Artist: Ike Turner
Genre(s):
Other
R&B: Soul
Discography:
The Bad Man
Year: 2005
Tracks: 20
Proud Mary: The Best of Ike and Tina Turner
Year: 1991
Tracks: 25
Great Rhythm and Blues Sessions
Year: 1991
Tracks: 13
Ike Turner is sure nonpareil of the virtually dehumanized figures in rock history. Mention his name and the first association that comes to well-nigh anyone's mind is "abusive husband," not "soulfulness asterisk" or "rock & turn over initiate." According to legend, Turner was a tyrannous ogre world Health Organization used physical violence and psychological intimidation to control his infinitely more gifted wife Tina, while humoring his have appetites for cocain and women at every turn. That's not entirely accurate, although by well-nigh accounts Turner did quite an a moment to earn that report; he exhausted time in prison house due to his dose problems, and his possess refutations of Tina's allegations of abuse feature been discrepant at best over the eld. Still, this view of Turner as villain does a ill service to his very real musical bequest as an musician and bandleader. As a pianist in the early '50s, Turner helped repose the base for rock & stray; he was too a distinctive guitar player with a biting, awful quality, and was one of the number one to make the whammy browning automatic rifle an integral parting of his sound. It's unfeigned that he was nowhere near the isaac Bashevis Singer Tina was, and it's in all likelihood besides true that she was his just the ticket to stardom; furthermore, his songwriting, patch sometimes divine, oftentimes demoniacal a generic quality that made consistent chart appearances difficult. But as a bandleader, his disciplinarian approach -- when it wasn't manifesting itself in darker fashion, that is -- resulted in undeniably rigorous, well-drilled ensembles and some of the virtually stimulating live shows the R&B worldly concern of all time saw -- centered about Tina, yes, simply eyeglasses yet. If Turner isn't exactly the virtually defendable character around, in the end his musical strengths and weaknesses deserve the same objective estimate as anyone.
Izear Luster Turner, Jr. was natural November 5, 1931, in Clarksdale, MS, the centre of the segregated South. His father was beaten to death by a ring of angry whites, and ontogeny up in a hostile environment unquestionably case-hardened Turner. He found his vocation in music from an early years; he erudite boogie-woogie forte-piano firsthand from his divine guidance, Pinetop Perkins, and as a stripling talked himself into a DJ slot on the local radio post, where he played everything from the parachute megrims of Louis Jordan to rural area & western. He formed his kickoff band spell still in high shoal, and by the late '40s had assembled an outfit dubbed the Kings of Rhythm. In 1951, the Kings of Rhythm travelled to Memphis to record at Sam Phillips' Sun studio. Their original tune "Rocket 88" (actual authorship is static disputed) was recorded with a pb vocal by sax musician Jackie Brenston, and as a answer was released under the diagnose Jackie Brenston & His Delta Cats, non Ike Turner & His Kings of Rhythm. "Skyrocket 88" zoomed to the crest of the R&B charts and is today regarded by many critics as organism quite possibly the first true rock & roll criminal record. Brenston afterward bypast for an abortive solo career, spell Turner and his ring became session regulars about Memphis; they went on to back legendary bluesmen wish Howlin' Wolf ("How Many More Years"), Elmore James, Otis Rush ("Double Trouble," "All Your Love"), Robert Nighthawk, Buddy Guy, and Sonny Boy Williamson II, summation an salmagundi of Sun artists. During the early '50s, Turner switched from pianissimo to guitar, and as well twofold as a talent scout for the Bihari Brothers' Los Angeles-based Modern Records, where he helped get other breaks for artists wish Howlin' Wolf and B.B. King.
During the mid-'50s, Turner affected the Kings of Rhythm to East St. Louis, where they pink wine to the crest of the local R&B circuit; Brenston rejoined in 1955, and the group too continued its academic session activeness. Turner sometimes issued records under his own diagnose on labels like Flair, RPM, and Federal, too victimisation the aliases Icky Renrut and Lover Boy. Adopting a review initialise for their live performances, the Kings of Rhythm worked with a revolving group of vocalists during this period. One was a teen singer originally from Tennessee named Anna Mae Bullock, wHO met Turner in 1956. She coupled the revue, and stirred into Turner's firm afterwards becoming fraught by the band's sax player; shortly, she and Turner began their own relationship and had a child of their have, marrying in 1958.
