12.17.07 5:00 AM CST
• Music
• Josh Robertson
Soul star Ike Turner died on Wednesday of undisclosed causes at the age of 76. After the revealing 1993 biopic What’s Love Got to Do With It, based on wife Tina Turner’s autobiography, Ike will likely be remembered more as an abusive husband than as a musician. But back in April of 1971, Ike and Tina’s relationship didn’t look so dark (at least on the surface). Here’s what we wrote in our first profile of the pair:
Ike and Tina Turner: Soul MatesSoul-shouting together has been Ike and Tina Turner’s bag since 1956, when Tina mounted the stage from the audience one night in St. Louis, took the microphone despite Ike’s protests and sang lead for his Kings of Rhythm. Ike liked what he heard and took Tina on as a regular, changing her first name from Ann and altering her surname, Bullock, by marrying her a year later. Born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, Ike had organized his first band at the age of 11 and later put together the Kings, recording a rhythm-and-blues hit, “Rocket 88.” “It was a big financial score,” says Ike, “but some dude at the record company beat me and I only got $40 for writing, producing and recording it, and so I took the Kings on the road.” And so he met Tina, who was living with her sister in St. Louis. Born in Brownsville, Tennessee, Tina grew up in Knoxville, where she sang in Gospel choirs and talent shows. Today, Ike and Tina Turner play Las Vegas hotels and rock festivals as well as soul-circuit auditoriums and live—when they’re home—in a $100,000 house in View Park, a hilly section of Los Angeles. Maintaining their prosperity by touring, they earn as much as $15,000 per appearance with an act that is solid, Gospel-drenched rhythm and blues, ribbed with a rock beat and a galvanic sexuality belted out by Tina. The Ike and Tina Turner Revue includes a proficient eight-man band led by Ike on guitar and a black go-go-girl trio choreographed by Tina, who also dances—springing onstage like a lioness in heat, writhing and twisting sensuously, caramel legs flashing, tawny mane flying. Although Ike and Tina have run practically the gamut of major record labels in recording their 15 albums—the latest is Working Together—and 60 singles, live shows are their forte and what they take greatest pride in. Says Ike: “We’re just doing our best to give the people their money’s worth of what they came to see—entertainment, man, entertainment.”
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Comments on this entry:
Ike will be remembered as an abusive freak but so will many other artists.
Tina Turner is the Queen of Rock N Roll.