Ike Turner...

IdleRich

IdleRich
I was gonna mention it but I'm not really sure how I feel about him.
Still, for (arguably) inventing rock n roll he's a pretty important figure.
 

Leo

Well-known member
sometimes great and influential artists/people aren't always very nice people, ike being a case in point. his guitar work with otis rush back in the late 1950s still rocks.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
sometimes great and influential artists/people aren't always very nice people, ike being a case in point. his guitar work with otis rush back in the late 1950s still rocks.

Well, quite. People were falling over themselves to praise James Brown upon his death. Some might argue he wasn't the world's nicest man.

And for all I know Pimp-C wasn't the nicest guy, either.

Even those Dissensians who may have met any of these guys can't claim to know them, so why are some people immune from criticism...?
 
Even those Dissensians who may have met any of these guys can't claim to know them, so why are some people immune from criticism...?

No one's said anybody is immune from criticism- it's just thought tasteful to concentrate on the positive things about someone's life immediately after they've died.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Funny that in the last few years it seemed to become acceptable to pay respect to Ike Turner again, he'd been winning lifetime achievement awards and such-like recently. After that Tina Turner biopic no one would have touched him with a barge-pole for ages.

'Rocket 88' is a good record, but I've never really quite understood why its seen as the first proper rock n roll record. Just what exactly is it that distinguishes it from the RnB that came before it? It doesn't seem 'epochal' enough somehow.

But I liked the Ike best for writing some of the greatest teenage pop songs this side of Chuck Berry. Love stuff like 'Make 'em wait' and 'Idolise You'...
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
its pitiful that many of his obits (if theyre like the one in the london paper at least) are only going to be about what he did to tina turner and not even mention the great records they made together or what a good guitarist/musician/bandleader he was.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
All depends on the kind of PR mchiine you've got working for you (or against you), I s'pose. Can people still not separate out the man or woman from their works? I'm sure I'd hate a great proportion of the people who've made my favourite records...:slanted:
 
its pitiful that many of his obits (if theyre like the one in the london paper at least) are only going to be about what he did to tina turner

That's what is fixed in the cultural consciousness as an award winning film was made about it... The man on the Clapham omnibus probably knows Ike Turner as the guy who beat up Tina Turner.
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
poor ike - he signed any rights he had over how he was depicted to the film makers of the tina turner biopic and gave them complete control for some reason. hope he got paid well for that at least, even if it totally ruined his reputation.
 

Octopus?

Well-known member

ripley

Well-known member
poor ike - he signed any rights he had over how he was depicted to the film makers of the tina turner biopic and gave them complete control for some reason. hope he got paid well for that at least, even if it totally ruined his reputation.

"poor ike"? "ruined his reputation"? He beat up his wife. repeatedly. is it "ruining his reputation" if it's true? didn't he ruin his reputation by beating her?

you are mourning his inability to extract financial gain from that years later? - or hoping that he was able to?

I play the world's tiniest violin for him.

look. I can see why people here don't want obituaries to focus solely on his abusive violence towards Tina. I'm not so bothered myself, because it so rarely happens that wife-beating is considered to be a part of someone's identity, even if it apparently was. The fact that James Brown and others get a pass on it is not an argument for giving everyone a pass for it in my book.

It doesn't make his artistic contribution any less, but I don't buy the "speak no ill of the dead" -- often an obituary deals with the totality of someone's life and their effect on society (if they are a cultural figure) or on their community. While he was beating Tina, it didn't seem to hurt his career much. That is a meaningful fact about American society in the 1960s anyway, and his role in it. The fact that later it became less acceptable to beat your wife, well yeah, it sucks for his reputation I guess. But I don't feel too bad about it.
 

petergunn

plywood violin
poor ike - he signed any rights he had over how he was depicted to the film makers of the tina turner biopic and gave them complete control for some reason. hope he got paid well for that at least, even if it totally ruined his reputation.

he was cracked out thru most of the 80's, sadly i bet he signed for peanuts...

hard to judge any artist on their private life, as most are, at best egostistical jerks...

is ike worse than phil spector? or miles davis?

anyways, he was a genius guitar player, definitely one of the wildest in the 50's (his tremelo bar work was just insane, he would bend the notes completely out of key)... he played piano on holwin wolf records and made some monster r&b, soul, and funk records w/ tina...
 

tate

Brown Sugar
didn't he ruin his own reputation by beating her?
Exactly.

look. I can see why people here don't want obituaries to focus solely on his abusive violence towards Tina. I'm not so bothered myself, because it so rarely happens that wife-beating is considered to be a part of someone's identity, even if it apparently was. The fact that James Brown and others get a pass on it is not an argument for giving everyone a pass for it in my book.

It doesn't make his artistic contribution any less, but I don't buy the "speak no ill of the dead" -- often an obituary deals with the totality of someone's life and their effect on society (if they are a cultural figure) or on their community. While he was beating Tina, it didn't seem to hurt his career much. That is a meaningful fact about American society in the 1960s anyway, and his role in it. The fact that later it became less acceptable to beat your wife, well yeah, it sucks for his reputation I guess. But I don't feel too bad about it.
Very well said.
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
to ripley, of course he ruined his own reputation himself, but even wife beaters deserve to be depicted as SOMEWHAT human (although i dont know if ike was a total monster in real life or not). im not defending ikes behaviour, and i dont buy the 'dont speak ill of the dead' thing either, i think his behaviour as an abusive husband should naturally be mentioned and criticised in any honest obit, it shouldnt be glossed over, but he wasnt ONLY a wife beater.

on a slight tangent, i wonder if it wasnt for the domestic abuse from ike, if tina turner would maybe have stuck with R&B more and not been so quick to dismiss it all these decades - she seems to have wanted to get away from anything too close to that or vaguely reminiscent of R&B ever since.
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
Ike and Tina Turner : Bold Soul Sister


things and stuff and stuff and things, and stuff.
i'm a bold soul sister.
b.s.s.
sock it to me biscuits.
bring it on down to the bone.
it's my thing, I'm gonna do what I wanna do.


genius.
 
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