Ike Turner Informations

Izear Luster "Ike" Turner Jr. (November 5, 1931 – December 12, 2007) was an American musician, bandleader, songwriter, arranger, talent scout, and record producer. An early pioneer of fifties rock and roll, he is best known for his work in the 1960s and 1970s with his then-wife Tina Turner in the Ike and Tina Turner Revue.

Turner began playing piano and guitar when he was eight years of age. He formed a music group, the Kings of Rhythm, as a teenager. Turner employed the group as his backing band for the rest of his life. His first recording, "Rocket 88" (1951) (credited to "Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats"), is considered a contender for the distinction of "first rock and roll song." Relocating to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1954, he and the Kings became one of the most renowned acts on the local club circuit. There, he met singer Anna Mae Bullock, whom he renamed Tina Turner; the two formed the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, which over the course of the 1960s became a soul/rock crossover success. Turner recorded for many of the key RandB record labels of the 1950s and 1960s, including Chess, Modern, Trumpet, Flair and Sue. With the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, he progressed to larger labels such as Blue Thumb, Liberty and United Artists.

Turner's cocaine addiction and legal troubles, together with accounts by Tina Turner of domestic violence (published in her autobiography I, Tina and the portrayal of him in its film adaptation What's Love Got to Do with It), impacted his career in the 1980s and 1990s. Addicted to cocaine and crack for at least 15 years, Turner was convicted of drug offenses and served 18 months in prison (Feb. 1990 – Sept. 1991). He spent the rest of the 1990s free of his addiction, but relapsed in 2004. Near the end of his life, Turner revived his career with live performance as a front man and returned to his blues roots. He produced two albums that were critically well-received and award-winning.

Turner has been hailed as a "great innovator" of rock and roll by contemporaries such as Little Richard and Johnny Otis. Phil Alexander, then editor-in-chief of Mojo magazine, described Turner as "the cornerstone of modern day rock 'n' roll."David Fricke, senior editor at Rolling Stone magazine, noted that "Turner was one of the first guitarists to successfully transplant the intensity of the blues into more-commercial music." In the course of his career, Turner won four Grammy Awards including two competitive awards and two Grammy Hall of Fame Awards. Turner was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Tina Turner in 1991. In 2001, he was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. He is also inducted into the Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame, the Blues Hall of Fame, and the Rhythm and Blues Hall of Fame. In 2018, "Rocket 88" was one of the first songs inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Singles.

Turner was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, on November 5, 1931, to Beatrice Cushenberry, a seamstress, and Izear Luster Turner Sr., a Baptist minister. The youngest of their two children, Turner had a sister named Lee Ethel Knight who was "some ten years" his senior. When he applied for his first passport in the early 1960s, Turner discovered his name had been mistakenly registered as Ike Wister Turner.

Turner said that when he was very young he witnessed his father beaten and left for dead by a white mob. His father lived for three years as an invalid in a tent in the family's yard before succumbing to his injuries. Writer and blues historian Ted Drozdowski told a different version of the story, stating that Turner's father died in an industrial accident. His mother then married a man called Philip Reeves. Turner said his stepfather was a violent alcoholic and that they often argued and fought. After one fight Turner knocked out his stepfather with a piece of wood. He then ran away to Memphis, where he lived rough for a few days before returning to his mother. He reconciled with his stepfather years later, buying a house for him in the 1950s around the time Turner's mother died.

Turner recounted how he was introduced to sex at the age of six by a middle-aged lady called Miss Boozie. Walking past her house to school, she would invite him to help feed her chickens and then take him to bed. This continued daily for some time. Turner claimed not to be traumatized by this, commenting that "in those days they didn't call it abuse, they called it fun." He was also raped by another middle-aged woman, Miss Reeny, before he was twelve.

In the eighth grade Turner began working as an elevator operator at the Alcazar Hotel in downtown Clarksdale. During breaks he would watch DJ John Friskillo play records at the radio station, WROX, located in the hotel. WROX is noted for being the first radio station in Mississippi to employ a black DJ, Early Wright. One day Friskillo spotted Turner watching and put him to work; teaching him the ins and outs of the control room. Turner described this as "the beginning of my thing with music." Soon he was left to play records while Friskillo took coffee breaks. This led to Turner being offered a job by the station manager as the DJ on the late-afternoon shift. The job meant he had access to all the new releases. On his show he played a diverse range of music, playing Roy Milton and Louis Jordan alongside early rockabilly records.

Turner was inspired to learn the piano on a visit to his friend Ernest Lane's house, where he heard Pinetop Perkins playing Lane's father's piano. Turner persuaded his mother to pay for piano lessons; however, he did not take to the formal style of playing, instead spending the money in a pool hall, then learning boogie-woogie from Perkins. He taught himself to play guitar by playing along to old blues records. At some point in the 1940s, Turner moved into Clarksdale's Riverside Hotel, run by Mrs. Z.L. Ratliff. The Riverside played host to touring musicians, including Sonny Boy Williamson II and Duke Ellington. Turner associated with many of these musicians, and at 13 years old he quit school to backup Sonny Boy Williamson II on piano.

