April 2, 2019 • 40 mins
Ike Turner very well may have invented rock ‘n’ roll; Tina Turner is one of the most electrifying entertainers to ever take the stage. Together, the pair ascended to icon status through the music they made together. But the couple’s road to the top was anything but smooth. It was rough and violent. Ike Turner, for all of his talent as a musician, was abusive and heavily addicted to cocaine, and in the end did everything he could to bring his wife down with him. This is the story of the couple's rise, Ike’s ultimate demise, and Tina’s triumph.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Disgraceland as a production of Double Elvis.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
The stories about rock and roll pioneer Ike Turner are insane,
as are the stories about his volatile relationship with his wife,
Tina Turner. I claim to have been married more than
a dozen times and to have spent more than eleven
million dollars on cocaine over the course of his life.
He once fired Jimmy Hendrix from his band, and he
(00:36):
discovered Tina Turner, who, among her many other accomplishments, top
McJagger to dance. During their marriage, Ike Turner grew heavily
addicted to coke, and as a result, his natural rough
and tumble demeanor intensified. He beat his wife, a musical partner, Tina, mercilessly.
Tina Turner was a raw talent whose singing style fit
(00:57):
naturally into Ike's patented rough take on rhythm and blues,
a style that befittes demons. Together, they were, as Tina
would later proclaim, nice and rough. But with or without Tina,
Ike Turner was mean and dangerous, the epitome of the
bad bad man. While married to Tina, he built a
sexual layer over his studio for his groupies and hangers
(01:18):
on kept a gun on him almost always and grew
accustomed to making his own drug runs in the Hollywood
Hills and his rolls Royce by himself. Ike and Tina
Turner had one of the most violent and volatile relationships
in rock and roll history. But they made great music.
And that music you heard at the top of the
show that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop
(01:39):
from my melotron called Melo Sachs bossa BK one. I
played you that loop because I can't afford the rights
to kiss and Say Goodbye by the Manhattans. And why
would I play you that specific slice of deep throated
slow jam cheese.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Could I afford it?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Because that was the number one song in America on
July twenty seven, teen seventy six, And that was the
day Tina finally split from Ike, severing one of rock
and roll's most talented couples forever, and took our first
triumphant steps towards cementing her own legacy as one of
pop music's greatest icons. On this episode, mellow Sax's Deep
(02:17):
Throated Cheese and the rough music and relationship with Ike
and Tina Turner.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
I'm Jake Brennan in This This Disgraceland.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
The show that night was at Caesar's Palace, but the
cocaine was at the International Hotel Las Vegas. Gigs started
early and so they then ended early, which meant Ike
Turner world class night. Owl needed to find a way
to occupy himself for the rest of the night, and
that meant sex, and if he was going to take
advantage of all that Vegas had to offer for then
(03:00):
cocaine was necessary for stamina. Not that Ike Turner needed
motivation for sex, but coke got them high and had
the added benefit of not derailing him sexually like most
other drugs.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
When his show business workloads.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Started to pick up back in the fifties, Ike was
so anti drug that he fired members of his band,
The Kings of Rhythm if they were even suspected of using.
Ike had seen dope heroin creep into the scene and
start to cause real problems. Heroin was originally a jazz
man's drug. Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis were
all known users, but as various styles of American roots
(03:39):
music filtered into one potent mix to become rock and roll,
various drugs of choice from various musicians affiliated with those
styles came along for the ride. Ray Charles was hooked
on heroin by the late nineteen forties and rock and
roll was still a decade away, so dope wasn't going
to cut it for Ike Turner. He had too much
to do dealing with his band members. It was a
(04:00):
full time headache, and there was always a record label
calling and harassing him for the latest overdue single or album.
Ike worked hard. His schedule, like him, was rough when
not writing, recording or blowing off steam. There were the
live shows during the first part of his career, six
to seven nights a week of hard work. Some of
those early Chitlin circuit gigs literally went all night long.
(04:23):
Ike and Tina began to find success with their first
singles think It's Going to Work Out Fine and I
Idolize You in the early sixties, but now, due in
part to Tina's growing domesticity, I cut the touring schedule
back to three to five shows a week. Still, the
schedule was relentless, just as Ike liked it, so heroin
wasn't going to cut it. Something else was needed, something strong,
(04:46):
where the desired effect was mania, not oblivion. That was
sort of the pitch King Curtis made the Ike some
years ago backstage after a gig. Ike, Man, you're right
not to mess with that brown stuff. It'll make you soft.
This stuff, it'll make you go, go go all night long.
Ike was impressed. King Curtis blew hard just like Ike's
(05:08):
Idyl Louis Jordan and the cocaine. The way it looked
it was almost pretty white, pure looking, packaged up like
a little pillow inside of King Curtis's saxophone case. Three
thousand dollars worth. That was a lot of money for
a lot of cocaine. Ike was flushed, so what the hell?
It was an investment. He thought he'd share it with
the band get him going for real cooking. Ike pulled
(05:30):
out a stack of hundreds and peeled off three k
for Curtis. He grabbed the massive bag of coke and
stuffed it into his own bag and hit the street
in search of his hotel. Forty five minutes later, he
was sprinting out of that same hotel and back toward
the venue to lay and asked looking on King Curtis,
the likes of which he'd never seen. The coke wasn't coke.
It was dreno or baking soda or flour, or some
(05:52):
impure combination of the three. He'd been had by the
sax man, who by now was nowhere in sight, long
gone in the wind. Ike learned a lesson that night.
Never trust no one, especially not a dealer. From then on,
Ike made as many deals as he could by himself,
no matter how famous he got, and he always always
(06:14):
sampled the product before purchasing it, so he was super
high when he exited room three zero zero nine on
the thirtieth floor of the International Hotel that night in
nineteen seventy one. The dealer had set him upright. Ike
paid more than three grand and ended up with less
coke than Curtis tried selling him back in the day.
But Ike, despite the inflation, was happy, if not satisfied.
(06:39):
Satisfaction would come later in his suite back at Caesar's.
While Tina slept in her suite quietly on another floor
of the hotel, Ike and a few select male members
of his band would party their way into the morning
through a mountain of cocaine in a rhythm King's harem
of Vegas showgirls. But at the moment, Ike was moving
quick down the hall on his brain as usual. He
(07:02):
heard the familiar ding of the elevator and then a
loud gaggle of slow moving Southern voices surrounding the entourage
exited through the elevator doors. The group of men moved
toward him, all dark shades, brill cream and pinky rings,
the smell of cheap cologne and bad barbecue making its
way out in front of them and down the hall
toward Ike. In the middle of the gaggle, Ike recognized
(07:24):
a distinct laugh, deep resonant, raspy, infectious. As Ike approached,
the entourage split, revealing in its center the one and
only King of rock and Roll, Elvis Presley. Ike Turner,
not one to be easily impressed, was, for a split
second anyways, shocked, not by Elvis's celebrity but by his size.
(07:46):
Ike hadn't seen the King since the sixty eight Comeback
special on NBC a couple years prior, where Elvis presented
a morse s felt, if not more seasoned, version of
himself in an effort to reclaim his crown from the
hippies who'd stolen the throne, turning on and tuning out.
But here now was Vegas Elvis, and to Ike he
was one fat looking motherfucker who looked like he'd seen
(08:08):
better days. He certainly didn't look like no king king
of rock and roll shit. Rock and roll was a genre.
