Joe Jackson, patriarch of Jackson family, dies
Joe Jackson, the father and longtime manager of the famed Jackson family, has died at 89.
He passed away Wednesday in Los Angeles at around 3:30 a.m. following a battle with cancer, TMZ reported.
The pop music patriarch was hospitalized last week with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer, a family source previously confirmed to The News.
Friends remembered the notoriously domineering dad as a force who revolutionized the recording industry with his guidance of The Jackson 5 and early solo careers of superstars Michael and Janet.
“I think Joe Jackson was the patriarch of a family that transformed music in America,” Rev. Al Sharpton, a family friend, told the Daily News on Wednesday.
“He brought the music of blacks mainstream, from Michael and the Jackson 5 to Janet. He fathered them and instructed them and never got the credit he deserved,” Sharpton said.
“He reinterpreted what American music was all about. Without Joe Jackson, black music would have continued largely on the Chitlin Circuit, which rendered blacks outside the mainstream,” he said.
In the days leading up to his death, Jackson was medicated for pain as family members flocked to his side, the family source previously told The News.
The source said Katherine Jackson, his wife of 68 years and mother of 10 of his children, rushed to his bedside as his prognosis grew more dire.
Granddaughter Paris Jackson revealed on social media she flew out to be with her grandfather Sunday.
Jackson struggled with health issues in recent years, including a 2012 stroke, a second stroke with accompanying heart arrhythmia in 2015 and a Los Angeles hospitalization in 2016.