Ike Turner, Musician and Songwriter in Duo With Tina Turner, Dies at 76

By JON PARELES
Published: December 13, 2007

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.

Tina Turner described the relationship as abusive in her autobiography, "I,
Tina," which was adapted for the 1993 film "What's Love Got to Do With It?"
and made Mr. Turner's name synonymous with domestic abuse.

"I got a temper," he admitted in 1999 in his autobiography, "Takin' Back My
Name: The Confessions of Ike Turner." But he maintained that the film had
"overstated" it.

Mr. Turner's career extended back to the 1950s, when he played with
pioneering Mississippi Delta bluesmen and helped shape early rock 'n' roll
as well as soul and rhythm-and-blues. "Rocket 88," a song his band released
in 1951 under the name Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, is regularly
cited as a contender for the first rock-'n'-roll record for its beat, its
distorted guitar and its honking saxophone.

Ike and Tina Turner were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in
1991.

Ike Turner, whose full name is variously given as Izear Luster Turner Jr.
and Ike Wister Turner, was born in Clarksdale, Miss., and was brought up
there by his mother after his father, a minister, was beaten to death by a
white mob.

As a child Ike spent time at the local radio station, WROX, a hub for Delta
blues performances. According to Mr. Turner's autobiography, the D.J.s
taught him how to cue up and segue records, sometimes leaving him alone on
the air when he was 8 years old.

He grew up around Delta musicians like the bluesman Robert Nighthawk Jr. and
the pianist Pinetop Perkins, who gave him boogie-woogie lessons, and he
learned to play guitar.

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.

Mr. Turner became a session guitarist, known for his flamboyant,
note-bending use of his guitar's whammy bar. He was also a producer,
songwriter and talent scout for Sun and for RPM/Modern Records. He worked
with Mr. King, Bobby (Blue) Bland, Howlin' Wolf, Johnny Ace, Otis Rush,
Elmore James and many other blues and R&B musicians.

In 1954 he moved up the Mississippi River to East St. Louis, Ill., where his
disciplined and dynamic band became a major draw at local clubs. There, 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.

Ike and Tina Turner had a wedding ceremony in Tijuana, Mexico, in 1962; Mr.
Turner's book said they were never actually married. They had a son, Ronald,
who survives him, along with Jeanette Bazzell Turner and four other
children: Mia, Twanna, Michael and Ike Jr.

The Rolling Stones chose the Ike and Tina Turner Revue as its opening act on
a 1969 tour, introducing it to many rock fans. In 1971 the revue reached the
pop Top 10 with its version of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Proud Mary,"
with Ike's deep vocal counterpoint and Tina's memorable spoken-word
interlude. "We never do anything nice and easy," Ms. Turner says in the
song. "We always do it nice and rough." That song won a Grammy Award for
best R&B performance by a group.

Ms. Turner's account of the couple's years together describes domestic
violence, infidelity and drug use; his version does not deny that, although
he wrote in his book, "Tina and me, we had our fights, but we ain't had no
more fights than anybody else."

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.