Ike and Tina Turner

Many years have passed since Tina Turner suffered at the hands of her violent, coked-up former husband, and it's high time to acknowledge that Clarksdale, MS's, Isaac Lustre Turner, for all his inexcusable and shameful behavior behind closed doors, is as much a monster on the stage and in the studio as he is off. Turner has an exemplary track record as a bandleader (his Kings of Rhythm were as formidable a combo as any in the South during the mid-'50s), talent scout, producer (for both Elmore James and Howlin' Wolf, and musician (his boogie-woogie piano style was distinctive and incendiary, and when he took up the guitar, he explored some uncharted territory marked by ferocious hurricane blasts of distortion and dirty, chunky blues riffs). On the recommendation of B.B. King, Sun Records owner Sam Phillips cut a session with Ike and the Kings on March 3, 1951, featuring Ike's cousin (and Kings saxophonist) Jackie Brenston singing lead on a propulsive ode to one of the day's most powerful motor vehicles, "Rocket 88," a song modeled after Jimmy Liggins' "Cadillac Boogie." His recordings with the Kings can be heard in all their majesty on Rhino's 1994 anthology I Like Ike, truly a thing of wonder. More recently, Ike proved that age and all his trials haven't robbed him of his muse, as his 2001 solo album, Here and Now, on the Ikon label, was nominated for a Grammy.

Then there's Tina. Born Annie Mae Bullock in Brownsville, TN, she was only 18 when she joined Ike and the Kings of Rhythm just as the band was ruling the roost of a lively club scene in East St. Louis, IL. She stepped up as lead vocalist in late 1959 and was christened Tina Turner by Ike. The former Ms. Bullock made her incendiary debut on the Sue Records single "A Fool in Love," with a full repertoire of blistering, hoarse R&B shouts framed by a singsong girl chorus and the Kings' steady rocking pulse pushing the whole affair forward. A Top 30 pop and #2 R&B hit, "A Fool in Love" set the template for a succession of rousing singles in the early '60s: Tina's gravel-throated blues shouts and cries answered by a pop-ish female chorus, all set against a churning, muddy soundscape with occasional spoken double-entendre-laden byplay between Ike and Tina.

Onstage, Tina's shapely, athletic figure and sexually charged performances became the stuff of legend, while Ike directed the proceedings behind her. Of course that energy could never quite be captured on disc, but producer Ike knew how to use the studio as a creative tool. Ike & Tina Turner singles from the Sue era (and the non-single album tracks as well) were some of the most ferocious performances ever set down on wax; there was very little in the way of calm introspection going on in those days. Tina sings with abandon and overwhelming emotion; most of her shouts wind up in the red, slightly distorted. The Collectables reissues of Dynamite! and The Soul of Ike & Tina Turner are essential documents of the Sue era. There is some duplication of tracks, as both contain "A Fool in Love," "Sleepless," the scalding mission statement called "Letter from Tina," "I Idolize You," and the string-laden R&B ballad "I'm Jealous," but only Dynamite! contains the priceless ditty "Tra La La La La," with its ingenious muted trumpet solo rising out of the mix like Miles on a bender. Another interesting document from this period is the all-instrumental outing Dance. Ike and Tina are on the cover, but this one's all Ike and the Kings of Rhythm, and it's a beautiful thing. Not only is it a showcase for the individual Kings, who were strictly powerhouse (especially the sax player), but it makes a prima facie case for Ike being considered with the all-time guitar greats.

In 1966, a now-legendary pairing took place when Ike yielded the producer's chair to Phil Spector for the album that was titled, after its key single, River Deep -- Mountain High. By most accounts, Spector had expected this to be the jewel in his crown. But despite its grandeur -- both in production and in Tina's vocal attack -- the single bombed in the U.S. after being a Top 10 hit in Britain, driving Spector into seclusion for three years. The ensuing album, produced in part by Spector, in part by Ike, reveals that Spector's Wall of Sound was a most inappropriate vehicle for Tina's coarse, bluesy shouting, which thrived in the tight R&B combo setting of Ike's old-school productions.

A 1969 tour with the Rolling Stones proved to be the beginning of the end for Ike and Tina. On the plus side, it brought them more attention than they had ever received -- and justifiably so -- and reinvigorated their recording career. But after their Top 10 cover version of "Proud Mary" for Liberty Records in 1971 (a rendition famously captured on film in the Gimme Shelter tour documentary, featuring Tina suggestively stroking and admiring the head of her microphone), the group faltered commercially and didn't get back to the Top 30 until 1973 with an autobiographical song written by Tina, "Nutbush City Limits." Their failure to achieve any consistency in the studio mirrored the decline in the quality of their live per-formances and Ike's descent into drugged-out oblivion. In 1975 the group cut a cover version of Pete Townshend's "Acid Queen" that took Tina out of her R&B base and pointed her in the pop-soul direction she would explore so fruitfully as a solo artist in the ensuing decades.

The best document of the early-'70s pre-breakup period comes by way of 32 R&B's Back in the Day collection. Most of the 15 songs here had never been issued before, and a few others are cast in radically different versions from the original recordings. Ike was experimenting with new approaches at this point, and it shows in the first cut, a medley of "Don't Fight It/Knock on Wood," which fuses Memphis-style horns of the '70s to the tight Memphis groove Ike fashioned in the '50s. Typical of the experiments going on at this time is a down-and-dirty version of the Archies' "Sugar Sugar," complete with a pumping horn section, a pulsating groove, funky wah-wah guitar, Ike's roadhouse piano, and a moaning, grunting, screaming vocal from Tina, who interprets the lyrics so salaciously you might believe someone was going down on her while she was standing at the microphone.

For a single-disc retrospective, EMI's Proud Mary: The Best of is a well-rounded collection, beginning with "A Fool in Love" and systematically rolling through the years before concluding with "Acid Queen." Its liner notes provide a good thumbnail sketch of the duo's recording history as well. (DAVID MCGEE)

From the 2004 The New Rolling Stone Album Guide