|
|
|
|
|
|
HOME | ABOUT | BIOS | EMAIL |
|
 |
| |
Thursday, December 13, 2007
PRANCIN'
Icky Renrut
1959
Available on : Ike's Instrumentals
Ace UK : 2000
[Buy It]
THE NEW BREED (PT. 2)
Ike Turner & His Kings Of Rhythm
1965
Available on : Ike's Instrumentals
Ace UK : 2000
[Buy It]
BOLD SOUL SISTER
Ike & Tina Turner
1969
Available on : Bold Soul Sister - The Best of the Blue Thumb Recordings
Hip-O : 1997
[Buy It]
GETTING NASTY
Ike Turner and the Kings of Rhythm
A Black Man's Soul
Pompeii : 1969
[Buy It]
MONEY
Ike Turner
1970
Available on : His Woman, Her Man
Night Train Int'l : 2004
[Buy It]
BI POLAR
Ike Turner
Risin' With the Blues
Zoho : 2006
[Buy It]
INTERVIEW WITH WBLJ FM
Ike Turner
2007
Ike Turner's death this week at the age of 76 is a highly equivocal event. Every obituary acknowledged his role as a musical innovator, but every obituary also lamented how that legacy came to be eclipsed by his personal demons and reprehensible behavior. Even in his final moments in the light, the shadow he cast was the most prominent part of his image.
The shadow in question is Ike's abusive behavior toward the women in his life, and particularly toward Anna Mae Bullock, who achieved some fame under the name Tina Turner. The obituaries all mentioned that Ike bullied Tina, got high around her, threw shoes at her, and jellied her nose. How could they not? It's a wonderful story, in the sense that it's a compelling and horrible one with a clear villain, a clear victim, and lots of light at the end of the tunnel. Tina left Ike behind and went on to have a massively successful solo career: Remember? What's love but a second-hand emotion?
I have nothing against the movie of Tina's life, except that Angela Bassett's arms were so spectacular that it seems implausible. Wouldn't a Tina who was ripped like that just have hauled off and knocked Ike cold? But there's also a movie in Ike's life that goes beyond the charismatic black-hearted prince that Laurence Fishburne potrayed. Turner's birth name was either Izear Luster Turner, Jr., or Ike Wister Turner -- in either case, a superb name for a future R&B star -- and when he was a child, growing up in Clarksdale, Mississippi in the nineteen-thirties, he watched as his father was beaten by a white mob who objected to Izear, Sr.'s dalliances with white women. His father was refused admission to the local hospital -- no blacks -- deteriorated in a makeshift tent hospital in the back yard, and died. Stepfathers beat Ike, who learned to hit back. He also applied himself to music, studied piano with Pinetop Perkins, and became a local bandleader by the time he was a teenager.
The group he assembled, the Kings of Rhythm, traveled to Memphis to record for Sam Phillips at Sun in 1951. That's the prehistoric ages in rock terms, and in fact the record that Ike and his band cut there, "Rocket 88," is considered by many to be the first rock and roll record. I didn't post it here, because it's well-known. Instead, here's "Prancin'," from later in the decade, and it features an astonishing guitar solo from Ike. People like to talk about Lowman Pauling's solo in the 5 Royales' "The Slummer the Slum," and it's fantastic, of course, but this is better. Ike's playing not only blows the doors off the place, but sets it on fire on the way out. Take just the first fifteen seconds, in which he lauches an all-out assault, bending notes, sliding up and down strings, detonating the ends of phrases. (The fury and focus he demonstrates is equivocal, of course, in that it produced both blistering R&B and actual human bruising.) In general, the instrumentals from this period tend to be superior to the vocal records, as the talent Ike backed wasn't always stellar.
In the late fifties, he found a stellar singer, the aforementioned Anna Mae Bullock, transformed her into Tina Turner, and promptly recorded "A Fool In Love," which became a huge hit at the close of the decade. It remains a phenomenal record almost fifty years later, mostly for the brute physicality of Tina's vocals, but it's also too well-known to post. With and without Tina, Ike recorded heavily though the early and mid-sixties. "The New Breed" recorded for Sue records in 1965, is another intense instrumental, this time updated with soul horns, and it makes it clear that Ike's guitar technique hadn't been staling in the intervening years. It's so jagged and unconventional that it sounds like Ike is playing a broken car antenna. Like "Prancin'," it's available only on the Ace import "Ike's Instrumentals." (The Ike Turner catalog, spread out over so many labels and so many years, is in more disarray than that of any R&B star of comparable stature.)
Much of Ike and Tina's reputation through the sixties stemmed from the duo's frenzied live shows and a few big singles, including "Proud Mary" and Phil Spector's controversial "River Deep - Mountain High," but Ike was continuing to evolve in the studio. "Bold Soul Sister," from 1969, shows how far toward full-out funk Ike and Tina went when the wind was blowing that way. With a melody borrowed from Sly and the Family Stone's "Sing a Simple Song" and lyrics that would surface a few years later on Funkadelic's "Stuffs and Things," the song sounds like a blueprint for Betty Davis's career. "A Black Man's Soul," an instrumental album from the same year, has become a favorite with DJs, largely for the breakbeat standout "Funky Mule." Billy Preston plays piano on the sunny, communal "Getting Nasty." And the cover of "Money" that went unreleased at the time may feature Tina on vocals, but it's distinguished by Ike's highly contemporary arrangement and guitar.
When Tina left him, it set Ike back, not just because he lost his creative partner and muse, but because he was suddenly perceived as Abusive Husband Number One, a role that he didn't relish. He began a comeback in 2001, when he released "Here and Now," a record that earned him a Grammy nomination in Best Traditional Blues and found him still fighting for his reputation -- his rewrite of the bad-marriage lament "Five Long Years" is titled "Eighteen Long Years" as a (metaphorical) slap in the face to Tina. "Risin' With the Blues," released last year, was not only nominated but won, and "Bi Polar," the last song on the album, is another in a long line of fine Ike Turner instrumentals.
The last piece of audio comes from just a few months ago. Ike, then 75, went on with the morning DJs at the Detroit FM station WJLB to talk about his career resurgence and a reality show that he planned to undertake with one of his many ex-wives (fourteen, according to the legend and the man himself, though official records only show four or five). The DJs -- Coco, Foolish, and Mr. Chase -- prod him repeatedly about his checkered past, but Ike insists that he's done with drink and drugs, if not younger women. For the most part, he sounds focused and relaxed in this interview, very much like an elder statesman trying to make sense of the new generation. Viagra comes up, and senior sex, and one of them asks, "Do you see yourself getting with somebody like I Love New York?" Ike obviously doesn't know what they're talking about, and instead says something about an upcoming collaboration with a man. "Well, that would mean that would be homosexual if you're doing it with a dude," one of the hosts says. "What are you talking about?"
"What's wrong with homosexual?" Ike says.
"Are you gay, Ike?"
"Do I sound like I'm gay with fourteen wives?" Ike says. He gets his back up a little bit, but there's not much sign of the temper that used to terrify journalists, producers, wives, and children. Did he mellow later in life? Did he clean up his life enough to redeem himself? Is there any fair way to balance his artistic achievements against the damage he did to those close to him? It's impossible to say on the strength of a lone radio appearance, but Ike proceeds through the rest of the largely undignified interview -- an R&B legend plumping for a reality TV project on Morning Buffoon radio -- with something approaching reserve. He seemed at peace, almost, and now he can rest in it forever.Labels: ben, soul
posted by Ben
LINK |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