Renamed Tina, Turner's new (and up-to-the-minute) wife got her low gear probability to babble jumper lead on a recording in late 1959, carving "A Fool in Love" for the Sue label. Released the next yr, the song was a runaway smash on the R&B charts, peaking at figure iI. Turner completed he'd observed a voltage prisonbreak hotshot, and reshaped the stria into the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, with Tina instantly the centerpiece of the act. It took a little time for all tangled to get their bearings, simply in the meantime, the hits unbroken approaching; "I Idolize You," "It's Gonna Work Out Fine," "Poor Fool," and "Tra La La La La" all hit the R&B Top Ten, a string that ran through 1962. (All take out "It's Gonna Work Out Fine" were scripted by Turner.) 1962 besides proverb the spillage of Dance With Ike & Tina Turner & Their Kings of Rhythm Band, an all-instrumental album that showcased Turner's irregular guitar run at its charles Herbert Best. As Ike & Tina became one of the hardest-working, most popular acts on the supposed chitlin circumference, they recorded for a telephone number of independent labels over the next few age; notwithstanding, since Turner's original material was progressively standard-issue, their chart fortunes declined reasonably.
At the like clip, the temptations of fame were proving as well much for Turner; he developed a terrible habituation to cocain that, when interracial with his dominant personality and warm temper, made for a volatile combination. According to Tina's autobiography, Turner grew progressively red, trouncing her oft and even burning her with cigarettes and java if she got kayoed of line. Turner himself disputes the severity of Tina's claims, merely it's worth noting that he had a widespread report for organism difficult. When producer Phil Spector attempted a commercial comeback around Tina in 1966, he stricken a consider with Turner: in exchange for beingness allowed to record Tina, Ike would receive full credit and billing on the records, merely Ike would besides not be allowed to set ft in the studio or to meddle with the finished recordings. Spector's collaboration with Tina produced the heroic "River Deep - Mountain High," smooth regarded by many as one of rock's superlative singles, and Ike's involvement was nothing -- which, naturally, didn't sit well with him.
In 1969, Ike & Tina were invited to undetermined for the Rolling Stones, and Turner realized that changing times had made the Revue's fierce, smutty firebrand of soulfulness music more toothsome to gabardine rock audiences. Accordingly, Turner incorporated contemporary rock & wrap covers into the Revue's repertory, giving them a whole novel rent on life. Versions of "Fall Together," "I Want to Take You Higher," and "Proud Mary" revived Ike & Tina's graph fortunes -- particularly "Proud Mary," which became their beginning Top Five bolt down single in 1971 and as well won a Grammy. However, Turner's offstage problems were pickings their toll on the act; 1973's "Nutbush City Limits," a song written by Tina, would be their last-place major strike, and Tina walked out on him in the midriff of a 1975 circuit.
The Turners' disassociate was finalized the following year, and Ike never quite a recovered from the red. For a spell, he drop out touring to adjudicate in and run the recording studio, Bolic, he'd open in Los Angeles in 1970. He was to a fault accustomed to life history on the road, though, and formed a new outfit that, naturally, didn't quantity up to his yesteryear succeeder; he as well released a brace of solo records on Red Lightnin'. Turner's cocaine habituation drained nigh of his funds, and his recording studio burnt to the ground in 1982. He ran foul of the law as considerably, and was arrested legion multiplication on for the most part drug-related offenses. When he and Tina were jointly inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991, he was ineffectual to give ear the observance because he was service of process prison time. When Tina's autobiography was adapted into the 1993 flick What's Love Got to Do With It, Turner signed away all of his rights, allowing the filmmakers to take narrative liberties for dramatic outcome if they chose. Turner attempted a comeback afterward being released from prison; he as well remarried and eventually overcame his addictions to unrecorded a clean, sober life. At first he well-tried to keep up with the times musically, but afterward touring with Joe Louis Walker as a piano player and guitar player, he realised thither was more demand for his original style, and formed a new version of the Kings of Rhythm. His autobiography, Takin' Back My Name, was published by a U.K. troupe in 1999, and in 2001 he released a new record album, Here and Now, which was nominative for a Grammy in the Best Traditional Blues Album category; it was besides nominative for several W.C. Handy Awards (the vapours equivalent of the Grammys) and took honors for Comeback Album of the Year. Risin' with the Blues, released little Phoebe years afterward, was nominative for a Grammy in the same family.