As a teenager, Turner joined a local rhythm ensemble called the Tophatters who played around Clarksdale, Mississippi. Members of the band were Clarksdale musicians and included Turner's school friends Raymond Hill, Eugene Fox and Clayton Love. The Tophatters played big-band arrangements from sheet music. Turner, who was trained by ear and could not sight read, would learn the pieces by listening to a version on record at home, pretending to be reading the music during rehearsals. At one point, the Tophatters had over 30 members and eventually split into two, with one act who wanted to carry on playing dance band jazz calling themselves the Dukes of Swing and the other, led by Turner, becoming the Kings of Rhythm. Turner said, "We wanted to play blues, boogie-woogie and Roy Brown, Jimmy Liggins, Roy Milton." Turner kept the name throughout his career, although it went through lineup changes over time. Their early stage performances consisted largely of covers of popular jukebox hits. B.B. King helped them to get a steady weekend gig and recommended them to Sam Phillips at Memphis Recording Service. In the 1950s, Turner's group got regular airplay from live sessions on the radio stations WROX in Calrksdale and KFFA in Helena, Arkansas.

Around the time he was starting out with the Kings of Rhythm, Turner and Lane became unofficial roadies for blues singer Robert Nighthawk, who often played live on WROX. The pair played drums and piano on radio sessions and supported Nighthawk at blues dates around Clarksdale. Playing with Nighthawk allowed Turner to gig regularly and build up playing experience.

He played gigs alongside other local blues artists such as Howlin' Wolf, Charley Booker, Elmore James, Muddy Waters, and Little Walter. Performances typically lasted for about twelve hours, from early evening to dawn the next day. Turner described the scenario to an interviewer:.mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}

In March 1951, Turner and his band recorded the song "Rocket 88." Turner's vocalist Johnny O'Neal had left to sign a solo contract with King Records, so Jackie Brenston, a saxophonist in the Kings of Rhythm, sang lead vocals. Turner played piano on the recording, and his intro was later used note-for-note by Little Richard "Good Golly, Miss Molly." Phillips licensed the recording to Chess Records in Chicago, who released it under the name "Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats" instead of "Ike Turner and His Kings of Rhythm Featuring Jackie Brenston." Turner blamed Phillips for this misrepresentation. The single, released in April 1951, reached number one on the Billboard RandB charts in June 1951; spending 5 weeks on top of the charts. The record sold approximately half a million copies. Turner and the band were paid $20 each (US$193 in 2018 dollars) for the record. The exception was Brenston who sold the rights to Phillips for $910. Phillips used profits from the success of the record to launch Sun Records in February 1952.

The success of "Rocket 88" caused tension and ego clashes in the band which culminated with Brenston leaving to pursue a solo career, causing the band to fall apart. Turner, without a band and disappointed his hit record had not created more opportunities for him, disbanded the Kings of Rhythm for a few years.

After recording "Rocket 88," Turner became a session musician and production assistant for Philips and the Bihari brothers, commuting to Memphis from Clarksdale. He began by contributing piano to a B.B. King track, "You Know I Love You", which brought him to the attention of Modern Records' Joe Bihari, who requested Turner's services on another King track, "3 O'Clock Blues" which became King's first hit. However, according to Bihari, Turner brought King to his attention years prior. He said, "Ike wasn't more than sixteen then. He would send dubs of things he cut to us, and if we'd like them we'd make a seal or sign the artist. That's how we acquired B.B. King." King also maintained that Turner introduced him to the Biharis.

During this time unbeknownst to Turner he met Elvis Presley who was a truck driver in Memphis. He recalled, "[Presley] was just a white boy that would come over to black clubs. He would come in and stand behind the piano and watch me play. I never knew he was no musician." Turner discovered his identity many years later when Presley approached him at the International Hotel and said, "Hey! Do you remember me?"

Turner, who was also a freelance talent scout, had Howlin' Wolf record for Sam Phillips at Sun Records (which licensed its recordings to Chess Records) in 1951. Wishing to exploit Turner's Delta music connections, Bihari contracted him as a talent scout, paying him to find southern musicians who might be worth recording. Turner, unaware of songwriter's royalties, also wrote new material which the Biharis copyrighted under their own name. They often purchased or claimed co-writer credit of songs written by artists on their labels using pseudonyms. Turner estimated he "wrote 78 hit records for the Biharis." Artists Turner discovered for Modern included Bobby Bland, Howlin' Wolf, and Rosco Gordon. He played piano in sessions with them and lesser-known artists such as the Prisonaires, Ben Burton Orchestra, Little Milton, Matt Cockrell and Dennis Binder.

Turner was contracted to the Bihari brothers, but he continued to work for Phillips, where he was effectively the in-house producer. This sometimes created conflicts of interest. Turner cut two Howlin' Wolf tracks, "How Many More Years" (Turner played piano) and "Moanin' at Midnight," which Phillips sent to Chess. Turner then took Wolf across the state border, rerecorded the tracks without Phillips's or Chess's knowledge, and sent the results to Modern/RPM. Turner also attempted to poach Elmore James from Trumpet Records and record him for Modern. Trumpet found out and Modern had to cancel the record. However, James did eventually sign for Modern, with Turner playing piano on a James recording at Club Desire in Canton.

While in Helena, Turner tried to recruit Marion Little Walter to record for Modern in January 1952, but Little Walter was on his way to Mississippi. In 1952, Turner discovered Little Junior Parker and played piano on his first release, "You're My Angel"/"Bad Women, Bad Whiskey," credited to Little Junior Parker and the Blue Flames. That summer Turner recorded with the new vocalist and pianist in his band, Marion Louis Lee, resulting in "My Heart Belongs To You" / "Looking for My Baby." The records were released from RPM Records as Bonnie and Ike Turner; they married in September 1952.

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