography, Joseph Jackson acknowledged having been a stern parent, saying he believed it was the only way to prepare his children for the tough world of show business.
However, he always denied physically abusing his children.
Joseph Walter Jackson was born in Fountain Hill, Arkansas, on July 26, 1929, the eldest of four children. His father, Samuel Jackson, was a high school teacher, and his mother, Crystal Lee King, was a housewife.
The couple split up when Jackson was 12. He moved with his father to Oakland, California, while his mother moved to East Chicago, Indiana. When he turned 18, he moved to Indiana to live near his mother. It was there that he met and married Katherine Scruse.
In the 1950s, he had tried to launch his own career as a guitarist, but came to realise the gifted musicians in his family were his children.
He is survived by his wife, children and more than 24 grandchildren.