Ike Turner, 1931 - 2007

The man who gave the world the first Rock-and-Roll record has died.

From the NY Times:

Ike Turner, the R&B musician, songwriter, bandleader, producer, talent scout and ex-husband of Tina Turner, died on Wednesday at his home in San Marcos, Calif., a San Diego suburb. He was 76.

His death was announced by Jeanette Bazzell Turner, who married Mr. Turner in 1995. She gave no cause of death, but said he had had emphysema.

... Mr. Turner was best known for discovering Anna Mae Bullock, a teenage singer from Nutbush, Tenn., whom he renamed Tina Turner. The Ike and Tina Turner Revue made a string of hits in the 1960s before the Turners broke up in 1975.

... In high school he formed a group called the Kings of Rhythm. B. B. King helped that band get a steady weekend gig and recommended it to Sam Phillips at Sun Studios in Memphis. The band had been performing jukebox hits, but on the drive from Mississippi to Memphis, its members decided to write something of their own.
Their saxophonist, Jackie Brenston, suggested a song about the new Rocket 88 Oldsmobile. The piano-pounding intro and the first verse were by Mr. Turner, and the band collaborated on the rest; Mr. Brenston sang.

Sun was not yet its own record label, so Mr. Phillips sent the song to Chess Records. It went on to sell a half-million copies. “I was playing rhythm and blues,” Mr. Turner wrote. “That’s all I was playing.” His book says he was paid $20 for the record.

... in 1958, he heard Anna Mae Bullock, who joined the group and quickly became its focal point as Tina Turner. The band was soon renamed the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. Her lead vocal on “A Fool in Love” started a streak of Top 10 R&B hits for the revue and also reached the pop Top 40. It was followed by “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine” in 1961. The duo became stars on the grueling so-called chitlin’ circuit of African-American clubs.

River Deep, Mountain High

Tina walked out on him in 1975. Mr. Turner, already abusing cocaine and alcohol, spiraled further downward during the 1980s while Ms. Turner became a multimillion-selling star on her own. A recording studio he had built in Los Angeles burned down in 1982, and he was arrested repeatedly on drug charges. In 1989 he went to prison for various cocaine-possession offenses and was in jail when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

But he had a windfall when the hip-hop duo Salt ’N’ Pepa used a sample of his song “I’m Blue” for their 1993 hit “Shoop,” which reached No. 4 on the Billboard pop chart.

Mr. Turner set out to reclaim his place in rock history. He wrote his autobiography with a British writer, Nigel Cawthorne. At the 2001 Chicago Blues Festival he performed with Pinetop Perkins in a set filmed for the Martin Scorsese PBS series “The Blues.” He renamed his band the Kings of Rhythm and re-recorded “Rocket 88” for the 2001 album “Here and Now.” He toured internationally, recording a live album and DVD, “The Resurrection,” at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2002. He visited high schools during Black History Month with an antidrug message. He recorded a song with the British band Gorillaz in 2005.

In the end, the music business embraced him: Mr. Turner’s 2006 album, “Risin’ With the Blues,” won the Grammy this year as best traditional blues album.