#The Ike and Tina Turner Revue

[whileiamdying]

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.

[twixnmix]

The Ikettes photographed by Barry Feinstein, 1971.

[bitter69uk]

“Is it possible to aspire to be two different people at the same time, rolled into one? If so, the two-headed transplant of my musical backbone could only be Ike and Tina Turner. I wanted to be as snakelike as Ike and as scary-sexy as Tina. So should you. Ike and Tina Turner were the best soul group ever.”

/ From John Waters’ 2019 collection of essays Mr. Know-It-All /

Born on this day: musician, songwriter, guitarist, producer, bandleader and rock’n’roll pioneer Ike Turner (né Izear Luster Turner Jr, 5 November 1931 – 12 December 2007). From the late fifties until their acrimonious split in 1976 Turner and his fiercely glamorous raspy-voiced “bold soul sister” wife Tina Turner (the former Anna Mae Bullock) were the tempestuous royal couple of greasy, primal rhythm and blues. Yes, Ike’s reputation as a monster is warranted (especially once the cocaine addiction kicked in), but his trailblazing musical genius demands recognition. In the great 2023 documentary Little Richard: I Am Everything, one of the talking heads notes that Richard's piano playing was beholden to Turner’s, something Richard himself freely admitted (he raved that hearing “Rocket 88” by Ike Turner and His Kings of Rhythm in 1951 “made my big toe shoot up in my boot” and profoundly fired his own musical imagination. Richard borrowed the piano intro to “Rocket 88” for his own “Good Golly, Miss Molly”). Pictured: The eternally stylish Turners on the cover of the revue’s first-ever live album – released sixty years ago this month (November 1964). Find it on Spotify if you're curious - it rocks! John Waters is right: Ike and Tina Turner were the best soul group ever.

[demifiendrsa]

The "Queen of Rock 'n' Roll" Tina Turner has passed away at age 83 after a long illness.

Turner became famous in the late 1960s as the singer of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. After leaving husband Ike Turner following years of physical and emotional abuse, she staged what remains one of the greatest comebacks in pop music history, scoring massive hits in the 1980s such as “What’s Love Got To Do With it”, “Private Dancer” and “The Best”, with more than 180 million albums sold, 12 Grammy Awards won and sold-out stadium tours around the world.

Turner also starred in movies such as the Acid Queen in The Who’s rock opera Tommy (1975) and the villainous Auntie Entity in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, which included another hit, “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)”.

[dearyallfrommatt]

“I Want To Take You Higher”

The Ike & Tina Revue featuring the Ikettes. Ike was known to shift gears on a song on a whim and he does it here. Very little rocks as hard as this.

[absurdlakefront]

Tina Turner just eats this song with much charisma to spare!

[bitter69uk]

A year without Tina Turner! It’s the first anniversary of the death of ultimate wailing rhythm and blues tigress, Nutbush, Tennessee’s finest daughter, “the hardest working woman in show business” and the embodiment of grit, sensuality and glamour, Miss Tina Turner (Anna Mae Bullock, 26 November 1939 – 24 May 2023). Even though we all knew the incomparably fierce soul diva had been in failing health for years, the announcement of her death aged 83 still felt wrenchingly inconceivable. What a woman. What an artist. What a loss. No one will EVER shimmy in stiletto heels, shake a fringed mini-dress or whip a wig around with more abandon than Tina! Pictured: portrait of a Bold Soul Sister. Looking at this 1964 shot of a radiantly beautiful young Tina, it’s understandable why John Waters would call her "a fashion icon that influenced me for the rest of my life." In his in his 2019 volume Mr Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder, Waters (a passionate fan of the Ike and Tina Turner Revue) declared – accurately! - “Ike and Tina were the best soul group ever.” All hail the queen!

