Before Michael Jackson ever went to school, he had a long walk to make, and his big sister made it with him.
Rebbie Jackson is the oldest of the ten Jackson children. She was born on May 29, 1950, and Michael came along on August 29, 1958. “I’m 8 years older than Michael,” she said in an interview with the UK outlet HeyUGuys for the 2011 documentary “Michael Jackson: The Life of an Icon.”
Their mother, Katherine, was working then, and somebody had to look after the little boy. “My grandmother babysitted him while my mom worked,” Rebbie said, “so I had to walk him to her house so she could take care of him.” It wasn’t a quick trip around the corner, either. She called it “a pretty good distance.”
She told the story sitting next to her brother Tito, with the documentary’s poster behind them. The film was produced by David Gest and came out on DVD and Blu-ray on November 2, 2011, with Katherine, Tito and Rebbie all taking part.
When her turn came to share a memory of Michael, Rebbie skipped the stages and the TV studios. She went back to the years before he was a student. “Mine [is] when Michael was very young and it’s before he started school,” she said.
Rebbie and Tito Jackson remember little Michael in a HeyUGuys interview
This is HeyUGuys’ own upload of its press interview with Tito and Rebbie for “Michael Jackson: The Life of an Icon.” Tito talks about the early years at about 0:14, and Rebbie tells the walking story from about 3:22.
So what stayed with her from all those trips to their grandmother’s house?
It was Michael himself, and how much energy that little boy had. “I used to get a kick out of how rambunctious he was and he was just full of activity,” Rebbie said at about 3:39, “and I think of that all the time.”
Decades later, that’s the picture she keeps. Not a star on a stage, just a very busy little brother on the way to Grandma’s.
Tito’s memory comes from a few years further on, when the brothers were working the road. His answer about when Michael was happiest goes back to the time before the record deal that made them famous. “I think he was most happy … prior to the Motown days when we were Jackson 5 traveling and in our Volkswagen van and opening up for Jackie Wilson and James Brown,” he said at about 0:22.
He kept going. “I remember him from being a little boy and the fun that we had and the fun he had, the jokes that he did and he was just a bundle of joy,” Tito said.
Rebbie’s other favorite times came later, once the whole family was performing together. “When we would perform together as a family we had a family show, we used to tour all over the country … play Vegas and those were fun times,” she said, “and then of course when we had the mini TV series, that was a lot of fun too.”
The family’s Las Vegas run began at the MGM Grand in 1974, and Rebbie joined her siblings on stage there that June. The CBS variety series “The Jacksons” premiered in June 1976, and she was part of that cast too.
Ten years after Vegas, the little boy she used to walk to their grandmother’s house returned the favor. In 1984 Michael wrote, arranged and produced the title track of Rebbie’s debut album, “Centipede,” and it climbed to No. 4 on Billboard’s Black Singles chart.