Grammy-award-winning, Trini-born mix engineer Dexter Simmons remembers Michael Jackson, with whom he spent three and a half months working on the Invincible album, as a ’humble, polite’ person who was very attentive to his children.

In a telephone interview from his LA home yesterday, Simmons said the MJ he knew understood but was never happy with the ’dismal view’ of him painted in the media. ’I don’t think in this lifetime we will see or experience someone like him again,’ he said.

’We used to talk about Trinidad,’ he said, adding that T&T had made a ’lasting impression’ along with the music and words of Kitch’s ’Sugar Bum Bum’.

’He sang it for me, just like that.’

Simmons worked with MJ in the 1990s but got to know him ’really well’ working on the Invincible album released by Epic Records in 2001. ’That whole talk about how he slept in an oxygen tank, for example, simply was not true, when he burnt his hair, one of the treatments prescribed was pure oxygen, and someone leaked that photo. There are so many other things. I was once in a meeting with him and a producer and it was being said on the entertainment news that he’d fired that particular producer. MJ just laughed sadly.’

He also remembers a man who ’loved his children, they travelled everywhere with him. He would read to them, although he had a huge entourage of nannies and bodyguards. He considered them his responsibility. I remember one time, one of the kids spilled some milk in the studio, and Michael simply got some paper towel, got down on his knees and cleaned up the carpet himself.’

Simmons also remembers a ’perfectionist’ when it came to the music. ’This is why he would spend three to four years working on an album. His studio sessions were long. Once we were working at a NY studio and it ran out of water. Everyone was stressed and eventually we went to our homes to shower and thought Michael did the same. We came back and met him there. He’d sent for a bucket of water to bathe, rather than stop working.’

Jackson was also ’such a cool, fun person. One time he snuck out to a 7-Eleven for water. The studio was freaking out, but he was laughing because the man at the store congratulated him on being the best MJ impersonator he ever saw.’

Simmons also has cherished memories of working with both Michael and Janet Jackson on the single ’Scream’.

’He often told me Janet influenced him and he loved her work especially ’Rhythm Nation’, he added.

Simmons said there were plans for him to be involved on the comeback tour for which he’d already done some mixes. ’I liked the new stuff. It was going in a different direction musically, but it was still essentially Michael.’

Simmons received a Grammy (Album of the Year) in 2004 for his work on the OutKast Speakerboxxx album and is considered to be among the top five mix engineers in the world. His credits, which can be found on allmusic.com , span the many genres of popular music and include Machel Montano’s 2009 Red Antz CD. He is expected to be in Trinidad and Tobago later this week.