Ike Turner had every right to claim he invented. So
called experts debated the subject, but the fact was that
there was no rock and roll before Rocket eighty eight,
and it was Ike Turner's mind that launched Rocket eighty eight.
That song had that boogie woogie rock and roll vibe
(08:30):
before any of that hip shaking, hillbilly shit Elvis put out.
That brought him to the attention of Colonel Parker, who
eventually brought Elvis to RCA, into Hollywood, and thus rock
and roll to the world over, making teenagers piss their
pants and screamed so loud that they drowned out the
reverberations of Rocket eighty eight, and Ike Turners claimed any
sort of throne. But to Ike Turner, a man who
(08:51):
knew a thing or two about a thing or two,
number one being rock, number two being roll, Elvis Presley
was as much a king as king. Curtis was a
coke dealer despite whatever coked up look of shock Ike
Turner had on his face there in the hallway of
the thirtieth floor of the International Hotel. There was no
mistaking who he was, Ike motherfucking Turner, and Elvis was
(09:11):
happier than a pig and shit to see him. A
big smile broke over his fat face. Oh man, Ike Turner,
can you believe it? Boys? Elvis went straight at Ike.
Ike stiffened his backbone, clenched his fists, and steeled himself.
He was about to lay a hard ride on the
king when Elvis offered his hand to shake Ike's.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Man, it's good to see you. Do you recognize me?
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Ike give him a puzzled look, stared said nothing, but
thought recognize you, motherfucker? I have eyes, don't I? Elvis Presley.
Elvis kept at it. Hey, do you remember me? Ike's
expression softened to touch. Elvis is getting more excited from
back in Memphis. Man the juke joined on eleventh used
to let me in the back door. Ike remembered. Now
(09:58):
it was distant button Elvis's fat mug. I could see
back twenty years to another time, a time when only
one of the two men had made a name for himself,
and it wasn't the white man with the entourage looking
at him funny. It was Ike Turner, who back in
nineteen fifty one was enjoying the success of Rocket eighty eight,
knocking him dead alongside Little Junior Parker and Willie Nicks
(10:19):
and whatever bucket of blood could afford him. That night.
Ike was on piano back then at those West Memphis gigs.
At the gig on eleven, the piano was set up
at the back of the stage, right next to the
exit door which led to the alley out back, where
on most knights, a good looking kid with a bad
complexion and silly looking sideburns would double park his work
truck and do his best to sneak into the All
(10:40):
Black Club through the back. He had a friendly enough
demeanor and for whatever reason, didn't rub Ike the wrong way,
so Ike would let him in to watch the show
from behind his piano, where Ike would mess around playing
while standing up, googly eyeing the crowd, dancing like a fool,
purposefully knocking his knees together and shaking his hips all
abandoned all R and B and the teenage truck driver
(11:03):
studying it all behind the piano none other than the
pubescent would be king of rock and roll himself, Elvis Presley.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
It all came back to Ike. Now.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
He had no idea back then, no idea that the
young kid who would blanket airways with blue suede shoes
and melt teenage hearts on the big screen in Blue
Hawaii was the same kid who I gave incidental rock
and roll lessons to back in West Memphis at fifty one. Yeah,
I recognize you, Ike said flatly, Now, if you'd excuse me,
(11:34):
I'm late for my date. And with that Ike paraded
past Elvis's entourage and down the corridor with all the
entitlement of a pavity hotel, duck into the elevator, down
into the lobby, and off into the night. As the
elevator descended, I couldn't help but think about those days
back in Memphis. But his mind took him further back
past Memphis to Clarksdale, Mississippi, where he grew up in
(11:57):
a modest house on Washington Avenue, a house that, back
in the late nineteen thirties was nothing more than a
house of horror for the young boy Ike Turner. The
first thing he heard were the trucks screeching up out front.
There wasn't a lot of traffic in Ike's childhood neighborhood,
especially not at night. Then the voice is angry, excited,
(12:18):
and unmistakably white. Then the door busted open and broke
and clean off its lock and loudly puncturing the wall
with the backside of the doorknob. The man entered the
Turner home with bats, loudly forcing themselves in through everything
in their way. Ike rose up out of his bed
and ran to his doorway to see what was happening.
And that's when he saw his father being dragged, kicking
(12:38):
and screaming down the hall by a small mob of
white men. And they were gone almost as quickly as
they came, stealing away his father in the dead of night,
leaving behind his mother hysterical, screaming, crying, horrified. Ike was petrified,
unable to move, unable to cry, scared in the stillness,
hardened in that one moment, like a rock a stone
(12:59):
result to make sure nobody ever came into his house
again like that, not without a fight. An hour or
so later, there was the sound of familiar tires rumbling
down the dirt road and squealing to a stop in
front of their house, voices a loud thud, the acceleration
of the truck once again, and then nothing. Ike with
(13:19):
his mom and toe, ran out to the front yard,
and there, lying on the grass was what remained of
the man of the house, Ike's dad, a mangled mess
of broken bones, blood and bruises, unconscious but breathing, barely
dead quiet. Serious medical treatment for African Americans and segregated
(13:40):
nineteen thirties Clarksdale, Mississippi was poor at best. Extended hospital stays,
even for the near dead, were not allowed, so the
Board of Health built a tent, a tent in the
Turner's backyard for Ike's dad to convalesce.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
There.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
He remained for several years, immobile in a near vegetative
state in a tent backyard. The beating, it was later learned,
was because Ike's dad had supposedly been sleeping with a
white woman. Whatever the reason, the state he was in
in his presence in the backyard was a constant reminder
of the brutally racist and rough reality Ike Turner lived
(14:16):
in mercifully. Ike's father, after a few years, finally succumbed
to his wounds and died. Ike's mom remarried, and from
there things somehow got worse for Ike. His stepfather drunk
most of the time, violent all of the time, beat
young Ike regularly, and by age six, Ike was sleeping
with an adult neighborho would invite the boy into her
(14:36):
yard to feed her chickens and proceeded to take advantage
of him. He was also raped repeatedly by two other
local adult women, a charge that in adulthood, Ike didn't
seem to mind and used to burnish his manly image.
But his childhood was a nightmare until he found music
over at Clarksdale's local radio station WROX, where Ike Turner,
(14:59):
by the time he was eight years old, would spend
most of his days at first running errands for the
local DJs, and eventually subbing for them when they needed
time off. It was during this time that Ike met
piano player pine Top Perkins and convinced his mother to
pay for piano lessons. Ike graduated from Pinetop anyway, having
(15:19):
learned piano, he moved on to teaching himself guitar. It
moved into the Riverside Hotel in Clarksdale, the local establishment
that hosted most of the day's prominent touring musicians, Duke
Ellington and Sonny Boy Williamson among them. The Riverside, along
with downtown Clarksdale, was Ike Turner's campus. His education was
in full swing, his professors some of the greatest blues
(15:41):
and jazz men of all time.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Ike took his.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Education and formed the Ike Turner Kings of Rhythm his
master's thesis, Rocket eighty eight, a single that sold close
to half a million copies, but only made Ike im
easily twenty dollars due to the fact that Ike wasn'tcredited
on the original recording. But the song did make Ike
Turner one of the most happy being musicians in Memphis
at the time, and that was something money couldn't buy.
(16:05):
But Ike quickly outgrew Memphis. New gigs were needed and
new digs desired, so Ike Turner and his Kings of
Rhythm headed north about three hundred miles to Saint Louis,
where he would discover the raw talents of seventeen year
old Anime Bullock, who Ike would soon make known to
the world over as Tina Turner. Tina Turner grew up
(16:42):
as Anime Bullock in a one horse town in Tennessee
called Nutbush, with a population of two hundred and fifty
nine and exactly one road running through it. The town
had a church, a post office in a schoolhouse with
a single room, where Anime studied until the ninth grade.
