Background and career
Izear Luster "Ike" Turner Jr. (November 5, 1931 – December 12, 2007) was an American musician, bandleader, songwriter, record producer, and talent scout. An early pioneer of 1950s rock and roll, he is best known for his work in the 1960s and 1970s with his wife Tina Turner as the leader of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. A native of Clarksdale, Mississippi, Turner began playing piano in childhood and formed the Kings of Rhythm as a teenager. His first recording, "Rocket 88", credited to Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, is widely regarded as a contender for the first rock and roll song. During the 1950s, Turner taught himself to play guitar and worked as a talent scout and producer for Sun Records and Modern Records, playing a key role in the early careers of several blues musicians, including B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, and Bobby Bland. In 1954, he relocated to East St. Louis, where the Kings of Rhythm became one of the leading acts in the Greater St. Louis area. In 1960, Turner formed the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, which went on to achieve major success as a soul and rock crossover act during the decade. Turner's cocaine addiction, along with allegations of domestic violence described by Tina Turner in her 1986 autobiography I, Tina and the 1993 film adaptation What's Love Got to Do with It, adversely affected his career. Addicted to cocaine for at least 15 years, Turner was convicted of drug offenses and served 18 months in prison. After his release in 1991, he relapsed in 2004 and died of a drug overdose in 2007. In the final decade of his life, Turner experienced a career resurgence as a frontman, returning to his blues roots with the release of the award-winning albums Here and Now (2001) and Risin' with the Blues (2006). Hailed as a "great innovator" of rock and roll by contemporaries such as Little Richard and Johnny Otis, Turner received critical acclaim as well. Rolling Stone editor David Fricke ranked Turner No. 61 on his list of 100 Greatest Guitarists and noted, "Turner was one of the first guitarists to successfully transplant the intensity of the blues into more commercial music." Turner won five Grammy Awards, including two competitive awards and three Grammy Hall of Fame Awards. He also received the Recording Academy's Heroes Award. Turner was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Tina Turner in 1991. As a solo artist, he is inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame, the Clarksdale Walk of Fame, the Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame, the Blues Hall of Fame, and the Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.
Izear Luster Turner Jr. was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, on November 5, 1931, to Beatrice Cushenberry, a seamstress, and Izear Luster Turner, a Baptist minister. His parents were Creole. Turner was the younger of their two children; his sister, Lee Ethel Knight, was "some ten years" his senior. When Turner applied for his first passport in the 1960s, he discovered that his name was registered as Ike Wister Turner. By then both of his parents were deceased, so he could not verify the origin of his name. Blues historian Ted Drozdowski claimed that Turner's father died in an industrial accident; according to Turner, he witnessed his father beaten and left for dead by a white man (another account given by Turner alleged that "a couple of pickup-truck loads of whites in khaki pants and khaki shirts" dragged his father away, returning him after having "kicked holes in his stomach"). He claimed he was later told this assault was an act of retaliation over a woman with whom his father was having an affair, and that his father lived for two or three years as an invalid in a tent erected by the Health Department in the family's yard before succumbing to his injuries when Turner was about five years old. Donald Brackett, author of Tumult! The Incredible Life of Tina Turner, observed Turner "often related" this story, but that "like most Ike stories, it might need to be taken with a pound of salt". His mother remarried an artist named Philip Reese, who Turner described as a violent alcoholic. One day after Reese gave him a whipping, Turner knocked him out with a length of lumber and ran away to Memphis for a few days before returning home. Despite their troubled relationship, Turner moved his stepfather into one of his homes in St. Louis after his mother died in 1959 and took care of him until his death in 1961. Turner recounted how he was sexually assaulted at the age of six by a woman 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 was also sexually assaulted by another middle-aged woman, Miss Reedy, before he was twelve. Reflecting on these experiences, he stated: "That's probably why every relationship I was in was surrounded by sex. Sex was power to me."