Tina Turner, ca. 1964. Michael Ochs Archives

[travsd]

The Vaudeville of Ike and Tina Turner

Tina Turner (Anna Mae Bullock, 1939-2023) passed away back on May 24. This was too momentous for a hasty, ad hoc memoriam, so I opted to wait and do a more thoughtful tribute on her birthday. Her vilified ex Ike Turner (Izear Luster Turner Jr., 1931-2007) was also born in November. Most celebrity obits are superficial in the extreme, merely reminding readers of supposed high points and low…

[fyblackwomenart]

Tina Turner by

thegoldenbaba

1939-2023

Tina Turner was an American-born singer. Known as the "Queen of Rock 'n' Roll", she rose to prominence as the lead singer of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue before launching a successful career as a solo performer.

[queenie435]

FIRST SUCCESSFUL FEMALE STANDUP COMEDIAN

Loretta Mary Aiken (March 19, 1897 – May 23, 1975), known by her stage name Jackie "Moms" Mabley, was the first successful female standup comedian and had a career that spanned over 50 years. Moms bridged the gap between vaudeville and modern stand up comedy. She was also the first woman comic to be feature at the Apollo theater and Carnegie Hall in 1962.

Moms Mabley was born Loretta Mary Aiken in Brevard, North Carolina, to a large family. She experienced a horrifying, traumatic childhood. Her firefighter father was killed in an explosion when she was 11 and her mother was later hit and killed by a truck on Christmas Day. By the time she was fifteen she had borne two children resulting from sexual assaults: the first by a neighbour when she was twelve, and the second, two years later by a local sheriff. Her stepfather, who had remained her guardian, gave both children up for adoption and then forced Moms to marry a much older man who she despised.

Aiken left home at the age of 14 and pursued a show business career, joining the African-American vaudeville circuit(aka Chitlin' Circuit)as a comedian under the Theatre Owners Booking Association, Fellow performer Jack Mabley became her boyfriend for a short time, and she took on his name, becoming Jackie Mabley, with "Moms" coming from her eventual reputation as a mentoring, mothering spirit.

Moms saw an opportunity to try out her own voice, and discovered that she was a natural at singing, dancing and telling a joke. Especially telling a joke. She realized she had something that many of her contemporaries didn’t - original material. Since her sheltered life had hampered any introduction to current comedy routines, Moms inevitably began to craft authentic pieces based on her own experiences, much of it based on Granny’s pearls of wisdom.

Moms talked to her audience as if they were her children. She delivered superbly solemn routines, original in their time yet amazingly, never bettered. As soon as Moms delivered her opening line “I 'gots' something to tell you...” she immediately captured the attention of everyone in the room - and those rooms were full for over fifty years.

By the early 1920s she had begun to work with the duo Butterbeans & Susie, and eventually became an attraction at the Cotton Club. Mabley entered the world of film and stage as well, working with writer Zora Neale Hurston on the 1931 Broadway show "Fast and Furious: A Colored Revue in 37 Scenes" and taking on a featured role in Paul Robeson's "Emperor Jones" (1933).

Starting in the late 1930s, Mabley became the first woman comedian to be featured at the Apollo, going on to appear on the theater's stage more times than any other performer. She returned to the big screen as well with "The Big Timers" (1945), "Boarding House Blues" (1948), and the musical revue "Killer Diller" (1948), which featured Nat King Cole and Butterfly McQueen.

By the late 1950s Moms Mabley was one of the highest-paid comics in the US, making $10,000 a week. Mabley's standup routines were riotous affairs augmented by the aesthetic she presented as being an older, housedress-clad figure who provided sly commentary on racial bigotry to African-American audiences. Her jokes also pointed towards a lusty zest for younger men.

Mabley began a recording career with her Chess Records debut album "The Funniest Woman Alive," which became gold-certified. Subsequent albums like "Moms Mabley at the Playboy Club," "Moms Mabley at the UN" and "Young Men, Si - Old Men, No" continued to broaden Mabley's reach (she ultimately recorded many albums). She landed spots on some of the top variety shows of the day, including "The Ed Sullivan Show," and graced the stage of Carnegie Hall.