Nutbush was deep cotton country, a place where African American
(17:02):
sharecroppers tended fields that were once worked by their slave ancestors,
Floyd and Zelma Bullock. Anime's parents were a sharecroppers, and
while Tina would later say she never felt poor, there
was always food on the table when sometimes even new clothes,
But life in the Bullock household was far from happy.
Annime and her sister were routinely shuttled among the homes
(17:25):
of grandparents and cousins in and around Hayward County, but
even still, that was a lot better than being around
when their parents were fighting. Oftentimes the spats turned physical.
Divorce was inevitable. When her mother, Zelma had had enough
of being a wife and mother enough of Nutbush in
its one horse, she packed up and lit out of
town on her own without her eleven year old daughter Anime,
(17:49):
without even saying goodbye. For Anime, this was a hurt
that was never going to go away, and for the
next few years she was raised by her grandmother in
a tidy house with a large garden. She loved her grandmother,
and her grandmother loved her, and life was as good
as it could be for her parentless child until suddenly
her beloved grandmother died and Anime Bullock, who was still
(18:09):
in high school, was suddenly on her own, so she
moved to Saint Louis to live with her unloving mother.
A lot of things about Tina's years with Ike Turner
make more sense if you remember this. When she met him,
she was seventeen years old. With her big sister Aileen,
she hit the Manhattan Club in East Saint Louis, where
Ike and his band played. When Tina got her chance
(18:31):
on stage, it turned out to the delight of the
Manhattan Club that Aileen's little sister could sing, and Little Anne,
as she was then known, loved singing and dancing and
connecting with the crowd. As for Ike, he did a
double take. He liked what he heard because what he
heard was the sound of money. So he did what
I like usually did, threw his money around like a fool.
(18:51):
He bought Anime clothes jewelry, a fur coat. Before long
she was driving a cadillact to school, and Little Anne
admired the man's music and charisma and liked the idea
of a career he could give her.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
She just had a change of name.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Little Anne wasn't powerful enough for her voice, so at
the age of twenty, convinced by Ike that it was
the right thing to do, she took the professional name
Tina Turner. Now that sounded more powerful, she went along
with it. The man a good show, biss since she thought,
even though when she first laid eyes on him on
stage that night, she said she couldn't help thinking, God,
(19:25):
he's ugly. At that point, Tina didn't know just how
ugly it would get. Ugly and rough go hand in hand,
and life with Ike was rough. The way Ike chose
to live. He had a way of sapping the joy
out of everything. Case in point, Ike in Tina's wedding,
it was transactional, no heart, and pulled off on the
(19:45):
fly over the border in Tijuana, Mexico. For Tina, the
wedding was a straight up humiliation in the heat in
the filth of the office of the very First Justice
of Peace that they found Tina batted away the flies
and on the dotted line. There was no bridle dress,
no you may now kiss the bride, no wedding cake,
(20:07):
just sweat, grime and a very horny Ike. Horny for what.
Tina didn't know, but she could tell Ike had his
thoughts on more than just her. Once the transaction was complete,
Ike decided it was time to celebrate, so naturally, he
took his newlywed bride to a live Tijuana sex show.
Superman was his name, and he was part Carney's side
(20:30):
show and part Central American legend, a freak show, and
a main attraction twelve inches below the belt, flaccid, unbelievable
to the naked eye. The rumor was that he took
his name from the original Superman, not the George Reeves
character from the popular American television series, but from the
Cuban sex worker who worked two, sometimes three, live sex
(20:53):
shows a night in a musty old Havana theater and
went by the name Superman. Tijuana Superman, a journal or
not was about to horrify the newly minted missus Ike Turner.
The audience, drunk and giddy with anticipation, shifted anxiously on
their beer stained wooden chairs. Dank smoke hung low throughout
the club. Ike sipped his drink expressionless, a cold, flat
(21:17):
stare fixed upon his wife, who sat quietly in fear
of protesting, knowing that any complaint would invite Ike's fists
to rain down upon her.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
As much as she didn't.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Want to bear witness to a live sex show hours
after getting married, or at all, for that matter, she
sure as hell did not want a black eye on
her wedding night, so she sat quiet, uncomfortable, scared. The
music hit and the audience turned their attention to the
tiny stage.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
MC curtain was drawn back.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
At center stage, there was a loosely bound female sex
worker wearing next to nothing, her binds tended to by
too scantily clad wind in veils made it look like
traditional belly dancers. Then, from stage left, Superman appeared, wearing
a dark red velvet cape. His black hair and oil
(22:14):
slick combed straight back over his head to the nape
of his neck, his skin caramel colored with beads of
sweat obvious to those in the first few rows. He
was tall, homely, menacing. He slowly walked the stage circling
the women, before stopping and turning to the audience. He
dropped his cape and robed and revealed his superpower to
(22:36):
the crowd. Short gasps and applause spread and burst throughout
the moon. The few women who were in the audience
looked horrified, most of the men smiled in disbelief, and
a few did their best to secretly suppress their arousal.
Superman turned toward his partner in this unholy union. What
came next was rough. Tina Turner covered her eyes and
(22:57):
her husband, White Turner, held back a devilish smile. Wow
sipped his drink slowly. Somehow with more menace than Superman.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
We'll be right back after this word word word.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Back Before Tiajuana, Superman, mister and missus, Ike Turner had
a different kind of relationship. Ike was betting on Tina's talent,
and in the beginning it was a risk born more
out of necessity and circumstance than foresight and faith. Art
was late for the recording session. Ike was pissed. It
was a power move. Ike knew it. Art wanted more money,
(23:36):
but fuck that. Ike was the star. Ike was the
band leader, even if he didn't sing lead. Art was
only fronting the Kings of Rhythm because Ike Turner led.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Him front the Kings of Rhythm.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
If Art wanted more bread, he could go out and
get it himself, just like Ike had done. This was,
after all, still America. Ike would be damned if he
was going to let some glorified backup singer leverage him
into increasing his salary, especially when said singer had no
real leverage.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
So fuck them.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
When Art didn't show for the session, Ike simply called
up one of his female backup singers into the vocal booth.
Little Anne could handle the tune, I thought. He just
switched the lyrics around so it could be sung from
a female's perspective, and the result a rhythm in blues explosion.
A Fool in Love written and recorded by Ike Turner's
sung by Anime Bullock aka Tina Turner and released in
(24:24):
July nineteen sixty on the Sue Records label. Jumped off
of the vinyl and stirred listeners at their core. Tina's
sultry gospel vocal intro quickly gives way to an r
and b rave up that is nothing short of exhilarating.
The song cooks and it quickly ascended the charts. A
Fool in Love crossed over from the R and B
charts to the pop charts and became a million seller.
(24:46):
Ike and Tina Turner were suddenly stars. Tina, at twenty
years old and with Ike at her side, made her
first televised appearance on American Bandstand.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
She was nine months pregnant at the time.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Ike wasn't gonna let a little thing like his a
baby mama getting the way of his success. It had
been a long time since his first and only hit,
Rocket eighty eight, a hit he did not benefit from financially,
so there was no way he wasn't going to milk
this run a success for all it was worth. Tina
could holler pregnants up on stage and shake it. Preggers
are not And Tina brought it, sang her ass off.