Turner attended Booker T. Washington Elementary School, then was promoted to Myrtle Hall in the sixth grade. He quit school in the eighth grade and 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. 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. On his show, "Jive Till Five", he played a diverse range of music such as Roy Milton and Louis Jordan alongside early rockabilly records. Turner was inspired to learn the piano after he heard blues pianist Pinetop Perkins play at his friend Ernest Lane's house. Turner persuaded his mother to pay for piano lessons, but he did not take to the formal style of playing. Instead, he spent the money in a pool hall and learned boogie-woogie from Perkins. At some point in the 1940s, Turner moved into Clarksdale's Riverside Hotel. 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 backed 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. The Tophatters had over 30 members, but they broke up into two groups after six months to a year. One faction wanted to play jazz music and became the Dukes of Swing. The other band led by Turner became 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 Clarksdale 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 musician Robert Nighthawk, who often played live on WROX. The pair played drums and piano on radio sessions. Turner gained experience performing by supporting Nighthawk at gigs around Clarksdale. He played juke joints alongside other local blues artists such as Elmore James, Muddy Waters, and Little Walter. Performances typically lasted about twelve hours, from early evening to dawn the next day. Turner recalled, "there wasn't no intermission. If the drummer had to pee, I would play drums until he returned....There were no breaks. We just switched around."
In March 1951, Turner and his band recorded the song "Rocket 88" at Memphis Recording Service (now Sun Studio). 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 while Turner was on piano. "Rocket 88" is notable among other things for Willie Kizart's distorted guitar sound. Phillips licensed the recording to Chess Records in Chicago. Chess 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. Soon after its release, the single caused a sensation and Turner performed with his band at the W.C. Handy Theatre in Memphis. The single reached number-one on the Billboard R&B charts in June 1951 and spent 5 weeks on top of the charts. The record sold approximately half a million copies. Turner and the band were paid $20 each 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 song is often cited as the first rock n' roll record, but in a later interview, Turner offered this assessment: "I don't think that 'Rocket 88' is rock 'n' roll. I think that 'Rocket 88' is R&B, but I think 'Rocket 88' is the cause of rock and roll existing". The success of "Rocket 88" generated 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.
Soon after the release of "Rocket 88", Turner moved to West Memphis, Arkansas and played with various local bands. He then became a freelance talent scout, session musician, and production assistant for Sam Phillips at Sun Studio, commuting to Memphis, Tennessee. Wishing to exploit his Delta music connections, the Bihari brothers at Modern Records also hired Turner as a talent scout, paying him to find southern musicians who might be worth recording. Turner arranged for B.B. King and the Beale Streeters to record for Modern at the YMCA in Memphis. Turner played piano on King's early records "You Know I Love You" and "3 O'Clock Blues", which became King's first two number-ones. According to Joe Bihari, Turner had 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 Bihari brothers. Unaware of songwriter's royalties, Turner also wrote new material which the Biharis copyrighted under their own names. They often purchased or claimed co-writer credit of songs written by artists on their labels using pseudonyms. Turner estimated he wrote seventy-eight hit records for the Biharis. Artists Turner discovered for Modern and Sun include Bobby Bland, Howlin' Wolf, Rosco Gordon, Boyd Gilmore, Houston Boines, Charley Booker, and Little Milton. He played piano in sessions with them and lesser-known artists such as the Prisonaires, Driftin' Slim, Ben Burton, Matt Cockrell, Dennis Binder, Sunny Blair, and Baby Face Turner. 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. In 1951, Turner recorded two Howlin' Wolf tracks for Phillips, playing piano on "How Many More Years" and "Moanin' at Midnight", which Phillips sent to Chess. Turner and Howlin' Wolf then recorded a version of "Moanin' at Midnight" at radio station KWEM in West Memphis without Phillips' or the Chess brothers' knowledge. He sent the results to the Biharis at Modern and they released it on their subsidiary label RPM Records. 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 with Modern, and Turner played on his recordings that were released on Modern's subsidiary label Flair Records. While in Helena, Turner tried to recruit 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 in West Memphis, and they formed a band with Matt "Guitar" Murphy. Turner recorded Parker's first single, "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 on RPM as Bonnie and Ike Turner and they performed together at the Hippodrome in Memphis. Turner married Lee in September 1952. Unbeknownst to Turner, during his time in West Memphis, he met Elvis Presley, who was a truck driver. 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 after Presley approached him when they were both playing at the International Hotel. To accommodate his then-wife Bonnie, who also played piano, Turner taught himself how to play guitar by ear, and Willie Kizart taught him blues guitar techniques. He began playing guitar in sessions in 1953, and by 1954, with the assistance of Joe Bihari, he built a makeshift recording studio at a defunct Greyhound bus station in Clarksdale. Turner used his Kings of Rhythm as session musicians. They played on many recordings for Bihari's Modern, RPM, and Flair labels. Some of the artists Turner backed on piano and guitar during this period include Elmore James, Johnny Ace and the Flairs. Around this time Turner discovered Billy "The Kid" Emerson in Greenville. He brought Emerson to record at Sun Records and backed him on guitar in 1954.
