Almost every family has one. A card or a scrap of paper from a favorite relative, tucked away in a drawer, signed with a name only the family understands.
Michael Jackson’s nephews have one too. And it’s in his own handwriting.
The nephews are Taj, Taryll and TJ, the three sons of Michael’s brother Tito Jackson. Taj was born in 1973, Taryll in 1975 and TJ in 1978. Together the brothers formed a group called 3T, and they put out their first album, “Brotherhood,” in 1995. Uncle Michael mentored them as they got their start.
In the summer of 1996, 3T sat down with Black & White, a French magazine all about Michael. Taj told them the boys kept in touch with their uncle no matter where he was. “Even when he’s away, we stay in touch with him. We send him letters and he answers.”
Taryll kept it short. “He does silly things.”
If you’ve never seen the four of them side by side, the 1995 video the brothers made with Uncle Michael is the place to start.
Michael and his three nephews in the video for “Why”
So where does the silly side come from? Part of the answer goes back to Michael’s own childhood.
Michael loved The Three Stooges his whole life. In 1985 he wrote the foreword to a book about Curly by Joan Howard Maurer, the daughter of Stooge Moe Howard. “In my childhood, around our house in Indiana, it was a daily ritual for me to watch “The Three Stooges” on television,” he wrote. In the same pages he admitted that “Curly was definitely my favorite Stooge” and that “As a kid, I imitated Curly all the time”
He passed a little of that love down to Taj. Michael gave his nephew an old “3 Stooges” coloring book and tucked a note inside, written in red on lined notebook paper. The note isn’t dated, so nobody can say exactly when Taj got it.
Here’s what it says: “Taj, This book is valuable, I was only 3 years old when it came out. Cherish it always.”
Then comes the sign-off. It wasn’t “Uncle Michael.” It was “Love, Uncle Doo Doo, M.J.”
Yes, the King of Pop signed his letters to his nephews that way. Taj said so himself when he told Black & White magazine in 1996, “It’s one of the thousand nicknames he gave himself.” He added, “He signs his letters “Uncle Doo Doo,” it’s just to do something silly.”
When the interviewer asked if there was some hidden meaning behind it, Taj laughed. “No! (laughs) I’m sorry, I wish there was one!”
Michael was born in 1958, so by his own words that coloring book came out in the early 1960s, when he was just 3 himself.
A fan made a short video about this very note, with English subtitles, and its cover picture is the coloring book with Michael’s red writing sitting right on top.
The note Michael tucked inside a Three Stooges coloring book
Taryll told the magazine that backstage, playing video games and joking around, his uncle was just the goofy guy they knew. Then Michael would walk out in front of a crowd and the boys would see someone else entirely.
“But when he comes up onstage, even us we get stunned, he’s fantastic.”
That’s the uncle Taj, Taryll and TJ grew up with. A superstar on the stage, and offstage the man who signed his mail with the silliest name he could think of.