(25:20):
It was heavy, deep, and she shook it with the
power of a thousand suns and let the world know
that there was more than one badass on stage that night.
The last name of Turner, A Fool in Love was
followed by more hits, but Ike did not rest the
Ike and Tina Turner review played up to three hundred
shows a year on their own in support of megastars
like the Rolling Stones. Ike made deal a deal writing
(25:43):
and recording whenever you get the chance, in order to
bring in as much bread as possible. Famed record producer
Phil Spector came calling for Tina, not Ike. Phil paid
twenty grand to get Ike to fuck off out of
the studio so that he could have Tina all to
himself while the tape was rolling. The result was the
impecct We produced and performed Single River, Deep Mountain High.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
In the heady days of all of this.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Success, after the Tiajuana wedding, Ike and Tina settled into
the Baldwin Hills section of Los Angeles, alongside other celebrities
like Tina's idol, Gray Charles. Success was sweet, but not
sweet enough to mask Ike's rough nature. Ike was relentless,
rain or shine, in sickness or in health. He worked
(26:27):
Tina in this band like Georgia Mules. For Tina, it
wasn't just the travel and schedule of the gigs that
was rough, or later, the longer hours and the variety shows,
the residency in Las Vegas. Yes, all of that took energy,
but Tina herself a perfectionist gave her all on stage
without fail, but it was more than the work. Ike
(26:48):
wore her down in their private moments. The man was mean,
a world class prick. When he had first bestowed the
name Tina Turner upon her, she pushed back. He chosen
Tina because it rhymed with Sheena of Sheena, Queen of
the Jungle, the image he had in mind for his
future wife. He'd also trademarked the name. He owned it,
(27:08):
but Tina didn't want it. Anime is who I am,
she said, resting her hand on her pregnant belly. Ike
reacted viciously. First he screamed, Then, to her horror, he
picked up a wooden shoe stretcher smacked her across the
head with it. He always hit her in the head,
and always was something hard and blunt. Ike used to say,
(27:29):
a guitar player needs his hands, so he never fights
with his fists. So he beat Tina about her head
over and over and over until she was bloody. And
then he beat her some more for crying about it.
And after that he ordered her under the bed, where
he would then rape her. And that was the way
I turned her. Like to end an argument, piece of
(27:50):
shit Ike pushed Tina hard. He had no patience for
illness or weakness of any kind. It fucked with his
total control. After torn with the rolling stones, Tina was sick.
She'd driven herself into the hospital, where she was admitted
and treated for TV, an illness that was practically a
(28:10):
death sentence.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Up until about.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Nineteen forty making Keys sent flowers, but Ike nothing, not
a He never even visited. Not much later in the relationship,
Ike would humiliate Tina daily by openly sleeping with three
other women who he kept at their house. At their house,
Tina felt powerless and visible. She began to think of
ways to escape. She went to the doctor for sleeping pills.
(28:33):
After dinner one night, she retired to the master bathroom
and swallowed them all.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
She placed each of the fifty pills.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
On her tongue one at a time, filled the paper
cup with water, and gulped hard. It would be over soon,
thank God, she thought. She awoke in the hospital to
Ike clutching her shoulders and shaking her, screaming into her face,
calling her a failure. She wasn't even woman enough to
kill herself to finish the job, Ike repeated to her,
over and over again she should just fucking die do
(29:01):
him a favor. When she didn't, he told her she
better have her ass out of bed on the quick
because they had a gig that night. The abuse continued,
physical and emotional. As Ike's use of cocaine increased, he
took to beating Tina with more regularity, and the beating
seemed born just as much from Ike's short coke addled
fuse as they were some sick sexual kink. Somehow, Tina
(29:24):
held on for dear life, becoming a pro at excuse
making and applying makeup and just the right way to
mask the darkness she was living through while it manifest
about her repeatedly swollen face and head. Until nineteen seventy six, anyway,
en route to Dallas from La Tina in a window
seat scrunched up uncomfortably next to her husband's new pregnant girlfriend,
(29:48):
with Ike in the coveted aisle seat next to them.
Unfucking believable, Tina thought Ike had some golf and he
had zero self awareness. Furthering the insult, Ike stretched himself
out and lay his long legs across the laps that
both of the women he thought belonged to him. For Tina,
there was something about the way he imposed himself, draping
(30:09):
his body across her and his girlfriend that got to her.
The way I put his big shiny shoes on the
freshly pressed slacks of her pretty white suit. The weight
of him on her body, the weight of him on
her life. At this moment, it was too much. Internally,
Tina had reached a tipping point. But on the outside,
Tina remained in her seat, still afraid to move. She
(30:32):
didn't want another beating. The beatings were bad, but what
was almost worse was the time just before the beating,
the anticipation, when you felt that dreg when you knew
it was coming. Throughout all of the beatings, Tina had
managed to acclimate herself to the fucked up ways of
her abusive husband. The way she saw it, he was
so goddamn mean that once he was around, he didn't
(30:53):
want him to leave, because then he'd have to deal
with the dread of knowing he was eventually going to
come back. But for Tina, in this moment the plane,
something was shifting in the limo on the way to
the hotel, Ike was feeling playful. He tried feeding Tina
some chocolate. Normally, she'd have gone along with it and
taken what he offered, even when she didn't want it.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
But she I kept insisting.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
And he eventually shoved the melting chocolate into Tina's face
and it dripped onto her white suit. Normally should have
brushed us off, But not today, I said.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
No, Tina shouted. Predictably, Ike flew into a rage.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
But on that day, in that limo, somewhere in the
middle of that big state of Texas, Tina Turner did
not endure the beating.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
She fought back.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
She fought rough and hard with her teeth and her
nails and her stilettos. And when the couple emerged from
the car at the hotel, they were bloody. Ike's shirt
was torn and Tina's white suit was turned red with
her blood. Once in the room, he raped her, then
fell asleep. Tina, shaken but determined, quietly dressed and gathered
a few belongings and escaped. Staggering from her injuries, she
(32:02):
split from the hotel across the highway on foot, unafraid
of the oncoming traffic. She'd survive worse. At the counter
of a small one star motel, she introduced herself as
if she needed any introduction. I'm Tina Turner. I need
a place to stay. I have twenty six cents in
my pocket, but if you give me a room, I
promise I will pay it back. The clerk took a moment,
(32:25):
surveyed her cuts and bruises, and looked through the eye
and said, welcome, missus Turner.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
Let me show you then room.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
Back before Tina split from Ike, the two were the
picture of domesticity on the outside, despite the horror show
that was their actual relationship. Their home near suburban Englewood,
with their massive Imperial Oil painting portrait the couple, state
of the art, high five high pile shag, elaborate fish tanks,
swimming pool, revolving door of coming and going musicians, in
(33:07):
a steady flow of children being shuffled to and from
sports practices, seemed to say nothing to see here, just
a slightly eccentric rock and roll couple living the white
picket fence life in our mildly ostentatious way. Tina ran
the home, Ike ran the business, and taking care of
business at home wasn't going to happen. So Ike built
Bullock Sound his studio, a private studio where musicians were
(33:31):
welcome and Tina could visit, but never unannounced, and of
course Ike's special guests were always around.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
Ballock was a.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Short ride away from the Turner home and operated under
the guise of work, but its other purpose was his
Ike's own personal clubhouse, or as Tina called it, the whorehouse.