Mabley continued performing in the 1970s. In 1971, she appeared on The Pearl Bailey Show. Later that year, she opened for Ike & Tina Turner at the Greek Theatre and sang a tribute to Louis Armstrong as part of her set.

Mobley had a starring role in the 1974 picture "Amazing Grace," which she was able to complete despite having a heart attack during filming.

Over the course of her life, Mabley had six children: Bonnie, Christine, Charles, and Yvonne Ailey, and two placed for adoption when she was a teenager. She died from heart failure on May 23, 1975, in White Plains, New York.

Actress Clarice Taylor, who portrayed Bill Cosby's mother on "The Cosby Show" and was a major fan of Mabley's work, staged the 1987 play "Moms at the Astor Place Theater, in which she portrayed the trailblazing icon.

Fellow comedian Whoopi Goldberg made her directorial debut with the documentary "Moms Mabley: I Got Somethin' to Tell You, which was presented at the Tribeca Film Festival and aired on HBO in 2013.

[justforbooks]

When Tina Turner, who has died aged 83, walked out on her abusive husband Ike in Dallas, Texas, she feared it would spell the end of her showbusiness career. It was 1976, and she had been performing with Ike for two decades, since she had first jumped onstage and sang with his band at the Manhattan club in East St Louis, Missouri. Yet, although she was desperate and had only 36 cents in her pocket, she was on her way to a renaissance as one of the most successful performers in popular music during the 1980s and 90s.

She had to endure several lean years, but a turning point came in 1983, when David Bowie told Capitol Records that she was his favourite singer. A version of Al Green’s Let’s Stay Together followed. Produced by the electro-poppers Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh from Heaven 17, the track went to No 6 in the UK, then cracked the US Top 30 the following year.

Turner cemented the upturn in her fortunes with the album Private Dancer (1984). Driven by the huge hit What’s Love Got to Do With It? (her first American No 1), the album became a phenomenon, lodging itself in the American Top 10 for nine months and going on to sell more than 10m copies. Suddenly Turner was one of the biggest acts in an era of stadium superstars such as Michael Jackson, Dire Straits and Phil Collins.

In 1985 she was recruited to play Aunt Entity in the film Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, for which she recorded another international chartbuster, We Don’t Need Another Hero. A second Thunderdome single, One of the Living, won her a Grammy award, and she was an automatic choice to join the Live Aid benefit concert in that year, as well as to participate in its American theme song, We Are the World.

Her follow-up album, Break Every Rule (1986), launched Turner on a global touring campaign, during which a crowd of 184,000 watched her in Rio de Janeiro. The tour spun off a double album, Tina Live in Europe (1988).

The album Foreign Affair (1989) sold 6m copies and generated another trademark anthem, The Best, which was subsequently used to add oomph to numerous TV commercials and adopted both by the tennis ace Martina Navratilova and the racing driver Ayrton Senna. The subsequent Foreign Affair tour ended in Rotterdam in 1990, after which she duetted with Rod Stewart on the old Tammi Terrell/Marvin Gaye hit It Takes Two. Designed as the theme for a Pepsi advert, the track was a chart hit across Europe.

Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock in Nutbush, Tennessee, to Zelma Currie, a factory worker, and her husband, Floyd Bullock, a Baptist deacon. Abandoned by their father and temporarily by their mother, in 1956 Annie and her elder sister, Alline, moved to St Louis, Missouri, where they encountered Ike Turner and his band the Rhythm Kings. After Annie had talked the initially reluctant Ike into letting her sing with the band, he recruited her as one of his backing singers.

It was in 1960 that Tina – who had by then changed her name because it reminded Ike of the cartoon character Sheena, Queen of the Jungle – first sang a lead vocal with Ike’s band. A session singer failed to turn up, and Tina’s stand-in performance of A Fool in Love was a hit on both the pop and R&B charts. Ike immediately rebuilt his act around Tina, and christened it the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. They married in 1962.

