And I won’t stop until I get that respect. I may not ever get it completely, because my life has been too hard so far. But I’ve gotten a taste of what that respect is probably like, and I like it. I may not be able to get that class, because I didn’t act my life, I lived it. I am Tina Turner. I am raunchy. But I know I’m a lady and that deep inside of me there’s a craving for class. I know I’m accepted, but what I always wanted was the principal’s daughters’ world. And maybe that was my lesson in life...Maybe I had to learn something from wanting that and then not being able to have it.
--Tina Turner
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| 1939-2023 |
I don't remember the exact year, but I saw Ike and Tina Turner at Club Imperial back in the day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_Imperial
ReplyDeleteI envy you, Mike. I hope you enjoyed the show.
DeleteSimply the best!
ReplyDeleteBetter than all the rest, Mitchell.
DeleteHi, Kirk!
ReplyDeleteI knew I'd find this Reaper Report dark and early this morning. The Reaper reeled in another whopper when he took the incendiary R&B queen Tina Turner from us.
I was thrilled to watch for the very first time clip #1 showing Ike and Tina Turner and their backing singers The Ikettes (the latter successful recording stars in their own right) performing their 1960 hit "A Fool In Love" on the April 24, 1965, episode of Hollywood A Go Go. They tore the roof off the sucker. The clip is an even more valuable time capsule because the viewer gets to spend "5 Seconds in Heaven" (from 1:05 to 1:10) with blonde beauty Roberta Tennes, one of the Gazzarri Dancers at the time. Shortly thereafter, Roberta left H.A.G.G. to become a member of another popular TV dance troupe, The Action Kids, on Dick Clark's Where The Action Is series. Sadly, lovely Roberta (pictured in the sidebar of my Shady's Place blog) left this world too soon in 2015.
The second video is another valuable relic, because Tina stated that she was particularly fond of her 1966 single "River Deep, Mountain High." Written by Phil Spector along with Brill Building vets Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich and produced by Spector, "River Deep" was an underachiever on the U.S. chart, but was big in Europe. The song was also famously waxed by Eric Burdon And The Animals. At one point in my vinyl record collecting career, I owned almost everything released on various
labels by Ike And Tina Turner, everything released by the excellent R&B trio The Ikettes as a separate recording act and everything streeted by Eric Burdon and his groups.
I liked Ike & Tina's cover of "Proud Mary," but not nearly as well as their earlier recordings. "Poor Fool" (Nov. 1961) is cool, and their killer bee "Sleepless" (June 1962) kills. I have that Sue label 45 rpm in my collection and a scan of it is displayed in my right sidebar. The only other single by the duo that I loved was "Nutbush," which recalls the small Tennessee town where Tina spent part of her early life.
While I was happy to see Tina make a huge comeback in the mid 80s, the mellow, restrained, easy listening recordings that put her on top did not interest me. Alas, she was no longer the raw, gritty, fiery, shaking, shimmying Tina Turner that I remembered from my youth.
If you haven't seen it, I urge you to watch the 1993 biopic What's Love Got to Do with It starring Angela Bassett as Tina Turner and Laurence Fishburne as Ike, her abusive hubby.
Thanks for doing your duty and paying tribute to the irreplaceable first lady of southern fried R&B - Tina Turner. Enjoy the rest of your week, good buddy Kirk, and look for my next post at Shady's Place tamale morning when I salute another great lady who is no longer with us - Margaret Schneider - The Oldest Living Dell Rat.
(That's all I got.)
Shady, until I watched that David Letterman interview (third video from the bottom), I for some reason thought "River Deep, Mountain High" was one of Ike and Tina's biggest hits. It nonetheless looms large in Tina's oeuvre.
DeleteI don't have a problem with Tina's switch to what you call "easy-listening", though I did feel the need to include the duet with MicK Jagger as a way of mixing things up a bit.
A very nice tribute and selection of pictures. And all the news stories that I've seen, not one has commented about her being one of the few to ever do at James Bond theme song. Her song from that movie GoldenEye was one of my most favorite songs that she's ever done, and very seldom played. But it was that voice that I loved.
ReplyDeleteJust watched the Goldeneye video now, Maddie. I'd say Tina could be favorably compared to Shirley Bassey ("Goldfinger" "Diamonds Are Forever")
DeleteA true legend! RIP
ReplyDeleteDebra, this one really does make me feel old, not so much because of her '60s songs with Ike Turner, but her 1980s comeback. She was a staple of MTV, for crying out loud!
DeleteTina was a person I never imagined becoming old and dying. We are the richer for her life.
ReplyDeleteWell said, Andrew. And welcome back.
DeleteSo many of these people seem frozen in time for me, so it is always a shock when it is their time to go. I just talked with my sister, and she remembers seeing Tina Turner at the Richfield Coliseum, which itself must RIP with all its memories as it is only an empty field today.
ReplyDelete--Jim
And you know what else, Jim? The Richfield Coliseum was called the Richfield Coliseum for the entire 20 years of its existence, as this was before the era of naming rights for stadiums and sports arenas. Today there's the Rockets Mortgage FieldHouse that used to be the Quickens Loans Arena that used to be Gund Arena, Progressive Field that used to be Jacob's Field, and the Cleveland Browns Stadium that used to be the First Energy Stadium that used to be the Cleveland Browns Stadium. It gets confusing.
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