Written by Fantasma el Rey
Time Life’s Legends Of American Music series continues with a three disc boxed set of The Ike & Tina Turner Story: 1960-1975. This new collection is a good look at the music left behind in the wake of the supernova that was the career of Ike and Tina Turner. Crossing most label restrictions, Time Life is able to pull together the major hits of these magnificent performers.
The story of Ike and Tina’s life together is a well-known tale of missed opportunities, abuse and rebirth, so let me concentrate on how they met and the music at hand. For details of their life together and how bad it got see the movie What’s Love Got To Do With It or read I, Tina by Tina.
Ike was an R&B pioneer who helped give birth to Rock ‘N’ Roll with the 1951 hit “Rocket 88” by his band The Kings Of Rhythm. At the time of its release the song was credited to Ike’s sax man and vocalist on the track, Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats. With the success of the song Jackie and “his” cats ditched Ike and signed with Chess Records of Chicago leaving Ike bandless and bitter.
Meanwhile over in Nutbush, Tennessee, young Anna Mae Bullock was pushing a broom and singing songs she heard on the radio. Little did she know that in a few years time she would be singing and shouting her own brand of gritty blues and expanding the R&B sound into something new, or that her life would be turned upside-down, inside-out, and hit rock bottom before she would find the success that she truly deserved in the music world.
One night in 1957 Anna Mae hooked up with Ike and his reformed Kings Of Rhythm at an East St. Louis nightclub, when she was called on stage during intermission. Ike took notice of the young blues shouter and a few days later he was at her mother’s house asking if young Anna Mae could travel with the band. Momma agreed and at the next gig she was introduced as Little Ann. The world kept spinning and Ike kept his band active, gigging and putting out records along the way. Yet not until 1960 did Ike hit with something that would stick and put him back in the spotlight.
“A Fool In Love” put Little Ann up front and sent shockwaves through the microphone and the music world. To protect himself from Little Ann abandoning him “like the others did,” Ike made sure the single was credited to Ike & Tina Turner, so he could replace her if he needed to. Although at the time they were not married, Anna Mae Bullock, now Tina Turner, was carrying Ike’s baby.
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