Featuring nine musicians and a trio of skimpily dressed backing singers, the Ikettes, the Revue took the R&B circuit by storm. Tina rapidly developed into a mesmerising performer, radiating raw sexuality and bludgeoning audiences with the unvarnished force of her voice. They began to pepper the charts with hits, including I Idolise You, Poor Fool and Tra La La La La, and even if they only intermittently crossed over from the R&B charts to the pop mainstream, the band’s performing reputation was second to none. Evidence of their stage prowess was preserved on the 1965 album Live! The Ike and Tina Turner Show, recorded on tour in Texas.

However, the seeds of the couple’s destruction were being sown in their successful but intense lifestyle. Ike was a habitual womaniser, and also developed a destructive cocaine habit. This provoked violent outbursts against Tina, who, as she later revealed in her 1986 autobiography, I, Tina, was beaten, burned with cigarettes and scalded with hot coffee. She gained a glimpse of what life beyond Ike’s intimidating orbit might be like when she worked with the “Wall of Sound” producer Phil Spector in 1966. To Ike’s frustration, Spector refused to allow him in the studio while he worked on the single River Deep, Mountain High, which subsequently became regarded as a high point of both Spector’s and Turner’s careers.

The Turners’ work won them the admiration of many of their peers, not least the Rolling Stones, who invited them to open a UK tour for them in 1966, then to join them on their American tour in 1969. Mick Jagger was regularly spotted at the side of the stage during Tina’s performances, fascinated by her stage presence and dance routines. One of the high points of Live Aid in 1985 was Tina and Jagger performing together at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia.

Working with the Stones prompted the Turners to import a rock-orientated edge into their work, a ploy that worked most successfully when they recorded John Fogerty’s Proud Mary in 1971. It was their first million-selling single and a Top five hit on the American pop charts. In 1973 they notched up another landmark with Tina’s feisty composition Nutbush City Limits, inspired by her Tennessee origins. She took the role of the Acid Queen in Ken Russell’s film of The Who’s rock opera, Tommy (1975): her performance was one of its few critically acclaimed moments, though her spin-off solo album, The Acid Queen, made little impression on the charts.

After her split from Ike, Tina stayed with friends and was forced to survive on food stamps. When their divorce was finalised in 1978, she preferred to take no money or property from the settlement, to establish a complete break from her husband. She earned cash from TV guest appearances on the Donny & Marie and the Sonny & Cher shows, but her late-70s albums Rough and Love Explosion sold poorly.

In 1980 she signed a management deal with Roger Davies, an Australian promoter working in the US, who secured some lucrative engagements in Las Vegas. The following year the Rolling Stones galloped to the rescue once again by booking her as the opening act on their Tattoo You tour of the US, and she also appeared with Stewart in a California concert broadcast internationally by satellite.

By the time she was inducted (with Ike, though he was then in jail) into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991, Turner had little left to prove. She was able to spend more time at the homes in Switzerland and the Cote d’Azur that she now shared with the German record executive Erwin Bach. A singles collection, Simply the Best (1991), reeled in more platinum discs as Turner entered the senior stateswoman phase of her career.

In 1993, as she launched her first US tour in six years, her film biography, What’s Love Got to Do With It, based on I, Tina, was released, starring Angela Bassett as Turner. The film brought forth a bestselling soundtrack album and another hit single with its opening track, I Don’t Wanna Fight.

A three-disc anthology, The Collected Recordings – Sixties to Nineties, appeared in 1994, and the following year came Turner’s recording of GoldenEye, the theme tune of the eponymous James Bond movie. The tour that accompanied her eighth studio album, Wildest Dreams (1996), became another record-breaker, grossing more than $100m in Europe alone. Twenty Four Seven (1999) teed up what Turner announced would be her last major arena and stadium tour. She had intended to tour with Elton John, but the idea was scrapped after she argued with him about the piano arrangement for Proud Mary during rehearsals for a TV special, Divas Live ’99. Her subsequent solo dates became the top-grossing tour of 2000.

