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whileiamdying · 10 years

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IKE & TINA TURNER: THE GREAT RHYTHM & BLUES SESSIONS

The 1980’s have treated Ike and Tina Turner quite differently. Tina has become a contemporary superstar recording somewhat glossy “Pop” material (albeit of high quality). Ike, meanwhile, has struggled, having to deal with a variety of legal problems while seeing his personal problems with Tina dragged through the media incessantly. In the process, his once immense contribution to R&B history has been somewhat overshadowed.

There was an earlier time, though, before the general public was made aware of their personal trials and tribulations, when the Ike and Tina Turner Revue was one of the hottest, most durable, and potentially explosive of all rhythm and blues ensembles. Fronted by Tina, one of the rawest, most sensual, and impossibly dynamic voices in black music, the Ike and Tina Revue was an ensemble that dripped musical discipline while manifesting nearly unbearable tension, the combination eventually giving way to wave upon wave of catharsis. At their height, only the James Brown Revue could operate on the same level.

The Ike and Tina Turner story starts deep in the heart of the pre-World War II Mississippi Delta. It was in the jumping town of Clarksdale that Ike was born in the fall of 1931. As a child he was fascinated by the piano playing of blues man Pinestop Perkins (whom he heard via Helena, Arkansas’ King Biscuit Radio Show). Before he was eight the youngster could be heard rattling his own set of 88’s. Less than ten years later he had joined a large swing ensemble going by the name the Top Hatters and run by a local saxophone playing dentist.

After Turner served a stint in the capacity of disc jockey for Clarksdale’s WROX, a number of former Top Hatters came together under a new guise, Ike Turner and the Kings of Rhythm. By March 1951 the Kings of Rhythm, through the intercession of B.B. King, cut four sides for Sam Phillips’ Memphis Recording Service. Phillips, in turn, leased the recordings to Chess Records in Chicago who issued two of them under saxophone player/vocalist Jackie Brenston’s name. Part boogie and part incipient rock and roll, “Rocket 88” by Jackie Brenston and the Delta Cats became a number one R & B hit in the spring of 1951. Ironically, Ike Turner’s first taste of Success didn’t even mention his name.

From late 1951 to 1956 Ike proceeded to play the role of talent scout and producer [or the California-based Modern Recording Company (taking a brief timeout in 1953 to record a few tracks by Billy “the Kid” Emerson, Johnny O’Neal and himself for Sam Phillips’ fledgling Sun label). During his tenure with Modern he waxed sides by the likes of Elmore James, B.B. King, Rosco Gordon, the King Biscuit Boys, Johnny Ace, Junior Parker and, of course, the Kings of Rhythm.

Having moved his base of operations to East St. Louis in 1955, Ike also changed record company affiliations, recording the Kings of Rhythm and producing others for Cincinnati’s King/Federal complex. Perhaps the most notable record he was associated with at King was Billy Gayles’ incendiary “I’m Tore Up.” By 1958 Turner had moved his activities to Eli Toscano’s Chicago-based Cobra and Artistic labels. A couple of records were Issued by Toscano before Turner recorded two further releases for a local St. Louis label, Stevens Records, under the name Icky Renrut in 1953 (the pseudonym was a device designed to circumvent outstanding contractual obligations elsewhere).

It was at this point that Tina entered the picture. Born Anna Mae Bullock in Nutbush, Tennessee in November 1939, Tina spent the first fourteen years of her life living in a number of small, largely rural western Tennessee hamlets with names such as Brownsville, Ripley, and Spring Hill. Her mother had moved to St. Louis in 1950. Five years later Tina followed suit. There she met Ike and the other Kings of Rhythm at what had become the band’s home base, the Club Manhattan in East St. Louis. Her sister, Alline Bullock, was dating drummer Gene Washington. Anna Mac Bullock was all of sixteen.

After a few months of nightly inveterate Kings of Rhythm worship, Tina got up and sang with the band. Astonished by her combination of emotion and up-against-the-wall power, Ike Turner let her take the occasional spot with the band. Soon he offered Anna Mac Bullock a job. Still in high school, she had acquired a new vocation.

In 1960 the Kings of Rhythm cut a demo of the Ike-penned “A Fool In Love”. Copies were dutifully sent to all the important independent record companies then recording R & B. Only one, Juggy Murray’s Sue label, expressed interest. Murray was sure he smelled a hit and, in his mind, Anna Mae Bullock was the key. After flying to St. Louis and impressing this notion upon Ike, he signed the band to a four-year deal. Ike, wisely, changed the name of Anna Mae to Tina, and the Kings of Rhythm became the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. A new age had dawned in the lives of all concerned.