Ike had an apartment built upstairs in the studio where
he spent most nights. He decorated the joint with his
own flare, lots of jungle prints, candelabras, Kamasutra murals, gold
(34:00):
played the tables, ten foot tall Romanesque statues, a garish
canopied bed, and a sofa with massive hard ons for arms.
Ballock Sound had other interesting features as well, like the
three inch thick doors that locked automatically behind each visitor
and required a secret code to exit, and the elaborate
security system. Nothing strange for a recording studio except for
(34:21):
the internal eye in the sky cameras I get installed
throughout the control room in his second floor apartment. Ike
kept himself busy, first with sex near constant orgies, drugged
out sex slaves, burned out starlets from Hollywood. On the backside,
working girls from the CD motels over by lax aspiring,
I gets looking for the next big break, singing back
(34:42):
up behind Tina. They all took their turn in Ike's barrow.
When Ike wasn't partying, he was writing and recording, trying
to keep up with the seventies. George Clinton and James
Brown did not sleep. They had LSD and PCP, respectively.
Ike had to find his own funk. It was a
full time job in a assistance was needed, and that's
where the cocaine came in. Lots and lots and lots
(35:05):
and lots and lots of cocaine. Ike started freebasing in
nineteen seventy four and kept a massive stockpile of coke
around him at all times, once spending as much as
one hundred thousand dollars in a two month period on
cocaine to fuel the constant party. In ongoing recording sessions
of Bolok later, I would estimate that he had spent
(35:25):
eleven million dollars on cocaine over a fifteen year period
from nineteen seventy four to nineteen ninety. During that time,
he burnt a hole cleaned through his septum and would
horrify friends by sticking a pen through it from one
side to the other. He was also arrested ten times,
convicted twice, and served hard time thirteen months of a
(35:45):
four year sentence. The security cameras of Bolock Sound were
not apparently cop proof. The voice on the other side
of the door was clear, open the fuck up now,
or we're coming in. Ike could see them out on
the street from his massive wall of video monitors in
his control room. Local cops yokels LA's mildless. It wasn't
(36:09):
the Feds, so it would take them puttson around for
an hour at least to break through the steel doors
and find their way to Ike through the studio's maze.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
Of car doors.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Ike, standing in the middle of his control room and
nothing but a silk kimono in velvet slippers, calmly sipped
his drink. This was the moment he'd waited for all
of his life to show the invasive authority figures that
he would not go quietly, if at all, he'd make
them work for it.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
This was his fortress.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
He patted his newest girlfriend on her ass, nearly naked
at his side, picked his forty five up off the
studio console. The one with the state of the art
IBM mixed memorizer, and calmly went about trying to locate
the rest of the firearms.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
And cocaine in the studio.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
He was able to squirrel most of the contraband wave
before the cops finally busted in, But what he forgot
the hide were the blue boxes he legal devices that
allowed Ike in his boys to place free long distance
telephone calls, seemingly harmless compared to the drugs and weaponry
Ike had hidden in his possession, but still very much illegal.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Ike Turner was busted.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
It was the first of a series of arrests that
would disrupt the rest of Ike Turner's career in personal life.
It signaled the end Forbolic Sound, a studio that ultimately
caught fire mysteriously and burnt to the ground at a
time later in Ike's life when he was in the
middle of extreme financial hardship. By the time Tina left,
Ike had little but his name, which, by then in
(37:35):
the music industry, at least from the perspective of the
people who wrote the checks, was mud. Tina, on the
other hand, had her name Tina Turner, ironically, a name
I had given her a name Ike had trademarked, and
a name that Ike had tried to claim was his
and the divorce and thus prevent her from using it
going forward in her career, a claim he lost. Tina
(37:57):
Turner took her name and her immense talent out for
under her abusive, controlling, piece of shit husband and turned
herself into literally the biggest pop star on the planet,
a level of success that Ike Turner, despite whatever claims
he had on the invention of rock and roll, would
never attain, and it drove him crazy and deeper into
a coke field madness. Ike finished as he started on
(38:20):
a rough road. His descent ran parallel to Tina's rise,
a nice cap to a rough career. Her nineteen eighty
four single What's Love Got to Do With It from
her solo album Private Dancer, went to number one on
the pop charts and won three Grammy Awards for Record
of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Female
Pop Vocal Performance. Throughout the eighties and nineties, Tina Turner
(38:42):
released several multi platinum albums, appeared in feature length films,
and saw her own biopic, What's Love Got to Do
With It? Cementer's status as a musical icon these days.
At the time of this recording, Tina Turner, the Queen
of Rock and Roll, is seventy nine years old, worth
over a quarter of a billion dollars in shilling in
her Swiss mansion, reportedly planning her own funeral, an affair
(39:04):
she claims will be a bigger and better sendoff than
that of her one time rival, the recently the parted
Queen of Soul Erretha Franklin.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
Ike Turner won't be attending.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
He died of a cocaine overdose at the age of
seventy six in two thousand and seven. Disgrace, I'm Jake
Brennan and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by Yours
(39:37):
Truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits
for this episode can be found on the show notes
page at disgracelampod dot com. If you're listening as a
Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show.
We really appreciate it, and if not, you can become
a member right now by going to disgrace lampod dot com.
Slash Membership members can listen to every episode of disgracelam
(40:00):
Ad free.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
Plus you'll get one brand.
Speaker 4 (40:03):
New exclusive episode every month, weekly unscripted bonus episode, special
audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit
disgraylampod dot com slash membership for details, Rate and review
the show, and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and
Facebook at disgracelampod and on YouTube at YouTube dot com
slash at Disgraceslampod Rock a Roller
Speaker 2 (40:29):
He then man
Disgraceland as a production of Double Elvis.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
The stories about rock and roll pioneer Ike Turner are insane,
as are the stories about his volatile relationship with his wife,
Tina Turner. I claim to have been married more than
a dozen times and to have spent more than eleven
million dollars on cocaine over the course of his life.
He once fired Jimmy Hendrix from his band, and he
(00:36):
discovered Tina Turner, who, among her many other accomplishments, top
McJagger to dance. During their marriage, Ike Turner grew heavily
addicted to coke, and as a result, his natural rough
and tumble demeanor intensified. He beat his wife, a musical partner, Tina, mercilessly.
Tina Turner was a raw talent whose singing style fit
(00:57):
naturally into Ike's patented rough take on rhythm and blues,
a style that befittes demons. Together, they were, as Tina
would later proclaim, nice and rough. But with or without Tina,
Ike Turner was mean and dangerous, the epitome of the
bad bad man. While married to Tina, he built a
sexual layer over his studio for his groupies and hangers
(01:18):
on kept a gun on him almost always and grew
accustomed to making his own drug runs in the Hollywood
Hills and his rolls Royce by himself. Ike and Tina
Turner had one of the most violent and volatile relationships
in rock and roll history. But they made great music.