A quiet period ensued, during which Turner confined herself to hand-picked events, such as a 2005 performance on the Oprah Winfrey Show. She contributed a version of Edith and the Kingpin to River: The Joni Letters (2007), a tribute album produced by Herbie Hancock. She performed alongside Beyoncé at the Grammy awards in 2008.

That October she went back on the road with the Tina! 50th Anniversary Tour, synchronised with the compilation album Tina: The Platinum Collection. In 2010 she became the first female artist to score top 40 hits in the UK in six consecutive decades (1960s-2010s) when The Best bounced back into the UK Top 10. Her Love Songs compilation appeared in 2014, and her remix of What’s Love Got to Do With It with the Norwegian DJ Kygo in 2020 made for a seventh decade containing UK hits.

Between 2009 and 2014 Turner appeared on four albums by Beyond, an all-woman group formed with her neighbours in Küsnacht, near Zürich. The music reflected the spiritual and religious beliefs of the participants, with Turner considering herself a Baptist-Buddhist (she was raised as a Baptist, but began practising Nichiren Buddhism in 1973).

In 2013 she married Bach and gave up her American citizenship to become a Swiss citizen. Three weeks after the marriage she suffered a stroke, and in 2016 she was diagnosed with intestinal cancer, then suffered kidney failure when “the toxins in my body had started taking over”, as she put it in her second autobiography, Tina Turner: My Love Story (2018). Her husband volunteered to give her one of his kidneys and a transplant operation was carried out successfully in 2017.

The following year, the biographical stage musical Tina opened at Aldwych theatre in London, directed by Phyllida Lloyd and starring Adrienne Warren in the title role. Turner received a Grammy lifetime achievement award, to go with her existing tally of eight Grammy awards and three Grammy Hall of Fame awards. Among her vast collection of honours, Turner also had five American Music awards, two World Music awards and three MTV Video Music awards.

In 2021 she joined the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an outright solo performer and sold the rights to her music catalogue to the publishing company BMG for an estimated $50m. Ready to retire fully, she bade farewell to her fans with the two-part HBO documentary Tina.

Alline died in 2010. Tina’s eldest son, Craig, from a relationship with the saxophonist Raymond Hill, took his own life in 2018. Ronnie, her son with Ike, died in 2022.

She is survived by Erwin and two sons, Ike Jr and Michael, from Ike’s first marriage.

🔔 Tina Turner (Anna Mae Bullock), singer and songwriter, born 26 November 1939; died 24 May 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[sbrown82]

Y’all see Mick Jagger “first” baby mama in the 2nd pic on the far left?! 💅🏿🤣

Ike & Tina Turner on “The Big T.N.T. Show” at the Moulin Rouge club in Los Angeles on November 29, 1965.

[sbrown82]

Tina Turner performing a cover of “Respect” live at the Rolling Stones American tour (1969).

[bitter69uk]

“Is it possible to aspire to be two different people at the same time, rolled into one? If so, the two-headed transplant of my musical backbone could only be Ike and Tina Turner. I wanted to be as snakelike as Ike and as scary-sexy as Tina. So should you. Ike and Tina Turner were the best soul group ever.”

/ From John Waters’ 2019 collection of essays Mr. Know-It-All / Born on this day: musician, songwriter, guitarist, producer, bandleader and rock’n’roll pioneer Ike Turner (né Izear Luster Turner Jr, 5 November 1931 – 12 December 2007). From the late fifties until their acrimonious split in 1976 Turner and his fiercely glamorous raspy-voiced “bold soul sister” wife Tina Turner (the former Anna Mae Bullock) were the tempestuous royal couple of greasy, primal rhythm and blues. Yes, Ike’s reputation as a monster is deserved (especially once the cocaine addiction kicked in), but his trailblazing musical genius demands recognition. In the great 2023 documentary Little Richard: I Am Everything, one of the talking heads notes that Richard's piano playing was beholden to Turner’s, something Richard himself freely admitted (he raved that hearing “Rocket 88” by Ike Turner and His Kings of Rhythm in 1951 “made my big toe shoot up in my boot” and profoundly fired his own musical imagination. Richard borrowed the piano intro to “Rocket 88” for his own “Good Golly, Miss Molly”). I’d argue one of Ike and Tina’s artistic zeniths together is the gut-wrenching ballad “You Got What You Wanted.” Pictured: the Turners performing on Ready Steady Go on 30 September 1966.

