Tito Jackson ✝

Toriano Adaryll "Tito" Jackson (born October 15, 1953) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. Jackson was an original member of The Jackson 5 and The Jacksons, who rose to fame in the late 1960s and 1970s with the Motown label, and later recorded as a solo artist on the Epic label in the late 1970s and 1980s. Tito is the third child in the Jackson family.\n', ' Toriano Adaryll Jackson was born the third of ten children in a black working-class family who lived in a three-room house in Gary, Indiana. His father, Joseph, was a steel mill worker. His mother, Katherine, was a devout Jehovah\'s Witness. At ten years of age, he was caught playing his father\'s guitar after he broke a string. After fixing the string, Joe demanded that his son play for him. Once he was finished, Jackson\'s father bought him his own guitar. Shortly thereafter, Joseph convinced Tito, Jackie, and Jermaine to form a singing group, having been impressed with the vocals of Jackie and Jermaine."[citation needed]\n', ' After first performing in school functions and supermarkets, the brothers began participating in local talent shows when Jackson was twelve. By then, his younger brother Michael, then seven, had become the official lead singer of the group. In 1965, they changed their name from the Jackson Brothers to the Jackson Five, and won several talent shows around the Gary area. After winning the Amateur Night competition for The Apollo Theater in August 1967, Joe Jackson began to work part-time at the steel mill to help his sons secure a recording contract. The group signed with Steeltown Records in Gary, Indiana, in November of that year. In January 1968, the Jackson Five\'s first single, "Big Boy," was released on the Steeltown label.\n', '