And that music you heard at the top of the
show that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop
(01:39):
from my melotron called Melo Sachs bossa BK one. I
played you that loop because I can't afford the rights
to kiss and Say Goodbye by the Manhattans. And why
would I play you that specific slice of deep throated
slow jam cheese.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Could I afford it?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Because that was the number one song in America on
July twenty seven, teen seventy six, And that was the
day Tina finally split from Ike, severing one of rock
and roll's most talented couples forever, and took our first
triumphant steps towards cementing her own legacy as one of
pop music's greatest icons. On this episode, mellow Sax's Deep
(02:17):
Throated Cheese and the rough music and relationship with Ike
and Tina Turner.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
I'm Jake Brennan in This This Disgraceland.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
The show that night was at Caesar's Palace, but the
cocaine was at the International Hotel Las Vegas. Gigs started
early and so they then ended early, which meant Ike
Turner world class night. Owl needed to find a way
to occupy himself for the rest of the night, and
that meant sex, and if he was going to take
advantage of all that Vegas had to offer for then
(03:00):
cocaine was necessary for stamina. Not that Ike Turner needed
motivation for sex, but coke got them high and had
the added benefit of not derailing him sexually like most
other drugs.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
When his show business workloads.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Started to pick up back in the fifties, Ike was
so anti drug that he fired members of his band,
The Kings of Rhythm if they were even suspected of using.
Ike had seen dope heroin creep into the scene and
start to cause real problems. Heroin was originally a jazz
man's drug. Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis were
all known users, but as various styles of American roots
(03:39):
music filtered into one potent mix to become rock and roll,
various drugs of choice from various musicians affiliated with those
styles came along for the ride. Ray Charles was hooked
on heroin by the late nineteen forties and rock and
roll was still a decade away, so dope wasn't going
to cut it for Ike Turner. He had too much
to do dealing with his band members. It was a
(04:00):
full time headache, and there was always a record label
calling and harassing him for the latest overdue single or album.
Ike worked hard. His schedule, like him, was rough when
not writing, recording or blowing off steam. There were the
live shows during the first part of his career, six
to seven nights a week of hard work. Some of
those early Chitlin circuit gigs literally went all night long.
(04:23):
Ike and Tina began to find success with their first
singles think It's Going to Work Out Fine and I
Idolize You in the early sixties, but now, due in
part to Tina's growing domesticity, I cut the touring schedule
back to three to five shows a week. Still, the
schedule was relentless, just as Ike liked it, so heroin
wasn't going to cut it. Something else was needed, something strong,
(04:46):
where the desired effect was mania, not oblivion. That was
sort of the pitch King Curtis made the Ike some
years ago backstage after a gig. Ike, Man, you're right
not to mess with that brown stuff. It'll make you soft.
This stuff, it'll make you go, go go all night long.
Ike was impressed. King Curtis blew hard just like Ike's
(05:08):
Idyl Louis Jordan and the cocaine. The way it looked
it was almost pretty white, pure looking, packaged up like
a little pillow inside of King Curtis's saxophone case. Three
thousand dollars worth. That was a lot of money for
a lot of cocaine. Ike was flushed, so what the hell?
It was an investment. He thought he'd share it with
the band get him going for real cooking. Ike pulled
(05:30):
out a stack of hundreds and peeled off three k
for Curtis. He grabbed the massive bag of coke and
stuffed it into his own bag and hit the street
in search of his hotel. Forty five minutes later, he
was sprinting out of that same hotel and back toward
the venue to lay and asked looking on King Curtis,
the likes of which he'd never seen. The coke wasn't coke.
It was dreno or baking soda or flour, or some
(05:52):
impure combination of the three. He'd been had by the
sax man, who by now was nowhere in sight, long
gone in the wind. Ike learned a lesson that night.
Never trust no one, especially not a dealer. From then on,
Ike made as many deals as he could by himself,
no matter how famous he got, and he always always
(06:14):
sampled the product before purchasing it, so he was super
high when he exited room three zero zero nine on
the thirtieth floor of the International Hotel that night in
nineteen seventy one. The dealer had set him upright. Ike
paid more than three grand and ended up with less
coke than Curtis tried selling him back in the day.
But Ike, despite the inflation, was happy, if not satisfied.
(06:39):
Satisfaction would come later in his suite back at Caesar's.
While Tina slept in her suite quietly on another floor
of the hotel, Ike and a few select male members
of his band would party their way into the morning
through a mountain of cocaine in a rhythm King's harem
of Vegas showgirls. But at the moment, Ike was moving
quick down the hall on his brain as usual. He
(07:02):
heard the familiar ding of the elevator and then a
loud gaggle of slow moving Southern voices surrounding the entourage
exited through the elevator doors. The group of men moved
toward him, all dark shades, brill cream and pinky rings,
the smell of cheap cologne and bad barbecue making its
way out in front of them and down the hall
toward Ike. In the middle of the gaggle, Ike recognized
(07:24):
a distinct laugh, deep resonant, raspy, infectious. As Ike approached,
the entourage split, revealing in its center the one and
only King of rock and Roll, Elvis Presley. Ike Turner,
not one to be easily impressed, was, for a split
second anyways, shocked, not by Elvis's celebrity but by his size.
(07:46):
Ike hadn't seen the King since the sixty eight Comeback
special on NBC a couple years prior, where Elvis presented
a morse s felt, if not more seasoned, version of
himself in an effort to reclaim his crown from the
hippies who'd stolen the throne, turning on and tuning out.
But here now was Vegas Elvis, and to Ike he
was one fat looking motherfucker who looked like he'd seen
(08:08):
better days. He certainly didn't look like no king king
of rock and roll shit. Rock and roll was a genre.
Ike Turner had every right to claim he invented. So
called experts debated the subject, but the fact was that
there was no rock and roll before Rocket eighty eight,
and it was Ike Turner's mind that launched Rocket eighty eight.
That song had that boogie woogie rock and roll vibe
(08:30):
before any of that hip shaking, hillbilly shit Elvis put out.
That brought him to the attention of Colonel Parker, who
eventually brought Elvis to RCA, into Hollywood, and thus rock
and roll to the world over, making teenagers piss their
pants and screamed so loud that they drowned out the
reverberations of Rocket eighty eight, and Ike Turners claimed any
sort of throne. But to Ike Turner, a man who
(08:51):
knew a thing or two about a thing or two,
number one being rock, number two being roll, Elvis Presley
was as much a king as king. Curtis was a
coke dealer despite whatever coked up look of shock Ike
Turner had on his face there in the hallway of
the thirtieth floor of the International Hotel. There was no
mistaking who he was, Ike motherfucking Turner, and Elvis was
(09:11):
happier than a pig and shit to see him. A
big smile broke over his fat face. Oh man, Ike Turner,
can you believe it? Boys? Elvis went straight at Ike.
Ike stiffened his backbone, clenched his fists, and steeled himself.
He was about to lay a hard ride on the
king when Elvis offered his hand to shake Ike's.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Man, it's good to see you. Do you recognize me?
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Ike give him a puzzled look, stared said nothing, but
thought recognize you, motherfucker? I have eyes, don't I? Elvis Presley.
Elvis kept at it. Hey, do you remember me? Ike's
expression softened to touch. Elvis is getting more excited from
back in Memphis. Man the juke joined on eleventh used
to let me in the back door. Ike remembered. Now
(09:58):
it was distant button Elvis's fat mug. I could see
back twenty years to another time, a time when only
one of the two men had made a name for himself,
and it wasn't the white man with the entourage looking
at him funny. It was Ike Turner, who back in
nineteen fifty one was enjoying the success of Rocket eighty eight,
knocking him dead alongside Little Junior Parker and Willie Nicks
(10:19):
and whatever bucket of blood could afford him. That night.
Ike was on piano back then at those West Memphis gigs.