“A Fool In Love” climbed its way to the #2 R & B slot while stopping at #27 Pop. Other hits quickly followed on Sue over the next four years including “I Idolize You”, “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine”, “Poor Fool” and “Tra La La La La”. All were Top 10 R & B and all also saw some Pop action, “it’s Gonna Work Fine” being the most successful going all the way to #14.

The Ike and Tina Turner Revue had arrived. Ike, though, unfortunately combined an acute sense of impatience with a workaholic personality. The result meant that Ike subscribed to the John Lee Hooker school of doing business; i.e. record at any opportunity for anyone who happened to be willing to put cash on the barrel head, regardless of their taste in packaging or their ability to promote or distribute the product. The results were threefold: Ike and Tina are perhaps the most over recorded R & B ensemble of all time; the various records issued under their name tend to be uneven, at times suffering from substandard material; and sorting the various recordings out tends to be problematic. That said, they still managed to place twenty-five records on the R & B charts for nine separate companies between 1960 and 1975.

The Ike and Tina Revue was always hyperactive, constantly playing shows (often a mind boggling three hundred plus a year), rehearsing and recording. The latter occurred virtually anywhere they found themselves with a few days to kill and an available studio. After sessions were completed, Ike would debate on who he would sell the tapes to. Such practices make it near impossible to precisely date these recordings but they appear to have taken place in 1967 or 1968, the sessions conducted in Memphis at the Royal Recording Studio, the same studio that Willie Mitchell and Hi Records would use to cut all of AI Green’s, Ann Peebles’ and Syl Johnson’s early seventies hits. They were originally issued over the course of a series of albums released in 1968 and 1969 on Ike’s Pompeii label, distributed at the time by the Atlantic subsidiary, Atco Records.

Ike took production credit and wrote a number of the songs. Also prominent in the composition department is one Mack Rice. A former member of The Falcons, Sir Mack Rice had scored big with “Mustang Sally” on Blue Rock in 1965. When Ike Turner ran into him in Memphis he was working for Stax Records both as an artist and writer. His “It Sho Ain’t Me” is closely modelled on the Stax sound developed by Otis Redding on ballads such as “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long”, the latter a song that Ike and Tina would do well with in 1969. In contrast, Rice’s “Betcha Can’t Kiss Me” is a mid-tempo chugger fueled by Tina’s ever impassioned vocal pyrotechnics. The Chipmunk effect on the backup vocals is just a little too cute. Asked about it in 1990, Mack Rice just laughed and said that was Ike’s idea.

Other highlights abound, where Tina’s concerned most notably with Ike’s own “I’m Fed Up” and Wayne Carson Thompson’s “You Got What You Wanted.” On these and other songs included here, Ike has created arrangements set in keys that at various points are nearly too high for Tina’s range. The result is a characteristic strain that manifests itself in much of what Tina sung in her years with Ike. It’s a technique that Isaac Hayes and David Porter used to great advantage with Sam and Dave at Stax. In recent years Tina has said that she didn’t like singing this way. That may be the case, but the results are undeniably chilling. Ike contributes his share as well, turning in strong bluesy stinging guitar lines on B.B. King’s “Rock Me Baby” and Bobby Blue Bland’s “I Smell Trouble.”

Three of the songs included here, “It Sho Ain’t Me”, “Too Hot To Hold”, and “Beauty Is Just Skin Deep” were released as forty-fives under three different monikers; Ike and Tina Turner, Tina Turner and the Ikettes respectively. Those listening closely will notice that it is not Tina singing on the latter; rather it’s a typically anonymous Ikette. Typically, anonymous because Ike felt that if people knew their names and they had hits, the individual Ikettes would be able to leave and start careers of their own. Instead, this way he owned the name “The lkettes,” paid the singers salary that entailed roadwork and sessions, and kept all the royalties himself. “Make ‘Em Wait” was the flip side of the “Beauty Is Just Skin Deep” and is definitely sung by one of the Ikettes and, to these ears, “Poor Little Fool” is also delivered by one of the backing girls.

None of these records were hits in the era of rampant psychedelia but such does not belie their eminent quality. Ike may have been a dubious businessman but nonetheless he was an absolute master of rhythm and blues guitar, he possessed a fine ear, a superb band and, in Tina, one of the great rhythm and blues voices of all time. Enjoy.

— Rob Bowman

Rob Bowman is a journalist/musicologist living in Toronto, Canada.

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