The Post-Rockist

(credit)

Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats - Rocket 88
(from The Legendary Sounds of Sun Studios)

Ike and Tina Turner - I Can’t Believe What You Say
Ike and Tina Turner - I’ve Been Loving You Too Long
(from The Ike & Tina Turner Story: 1960-1975)

Ike Turner and The Kings of Rhythm - Funky Mule
(from A Black Man’s Soul)

Ike Wister Turner — rock & roll icon, funk pioneer, St. Louis legend, and notorious drug-addicted abuser of former spouse Tina Turner — passed away earlier this week in his home in suburban San Diego at the age of 76. After the deluge of even-handed obits left in the wake of his passing on Wednesday, what’s left to touch on that hasn’t already been discussed and hotly debated these past few days? Born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, home of the legendary crossroads where Robert Johnson allegedly sold his soul to the devil in exchange for blues guitar-playing prowess, young Ike witnessed the lynching of his father Izear Luster by a white mob in the 1930s and was later abused by subsequent stepfathers. Growing up he devoted his life to music, spinning records for WROX, carrying amplifiers for blues singer Robert Nighthawk, learning boogie woogie piano from Pinetop Perkins, and forming his own rhythm and blues group, the Kings of Rhythm, by the time he was just a teenager.

At age 19, as his band was driving up Highway 61 from Mississippi to Memphis to record in Sam Phillips’ recording studio, the guitarist’s amplifier was damaged en route and ended up producing one of the first examples of a distorted, fuzzy guitar on record. “Rocket 88,” which many consider to be the very first rock & roll record, was released by Chess but mistakenly credited to the singer and sax player Jackie Brenston instead of Ike, who wrote the song. Although “Rocket 88″ was the biggest R&B hit of 1951, it was re-recorded by Bill Haley and popularized to a larger, whiter audience, and Ike’s boogie woogie piano intro was later reproduced note-for-note by Little Richard on “Good Golly Miss Molly.” Ike made a grand total of $60 off the song, the first in a long series of snubs he would have to endure for his contributions to popular music, most notably in 1991 when he was jailed for drug charges during his induction to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and was mailed a broken statue, and most recently when the mayor of St. Louis publicly considered naming an honorary day after Ike and then withdrew the offer in the summer of 2007 due to Ike’s unapologetic past about his abusive treatment of ex-wife Tina.

Even if we stopped right there, Ike Turner’s story is already flush with American legend: the crossroads, the segregated South, Highway 61, Sun and Chess Records, the birth of rock & roll, the co-opting of rock & roll by white musicians. But, for better or worse, Ike’s story continued. He relocated the Kings of Rhythm to St. Louis, and one evening during a nightclub revue a brash young teen from Nutbush, Tennessee forced her way on stage and demanded to sing. Anna Mae Bullock quickly became one of Ike’s backup singers, and then just as quickly changed her name to Tina Turner and became the main attraction. Ike thrived as a bandleader — transforming traditional rhythm and blues into nasty, electrified funk, and fueling rock & roll hits with a heavy dose of black-powered soul — and combined with Tina’s leggy, ecstatic stage presence they created one of the most wildly energetic live shows of the 1960s and ’70s. Ike and Tina Turner churned out hits like “Nutbush City Limits” and “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine”; they received a Grammy for their cover of CCR’s “Proud Mary”; they recorded “River High, Mountain Deep” with Phil Spector, to much controversy; and they toured with the Rolling Stones across America in 1969, much to Mick’s stylistic benefit.

But despite all this, Ike and Tina’s relationship is remembered more for their stormy behind-closed-doors fisticuffs than their fiery on-stage performances. Tina Turner’s memoir I, Tina, later adapted to film in What’s Love Got to Do With It?, revealed Ike to be such a mean son of a bitch that he made Bobby Brown look like Donny Osmond, and his 11 jail terms in the 1970s and ’80s did little to assuage his public image. In retrospect, it’s impossible to listen a track like “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” and not feel the intensity of their marital standoff. When someone like Otis Redding handled this song, it sounded like a standard plea against breaking up, but in the light of Ike and Tina’s troubled relationship the song gains volumes of deeper, more insidious meaning. Ike’s guitar is taut and menacing, at once pleading for softness but carrying a darker threat for retribution if rebuked. Meanwhile, Tina’s voice is hair-raising - a powerful delivery but absolutely desperate for solace: “Ooh! I love you, please don’t make me stop now. You-you-you can make me do anything you want me to do, and I’ll even say anything you want me to say, buy anything you want me to buy ya, if you just stay and make love to me.” It’s a frightening glimpse into the submission of a lover trapped in a violent relationship. And when she begs for Ike to “Sock it to me, baby” I can’t help but cringe, with each “Ow! more vicious than the last.

It’s debated whether or not Ike ever truly apologized for his brutish past, or whether he should even be forgiven for it. Recent interviews seem to suggest that he had managed to put his life on a different track during the past decade of his life, and continued to release great music up until his death — in 2007 he won a Grammy for his Risin’ With the Blues and he was reportedly working on a project with the Black Keys and Danger Mouse during the final year of his life. He may have been a bad man personally and a badass musically, but there’s no denying that Ike Turner is a bona fide icon in the history of rock & roll. Whether he was laying the frameworks of the genre with Howlin’ Wolf and Sam Phillips or creating his own soulful, whipcrack funk with his Kings of Rhythm, Ike Turner — the man, the myth, the mustache — will not soon be forgotten.

-Posted by Todd