At the gig on eleven, the piano was set up
at the back of the stage, right next to the
exit door which led to the alley out back, where
on most knights, a good looking kid with a bad
complexion and silly looking sideburns would double park his work
truck and do his best to sneak into the All
(10:40):
Black Club through the back. He had a friendly enough
demeanor and for whatever reason, didn't rub Ike the wrong way,
so Ike would let him in to watch the show
from behind his piano, where Ike would mess around playing
while standing up, googly eyeing the crowd, dancing like a fool,
purposefully knocking his knees together and shaking his hips all
abandoned all R and B and the teenage truck driver
(11:03):
studying it all behind the piano none other than the
pubescent would be king of rock and roll himself, Elvis Presley.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
It all came back to Ike. Now.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
He had no idea back then, no idea that the
young kid who would blanket airways with blue suede shoes
and melt teenage hearts on the big screen in Blue
Hawaii was the same kid who I gave incidental rock
and roll lessons to back in West Memphis at fifty one. Yeah,
I recognize you, Ike said flatly, Now, if you'd excuse me,
(11:34):
I'm late for my date. And with that Ike paraded
past Elvis's entourage and down the corridor with all the
entitlement of a pavity hotel, duck into the elevator, down
into the lobby, and off into the night. As the
elevator descended, I couldn't help but think about those days
back in Memphis. But his mind took him further back
past Memphis to Clarksdale, Mississippi, where he grew up in
(11:57):
a modest house on Washington Avenue, a house that, back
in the late nineteen thirties was nothing more than a
house of horror for the young boy Ike Turner. The
first thing he heard were the trucks screeching up out front.
There wasn't a lot of traffic in Ike's childhood neighborhood,
especially not at night. Then the voice is angry, excited,
(12:18):
and unmistakably white. Then the door busted open and broke
and clean off its lock and loudly puncturing the wall
with the backside of the doorknob. The man entered the
Turner home with bats, loudly forcing themselves in through everything
in their way. Ike rose up out of his bed
and ran to his doorway to see what was happening.
And that's when he saw his father being dragged, kicking
(12:38):
and screaming down the hall by a small mob of
white men. And they were gone almost as quickly as
they came, stealing away his father in the dead of night,
leaving behind his mother hysterical, screaming, crying, horrified. Ike was petrified,
unable to move, unable to cry, scared in the stillness,
hardened in that one moment, like a rock a stone
(12:59):
result to make sure nobody ever came into his house
again like that, not without a fight. An hour or
so later, there was the sound of familiar tires rumbling
down the dirt road and squealing to a stop in
front of their house, voices a loud thud, the acceleration
of the truck once again, and then nothing. Ike with
(13:19):
his mom and toe, ran out to the front yard,
and there, lying on the grass was what remained of
the man of the house, Ike's dad, a mangled mess
of broken bones, blood and bruises, unconscious but breathing, barely
dead quiet. Serious medical treatment for African Americans and segregated
(13:40):
nineteen thirties Clarksdale, Mississippi was poor at best. Extended hospital stays,
even for the near dead, were not allowed, so the
Board of Health built a tent, a tent in the
Turner's backyard for Ike's dad to convalesce.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
There.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
He remained for several years, immobile in a near vegetative
state in a tent backyard. The beating, it was later learned,
was because Ike's dad had supposedly been sleeping with a
white woman. Whatever the reason, the state he was in
in his presence in the backyard was a constant reminder
of the brutally racist and rough reality Ike Turner lived
(14:16):
in mercifully. Ike's father, after a few years, finally succumbed
to his wounds and died. Ike's mom remarried, and from
there things somehow got worse for Ike. His stepfather drunk
most of the time, violent all of the time, beat
young Ike regularly, and by age six, Ike was sleeping
with an adult neighborho would invite the boy into her
(14:36):
yard to feed her chickens and proceeded to take advantage
of him. He was also raped repeatedly by two other
local adult women, a charge that in adulthood, Ike didn't
seem to mind and used to burnish his manly image.
But his childhood was a nightmare until he found music
over at Clarksdale's local radio station WROX, where Ike Turner,
(14:59):
by the time he was eight years old, would spend
most of his days at first running errands for the
local DJs, and eventually subbing for them when they needed
time off. It was during this time that Ike met
piano player pine Top Perkins and convinced his mother to
pay for piano lessons. Ike graduated from Pinetop anyway, having
(15:19):
learned piano, he moved on to teaching himself guitar. It
moved into the Riverside Hotel in Clarksdale, the local establishment
that hosted most of the day's prominent touring musicians, Duke
Ellington and Sonny Boy Williamson among them. The Riverside, along
with downtown Clarksdale, was Ike Turner's campus. His education was
in full swing, his professors some of the greatest blues
(15:41):
and jazz men of all time.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Ike took his.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Education and formed the Ike Turner Kings of Rhythm his
master's thesis, Rocket eighty eight, a single that sold close
to half a million copies, but only made Ike im
easily twenty dollars due to the fact that Ike wasn'tcredited
on the original recording. But the song did make Ike
Turner one of the most happy being musicians in Memphis
at the time, and that was something money couldn't buy.
(16:05):
But Ike quickly outgrew Memphis. New gigs were needed and
new digs desired, so Ike Turner and his Kings of
Rhythm headed north about three hundred miles to Saint Louis,
where he would discover the raw talents of seventeen year
old Anime Bullock, who Ike would soon make known to
the world over as Tina Turner. Tina Turner grew up
(16:42):
as Anime Bullock in a one horse town in Tennessee
called Nutbush, with a population of two hundred and fifty
nine and exactly one road running through it. The town
had a church, a post office in a schoolhouse with
a single room, where Anime studied until the ninth grade.
Nutbush was deep cotton country, a place where African American
(17:02):
sharecroppers tended fields that were once worked by their slave ancestors,
Floyd and Zelma Bullock. Anime's parents were a sharecroppers, and
while Tina would later say she never felt poor, there
was always food on the table when sometimes even new clothes,
But life in the Bullock household was far from happy.
Annime and her sister were routinely shuttled among the homes
(17:25):
of grandparents and cousins in and around Hayward County, but
even still, that was a lot better than being around
when their parents were fighting. Oftentimes the spats turned physical.
Divorce was inevitable. When her mother, Zelma had had enough
of being a wife and mother enough of Nutbush in
its one horse, she packed up and lit out of
town on her own without her eleven year old daughter Anime,
(17:49):
without even saying goodbye. For Anime, this was a hurt
that was never going to go away, and for the
next few years she was raised by her grandmother in
a tidy house with a large garden. She loved her grandmother,
and her grandmother loved her, and life was as good
as it could be for her parentless child until suddenly
her beloved grandmother died and Anime Bullock, who was still
(18:09):
in high school, was suddenly on her own, so she
moved to Saint Louis to live with her unloving mother.
A lot of things about Tina's years with Ike Turner
make more sense if you remember this. When she met him,
she was seventeen years old. With her big sister Aileen,
she hit the Manhattan Club in East Saint Louis, where
Ike and his band played. When Tina got her chance
(18:31):
on stage, it turned out to the delight of the
Manhattan Club that Aileen's little sister could sing, and Little Anne,
as she was then known, loved singing and dancing and
connecting with the crowd. As for Ike, he did a
double take. He liked what he heard because what he
heard was the sound of money. So he did what
I like usually did, threw his money around like a fool.