[gone2soon-rip]

TINA TURNER (1939-Died May 24th 2023,at 83).American-born and naturalized Swiss singer, dancer, actress and author. Widely referred to as the "Queen of Rock 'n' Roll", she rose to prominence as the lead singer of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue before launching a successful career as a solo performer.Turner began her career with Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm in 1957. Under the name Little Ann, she appeared on her first record, "Boxtop", in 1958. In 1960, she debuted as Tina Turner with the hit duet single "A Fool in Love". The duo Ike & Tina Turner became "one of the most formidable live acts in history".They released hits such as "It's Gonna Work Out Fine", "River Deep – Mountain High", "Proud Mary", and "Nutbush City Limits" before disbanding in 1976.In the 1980s, Turner launched "one of the greatest comebacks in music history".Her 1984 multi-platinum album Private Dancer contained the hit song "What's Love Got to Do with It", which won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year and became her first and only number one song on the Billboard Hot 100. At age 44, she was the oldest female solo artist to top the Hot 100.Her chart success continued with "Better Be Good to Me", "Private Dancer", "We Don't Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)", "Typical Male", "The Best", "I Don't Wanna Fight", and "GoldenEye". During her Break Every Rule World Tour in 1988, she set a then-Guinness World Record for the largest paying audience (180,000) for a solo performer.Turner also acted in the films Tommy (1975), Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), and Last Action Hero (1993). In 1993, What's Love Got to Do with It, a biographical film adapted from her autobiography I, Tina: My Life Story, was released. In 2009, Turner retired after completing her Tina!: 50th Anniversary Tour, which is the 15th highest-grossing tour of the 2000s. In 2018, she became the subject of the jukebox musical Tina.Having sold over 100 million records worldwide, Turner is one of the best-selling recording artists of all time. She has received 12 Grammy Awards, which include eight competitive awards, three Grammy Hall of Fame awards, and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. She is the first black artist and first woman to be on the cover of Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone ranked her among the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.Turner has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the St. Louis Walk of Fame. She has twice been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with Ike Turner in 1991 and as a solo artist in 2021.She is also a 2005 recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors and Women of the Year award.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tina_Turner

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Izear Luster “Ike” Turner Jr. (November 5, 1931 – December 12, 2007) was a musician, bandleader, songwriter, arranger, talent scout, and record producer. An early pioneer of fifties rock and roll, he is known for his work in the 1960s and 1970s with his then-wife Tina Turner in the Ike & Tina Turner Revue.

He began playing piano and guitar as a child, then formed a group, the Kings of Rhythm, as a teenager. He employed the group as his backing band for the rest of his life. His first recording, “Rocket 88”, is considered a contender for the distinction of “first rock and roll song”. During the 1950s, he worked as a talent scout and producer for Sun Records and Modern Records. He was instrumental in the early careers of various blues musicians such as B.B. King, Howlin’ Wolf, and Bobby “Blue” Bland. When he relocated to East St. Louis in 1954, his Kings of Rhythm became one of the most renowned acts on the local club circuit. There, he met Ann Bullock who he renamed Tina Turner. He then formed the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, which throughout the 1960s became a soul/rock crossover success. He recorded for many of the key R&B record labels of the 1950s and 1960s, including Chess, Modern, Trumpet, Flair, and Sue. He progressed to larger labels such as Blue Thumb, Liberty, and United Artists with the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence