*( Ike and.... )
Chart entered : 9 June 1966
Chart peak : 3
Number of hits : 41 ( 4 with Ike )
And here's someone else who took a while to cross over to the UK. Ike doesn't qualify on his own account so we don't have to go over the whole "Rocket 88" thing again. There's more than enough to say about one of the great "event" singles in any case.
Anna Mae Bullock was born in 1939 in Nutbush Tennessee and had an unsettled childhood moving between different households and finding consolation by singing in church. By 1958 she was working as a nurse. Her older sister Aillene was working as a barmaid at Club Manhattan in St Louis and invited her along. One of the regular acts was Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm. Turner was a respected guitarist and songwriter and an early pioneer of rock and roll but mainstream success had so far eluded him. Anna wanted to sing with the band and eventually got her chance. Accounts of her knocking the place dead are fanciful but Ike liked her enough for it to become a regular event and she was allowed to sing backing vocals on the B-side of a single later that year. Anna was initially involved with the saxophonist Raymond Hill and bore his child.
Her real break came in March 1960. Anna had been pestering to become a lead vocalist but Ike preferred to stick to what he had until falling out with one of them Art Lassiter. Lassiter failed to show at the recording sessions for a song called "A Fool In Love" and Anna was asked to do a guide vocal. The record company president Juggy Murray persuaded Ike to leave the vocal as it was and offered him $25,000 for the track. Ike and Anna were already romantically involved but this immediately changed their professional relationship. Ike insisted she changed her stage name to Tina and the record was put out as a joint effort. Ike also hired some more female backing singers to bolster the sound who became known as The Ikettes. The song, a dense Ray Charles-esque Southern blues dominated by Tina's uninhibited rasp made number 27 on the charts.
While Ike retained the musicians, the Kings of Rhythm became the Ike and Tina Turner Revue and became one of the hottest live acts in the country though chart success was sporadic. "You're My Baby" the follow up was a flop despite a cleaner sound probably because Tina doesn't do any lead lines. " I Idolize You" rectified the error with a dark and dirty performance on an overtly sexual song which nevertheless made number 82 in November 1960. "I'm Jealous" doesn't quite work , the song's light brassy arrangement not supporting such a wild vocal.
Next came their biggest US hit of the sixties "It's Gonna Work Out Fine " . Its authorship is murky being credited to Joe Seneca on the label but also claimed by Rose Marie McCoy. The spoken male part and guitar is also disputed with Mickey Baker , of the R & B duo Mickey & Sylvia claiming that they did the honours and that Ike wasn't on the original recording at all. Despite a rather lumpy rhythm section the record was an effective blend of bluesy vocal and rock and roll guitar. It reached number 14 in summer 1961 and was Grammy Nominated for Best Rock and Roll Vocal Performance. "Poor Fool" loses the male part and replaces the guitar with piano but is otherwise pretty similar and reached 38 at the end of the year. "Tra La La La La " was their last Top 50 hit ( just ) until the 1950s and is a somewhat calmer effort distinguished by a tinny harmonica .
Thereafter live work sustained them while their singles bumped along the bottom end of the charts or didn't score at all. "You Should A Treated Me Right" is a competent R & B workout with nice sax work. "Tina's Dilemma" is a shouty novelty which probably worked fine as part of the stage act but grates out of context. "The Argument" is a hardly-disguised re-write of "It's Gonna Work Out Fine". "Worried And Hurtin Inside" sticks to the formula while "Wake Up" , their last recording for Sue is distinguished by some great drumming.
"If I Can't Be First " their first single for Sonja records in September 1963 heralds a cleaner sound while the tautological "You Can't Miss Nothing That You Never Had" introduces a lower register Tina. In 1964 they switched to Warner Brothers for "A Fool For A Fool" produced by Buck Ram in a Motown vein. "It's All Over " is overblown and tuneless and ended the association.
The next single was "I Can't Believe What You Say" on Kent in September 1964 a funkier affair at a faster tempo which gave them a minor hit. A perfunctory version of James Brown's "Please Please, Please" came and went in November before Warner Brothers released the novelty "Ooh Poo Pa Doo" for Christmas directly against "He's The One" on Kent. The latter continues the funkier direction in their music.
1965 saw another change of label with Loma releasing "Tell Her I'm Not Home" which sees a Stax influence creeping in although the next single "Somebody Needs You" is pure Motown. By the time of its release they had switched again to Modern who put out "Good Bye, So Long" a rock and roll number with Ike impressing on the keys. "I Don't Need" goes back to the Stax sound.
By October they were back at Sue for the uptempo Northern Soul of "Two Is A Couple". "Can't Chance A Break Up" is out of the same mould. "Dear John" is a spoken word item about hiding spousal abuse which opens too many cans of worms to go into here. "Dust My Broom" is not the blues classic but an Ike and Tina co-write which became a Northern Soul favourite.
Which brings us, finally, to this one. Phil Spector caught a show they did in Los Angeles and wanted to work with Tina. Aware that Ike's control freak tendencies nearly matched his own Spector paid him $20,000 dollars to stay away from the sessions. Tina was then worked into the ground to produce the perfect vocal, ending up singing in her bra. The cost of all the session musicians and backing vocalists involved meant Spector paid out another $22,000 making it the most expensive single to date.
The song was written by Spector with Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich ; it compares a woman's love to a girl's love for her rag doll or a puppy's love for its master. Spector throws so much into the arrangement it could only work with a larger than life vocal and Tina's scorching rasp proves equal to the task. Spector thought it was his best work and was mortified when it only limped to number 88 despite its success overseas.
Conspiracy theorists subsequently fed Spector's paranoia suggesting that he had made too many enemies in the business who wanted it to fail. The standard version, from the likes of Paul Gambaccini, is that it fell foul of airplay politics; it was too pop for R & B radio and too R & B for the white stations. It may have been just that Spector's sound had had its day.
"River....." marks the end of the Wall of Sound ( at least as far as its creator is concerned ). Spector retreated into his mansion and sulked for two years, the start of the long slide into mental illness which ended at the California State Prison in 2009. For Ike and Tina on the other hand the picture was much brighter. They had $20,000 in the bank and an invitation to tour with the Stones on the back of the single's European success. It inaugurated a period of more consistent commercial success for the remaining time they were together.
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