Ike Turner, one of the principle innovators in American music, died recently after a brilliant career. His records from three decades are classics, and his live revue with then-wife Tina was a spectacularly kinetic and hypersexualized showbiz explosion.
His composition “Rocket 88,” about a particular make of luxury automobile, was declared by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991 to be the “first rock ’n’ roll song.” Though this is a nice accolade, it should be viewed with a certain amount of circumspection. When an institution like the Hall of Fame draws seemingly arbitrary magic demarcations around particular cultural events or forms, it is plain suspicious. After all, jazz, blues, R&B, rock ’n’ roll, et al., were once fairly interchangeable terms, used to denote black or “race” music, until “rock ’n’ roll” became specifically the purview of whites, in the late 50s. So why the citation? Is “Rocket 88” the first rock ’n’ roll song because Sam Phillips recorded it? Because it sounds like something the Hall of Fame thinks constitutes later rock ’n’ roll? Perhaps, to the Hall of Fame’s mind, “Rocket 88” sounds like what rock ’n’ roll became by the middle 60s, a Europeanized variant of African-American R&B.
To name a particular tune the singular genesis of the genre seems artificial. After all, rock ’n’ roll as we know it is a famously broad musical form, not dependent on a particular beat, arrangement, or set of instruments to be classified as such. It is the musical counterpart to the anti-ideological liberal market system that spawned it. A rock section in a record store includes Kraftwerk, Elton John, Bobby Day, and Motörhead. However, regardless of whether Ike Turner “invented rock ’n’ roll,” he was indisputably a maverick in the exciting and fecund world of R&B music, the music that was eventually chosen by mainstream America to replace big-band jazz as the official soundtrack and expression of the postwar world, a universe in which the USA, having emerged from the conflagration as nuclear conquistador, was lord of all it surveyed.
Anyway, whether or not he invented rock ’n’ roll, Ike Turner had an influence far beyond his own chart hits. In the 50s, he was a talent scout, “discovering” and signing blues singers like Elmore James, B.B. King, and Howlin’ Wolf. He also worked as a session player for people like Fontella Bass, Dee Clark, and Buddy Guy. Eventually he had his own bands, for which he wrote, arranged, and produced music, like the Ike & Tina Revue, the Ikettes, and the Mirettes. In 1971, he built his own studio in LA called Bolic. This was where Ike and Tina recorded some of the most exciting soul/rock crossover records ever: “Workin’ Together,” “Her Man, His Woman,” “Feel Good,” “Nuff Said,” “Nutbush City Limits,” and “Let Me Feel Your Mind.” Ike and Tina were musically omnivorous, trying out anything they liked in the blues/rock paradigm. Black Sabbath’s “Evil Woman” is performed effectively as “Evil Man,” for example.
Making music as prolifically as he did, however, doesn’t come cheap. Ike was a taskmaster, was considered difficult and paranoid by some, and had developed strange habits. He kept an AK-47 spring-loaded beneath his mixing board, for example. He abused drugs and made illegal long-distance telephone calls, for which he was investigated by the FBI. Eventually, his string of hits in collaboration with Tina and sundry other feats were overshadowed by their divorce and the subsequent release of her book,
I, Tina. This became the 1993 blockbuster biopic
What’s Love Got to Do With It and outlined, in Hollywood style, Tina’s grievances against Ike as a physically and mentally abusive spouse. Thereafter, “Ike Turner” became a synonym for “wife beater,” symbol to a benighted mass audience oblivious to his achievements and influence. Ironically, Ike and Tina’s marketing of themselves through their career had been very much based not just on their relationship but also on the dysfunction of it.
IAN SVENONIUS
TO BE CONTINUED
REFLECTIONS ON IKE TURNER |
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