Why like Ike?

Turner promises a fiery return to showmanship

by Ted Drozdowski

Mississippi kid, showman, rock-and-roll pioneer, talent scout, hitmaker, wife abuser, cocaine addict, bankrupt, and -- at 64 -- comeback-trail marcher is the flip-book version of Ike Turner's public life. To those horrified by Lawrence Fishburne's portrayal of Ike in the Tina Turner bio-pic What's Love Got To Do with It and the unsavory accounts in her autobiography, I, Tina, he's a monster. (Today, Ike blames much of the knotty details of his past on his former drug addiction.) But as an artist, Turner -- who plays the House of Blues in a special early show this Sunday -- is surely one of the under-recognized greats of American popular music.

In 1951, Turner drove his little juke-joint band up to Memphis from Clarksdale, Mississippi, to record a song for Sam Phillips's Memphis Recording Company. (Phillips hadn't yet started his Sun Records label.) It was his tune "Rocket 88," which was released by Chess Records under the name of Turner's vocalist at the time, Jackie Brenston. With fuzztone guitar (the amp had fallen from Turner's car on the way to the session) and a riff so hot Little Richard later appropriated it for "Good Golly Miss Molly," the tune defined what rock and roll would become. But for Turner, it was simply a revved-up twist on the blues he'd grown up on. "I was just cutting a song the way I thought a record was supposed to be cut -- bass moving in the bottom, with the guitar like Robert Nighthawk, and we was kinda fond of Joe Liggins at the time, so I asked Jackie to sing it the way he sang. And I played the boogie-woogie piano on it."

Speaking by phone from his home in San Marco, California, Turner still talks fondly of growing up learning guitar lines from Gatemouth Brown records and then "keeping up with whatever was on the juke box, because that's what people wanted to hear." That assimilationist streak -- and Turner's penchant for revue-style shows with costumes and a variety of singers and dancers -- kept his '50s Kings of Rhythm busier than most other struggling groups and gave him an education in what made good R&B. Which, at the time, was synonymous with good pop.

By the mid '50s, Turner had relocated his band to St. Louis, where his penchant for finding new talent led to his discovery of Annie Mae Bullock, re-christened Tina Turner after their marriage. In 1960, they had their first Top 40 hit with "A Fool in Love." By the early '70s, the Ike & Tina Turner Revue was one of the world's most popular groups, racking up smashes like the wedding-band evergreen "Proud Mary," "Want To Take You Higher," and "Nutbush City Limits"; making their classic River Deep, Mountain High collaboration with Phil Spector; opening for the Rolling Stones on the tour that imploded at Altamont; and hosting rock television shows like The Midnight Special, pushing the genre's color line as hard as it's ever been pushed without compromising their soulful sound.

But after Tina walked out on Ike in 1976 -- declaring her own independence -- he spiraled down a dry well of cocaine and insecurity. "At the time, my bills were like $35,000 to $75,000 a month. That scared me so; without Tina, I didn't know how I'd pay them. I'd always done the music and the business but pushed Tina out front when we were together. I panicked. I didn't think anyone knew what I did, and that anybody would want anything to do with me. I just stopped playing because I was insecure, scared I wouldn't be accepted." The coke didn't help Turner's paranoia, and neither did the loss of his $2.5 million studio in a fire. "I got accused of burning it down for the money, but what they didn't know was that I didn't have any insurance."

After his inevitable and well-chronicled hard crash, which included a drug bust and jail term, Turner kicked his cocaine habit and started putting his life back together. He credits his present wife, Jeanette, with helping inspire him to the straight-and-narrow; she's also the lead vocalist in the new Ike Turner Revue, which makes its East Coast debut in New York and Boston this weekend.

Besides his new band, Turner's got a digital home studio, a completed album in the can (he's shopping for a record contract), and his biography, Taking Back My Name, slated for publication in September. So he's hustling again, working just like he did when he was starting out in the business.

"I want to be judged again by my performance. Some people call me a genius and ask what it's like to be in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. I don't have any feeling about that. All I know is I'm creative, and can play and write, and I can put together a good show. And right now, I've got a great band -- nine musicians and five girl singers who are super bad -- and the best show I've ever had together in my life. I'm almost 65, but I look 45. And I just wanna get my music and my show back up respected where it deserves to be."

Ike Turner plays the House of Blues in Harvard Square at 7 p.m. this Sunday, August 25. Tickets are $18; call 491-BLUE.