My Vinyl Collection 176
Ike Turner (1931-2007), Tina Turner (1939-2023). (6) Part One. The Rhythm King and the Queen of Rock and Roll. Music history from my shelf. Vinyl, 33 rpm.
1197. Ike Turner and His Kings of Rhythm, Volume 1. 1952-56 (1980)
1198. ———————————————, I’m Tore Up (1976)
1199. Ike & Tina Turner, Ike & Tina’s Greatest Hits 1960-64 (1965)
1200. ———————-, Nutbush City Limits (1973)
1201. Tina Turner, Private Dancer (1984)
1202. —-————, Break Every Rule (1986)
March 1960. Ike Turner takes his veteran band into Technisonic Studios in St. Louis to record his latest, ”A Fool In Love.” Ike was by then the puppet master of the Kings of Rhythm, an R&B outfit that had trundled out of Clarksdale, Miss., into the edge of the pop mainstream. His specialty was finding new singers for his uptempo big band sound. Art Lassiter was his latest and greatest, all set to run another Ike Turner produced hit up the flagpole.
Lassiter was 32 at the time, a war vet whose car broke down in 1953 in St. Louis. To raise cash, he won a singing contest with his best Ray Charles voice. By late 1955, Lassiter had his own group, the Trojans, which occasionally sang back up for Ike’s Kings.
Turner in early 1960 offered Lassiter the front man slot in the Kings and agreed to bring in Lassiter's singers — Robbie Montgomery, Frances Hodges, and Sandra Harding – the Artettes, the core of what became the Ikettes. Turner booked Technisonic for the Lassiter session. All seemed in order and Ike even loaned Lassiter $80 for new tires a couple of days before the session.
Alas, Art was a no show. Ike, of course, was not pleased. But he had an ace in the hole. If you haven’t already guessed, yes, ladies and gentlemen, meet a young singer named Anna Mae Bullock — Little Annie.
The Artettes were ready to go and Ike’s band was tuned up. Little Ann had been hanging around for a while, she’d been to rehearsals and knew the cut. Ike had already coughed up the cash for the studio time, so for the boss-man it was time’s a-wastin’. Maybe Lassiter was out, and besides, Ike knew he could dub out Little Ann if she didn’t perform.
But Annie Bullock, just 20 years old, performed. And soon, on stage, she was Tina. Rhymed with Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, Ike’s comic book hero, a sexy woman alone in the jungle who talk to the animals and threw an accurate knife. Those who crossed Sheena, slave traders, white hunters, record producers, were quickly her victims.
Ike spun the new record during a gig at Club Imperial in St. Louis. He sold the song for a $20,000 advance. More importantly, Ike copyrighted ownership of the name Tina Turner. That way he could substitute another singer. Al Lassiter could be Tina Turner if he so decreed.
He also insisted on marriage. Ike wanted full ownership of his ticket to stardom.
"A Fool In Love" was released July 1960, hit No. 2 R&B and peaked out at No. 27 Top 40, not long after playing the Apollo in Harlem. The revue hit American Bandstand. Tina was over eight months pregnant. Ike insists his wife sing. He also insists she sing with her back to the camera. Nonetheless, on the live broadcast Tina kills her hit, her voice off the register on the soul-o-gram. Watching on the TV we wonder why she has her back to the camera.
She escaped the grip finally in 1976. Ike was her jailer, her tormentor, the master of her life. Once free, Tina became one of the greatest rock stars of all time.
The puppet master of the Kings of Rhythm was initially exposed and humiliated. But in the USA, Ike was rehabilitated and won a Grammy before he died.
Izear Luster Turner Jr. was born November 1931 in Clarksdale, Miss., and died in L.A. in December 2007 age 76.
Father a Baptist minister. Mother a seamstress. Izear (“Infinite Zeal”) Sr. stood his ground on an education issue and was beaten by a white mob when Izear (“Ike”) Jr. was 5 years old. Senior succumbed to his injuries after three years in a tent in Ike’s backyard.
Meanwhile, his mother married an abusive alcoholic. Ike was sexually abused by a neighbor woman, abuse approved of by his stepfather. He said he had been raped by two other women by age 12. Ike later called this “fun.” He beats up the stepfather, quits school at 13. Lands a job at the Alcazar Hotel in downtown Clarksdale, becoming a DJ at WROX, the station located inside the hotel.
There he shakes hands with the Mississippi Delta blues. Pleased to meet you. Just at the moment these blues were getting a ripe ingestion of jazz in the form of the R&B spinoff, jump blues. This was the jump of the dancers. Ike was in the very middle of currents a-swirling — in the center of postwar innovation.
Turner was taught how to play piano by Delta blues pianist Pinetop Perkins. Ike performed while a roadie for Robert Nighthawk and Sonny Boy Williams. Buckin’ and jivin’ at 15. He formed a band. The Kings of Rhythm. In 1951, he wheedled a slot at Sam Phillips' Memphis Recording Studio, later Sun Records. "Rocket 88" was the song.
To Sam this was just a 12-bar blues he credited to Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats. On paper rather standard, but when given the full treatment in the studio the song lifted off its platform into a new strata — here was the confluence of jazz and blues, the baby they called rock and roll.
Brenston sang the lead. Ike did the rest, producing, arranging, playing several instruments. Filling, soloing.
Alan Freed played the song on his show from Cleveland, The Moondog House. Freed called the R&B he played “rock and roll” and the jump blues he played he also called “rock and roll.” “Rocket 88” went to No. 1 R&B: “Incendiary grooves;” “towering creativity;” “an unstoppable musical force.”
Band leader, arranger, accompanist, songwriter, lead guitar, piano, Ike was without peer. From Clarksdale he moved upriver in the mid-1950s to East St. Louis, across the Mississippi from a thriving postwar blues scene in St. Louis. Turner was a sensation as his flew his R&B extravaganza into what was once a boogie piano/country blues/female belter town.
There, one of his fans, the teen-aged Anna Mae Bullock, talked her way on stage and in 1960 became the band’s lead vocalist.
Lassiter returned to St. Louis but not to Ike. Tina was the star. A string of hits followed. "River Deep - Mountain High" with producer Phil Spector. Rolling Stones tour in 1969. "Proud Mary" 1972. Tina was queen of the jungle in Ike’s circus.
Next: Part Two, Tina Turner — Private Dancer