(18:51):
He bought Anime clothes jewelry, a fur coat. Before long
she was driving a cadillact to school, and Little Anne
admired the man's music and charisma and liked the idea
of a career he could give her.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
She just had a change of name.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Little Anne wasn't powerful enough for her voice, so at
the age of twenty, convinced by Ike that it was
the right thing to do, she took the professional name
Tina Turner. Now that sounded more powerful, she went along
with it. The man a good show, biss since she thought,
even though when she first laid eyes on him on
stage that night, she said she couldn't help thinking, God,
(19:25):
he's ugly. At that point, Tina didn't know just how
ugly it would get. Ugly and rough go hand in hand,
and life with Ike was rough. The way Ike chose
to live. He had a way of sapping the joy
out of everything. Case in point, Ike in Tina's wedding,
it was transactional, no heart, and pulled off on the
(19:45):
fly over the border in Tijuana, Mexico. For Tina, the
wedding was a straight up humiliation in the heat in
the filth of the office of the very First Justice
of Peace that they found Tina batted away the flies
and on the dotted line. There was no bridle dress,
no you may now kiss the bride, no wedding cake,
(20:07):
just sweat, grime and a very horny Ike. Horny for what.
Tina didn't know, but she could tell Ike had his
thoughts on more than just her. Once the transaction was complete,
Ike decided it was time to celebrate, so naturally, he
took his newlywed bride to a live Tijuana sex show.
Superman was his name, and he was part Carney's side
(20:30):
show and part Central American legend, a freak show, and
a main attraction twelve inches below the belt, flaccid, unbelievable
to the naked eye. The rumor was that he took
his name from the original Superman, not the George Reeves
character from the popular American television series, but from the
Cuban sex worker who worked two, sometimes three, live sex
(20:53):
shows a night in a musty old Havana theater and
went by the name Superman. Tijuana Superman, a journal or
not was about to horrify the newly minted missus Ike Turner.
The audience, drunk and giddy with anticipation, shifted anxiously on
their beer stained wooden chairs. Dank smoke hung low throughout
the club. Ike sipped his drink expressionless, a cold, flat
(21:17):
stare fixed upon his wife, who sat quietly in fear
of protesting, knowing that any complaint would invite Ike's fists
to rain down upon her.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
As much as she didn't.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Want to bear witness to a live sex show hours
after getting married, or at all, for that matter, she
sure as hell did not want a black eye on
her wedding night, so she sat quiet, uncomfortable, scared. The
music hit and the audience turned their attention to the
tiny stage.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
MC curtain was drawn back.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
At center stage, there was a loosely bound female sex
worker wearing next to nothing, her binds tended to by
too scantily clad wind in veils made it look like
traditional belly dancers. Then, from stage left, Superman appeared, wearing
a dark red velvet cape. His black hair and oil
(22:14):
slick combed straight back over his head to the nape
of his neck, his skin caramel colored with beads of
sweat obvious to those in the first few rows. He
was tall, homely, menacing. He slowly walked the stage circling
the women, before stopping and turning to the audience. He
dropped his cape and robed and revealed his superpower to
(22:36):
the crowd. Short gasps and applause spread and burst throughout
the moon. The few women who were in the audience
looked horrified, most of the men smiled in disbelief, and
a few did their best to secretly suppress their arousal.
Superman turned toward his partner in this unholy union. What
came next was rough. Tina Turner covered her eyes and
(22:57):
her husband, White Turner, held back a devilish smile. Wow
sipped his drink slowly. Somehow with more menace than Superman.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
We'll be right back after this word word word.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Back Before Tiajuana, Superman, mister and missus, Ike Turner had
a different kind of relationship. Ike was betting on Tina's talent,
and in the beginning it was a risk born more
out of necessity and circumstance than foresight and faith. Art
was late for the recording session. Ike was pissed. It
was a power move. Ike knew it. Art wanted more money,
(23:36):
but fuck that. Ike was the star. Ike was the
band leader, even if he didn't sing lead. Art was
only fronting the Kings of Rhythm because Ike Turner led.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Him front the Kings of Rhythm.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
If Art wanted more bread, he could go out and
get it himself, just like Ike had done. This was,
after all, still America. Ike would be damned if he
was going to let some glorified backup singer leverage him
into increasing his salary, especially when said singer had no
real leverage.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
So fuck them.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
When Art didn't show for the session, Ike simply called
up one of his female backup singers into the vocal booth.
Little Anne could handle the tune, I thought. He just
switched the lyrics around so it could be sung from
a female's perspective, and the result a rhythm in blues explosion.
A Fool in Love written and recorded by Ike Turner's
sung by Anime Bullock aka Tina Turner and released in
(24:24):
July nineteen sixty on the Sue Records label. Jumped off
of the vinyl and stirred listeners at their core. Tina's
sultry gospel vocal intro quickly gives way to an r
and b rave up that is nothing short of exhilarating.
The song cooks and it quickly ascended the charts. A
Fool in Love crossed over from the R and B
charts to the pop charts and became a million seller.
(24:46):
Ike and Tina Turner were suddenly stars. Tina, at twenty
years old and with Ike at her side, made her
first televised appearance on American Bandstand.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
She was nine months pregnant at the time.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Ike wasn't gonna let a little thing like his a
baby mama getting the way of his success. It had
been a long time since his first and only hit,
Rocket eighty eight, a hit he did not benefit from financially,
so there was no way he wasn't going to milk
this run a success for all it was worth. Tina
could holler pregnants up on stage and shake it. Preggers
are not And Tina brought it, sang her ass off.
(25:20):
It was heavy, deep, and she shook it with the
power of a thousand suns and let the world know
that there was more than one badass on stage that night.
The last name of Turner, A Fool in Love was
followed by more hits, but Ike did not rest the
Ike and Tina Turner review played up to three hundred
shows a year on their own in support of megastars
like the Rolling Stones. Ike made deal a deal writing
(25:43):
and recording whenever you get the chance, in order to
bring in as much bread as possible. Famed record producer
Phil Spector came calling for Tina, not Ike. Phil paid
twenty grand to get Ike to fuck off out of
the studio so that he could have Tina all to
himself while the tape was rolling. The result was the
impecct We produced and performed Single River, Deep Mountain High.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
In the heady days of all of this.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Success, after the Tiajuana wedding, Ike and Tina settled into
the Baldwin Hills section of Los Angeles, alongside other celebrities
like Tina's idol, Gray Charles. Success was sweet, but not
sweet enough to mask Ike's rough nature. Ike was relentless,
rain or shine, in sickness or in health. He worked
(26:27):
Tina in this band like Georgia Mules. For Tina, it
wasn't just the travel and schedule of the gigs that
was rough, or later, the longer hours and the variety shows,
the residency in Las Vegas. Yes, all of that took energy,
but Tina herself a perfectionist gave her all on stage
without fail, but it was more than the work. Ike
(26:48):
wore her down in their private moments. The man was mean,
a world class prick. When he had first bestowed the
name Tina Turner upon her, she pushed back. He chosen
Tina because it rhymed with Sheena of Sheena, Queen of
the Jungle, the image he had in mind for his
future wife. He'd also trademarked the name. He owned it,
(27:08):
but Tina didn't want it. Anime is who I am,
she said, resting her hand on her pregnant belly. Ike
reacted viciously. First he screamed, Then, to her horror, he
picked up a wooden shoe stretcher smacked her across the
head with it. He always hit her in the head,
and always was something hard and blunt. Ike used to say,
(27:29):
a guitar player needs his hands, so he never fights
with his fists. So he beat Tina about her head
over and over and over until she was bloody. And
then he beat her some more for crying about it.
And after that he ordered her under the bed, where
he would then rape her. And that was the way
I turned her. Like to end an argument, piece of
(27:50):
shit Ike pushed Tina hard. He had no patience for
illness or weakness of any kind. It fucked with his
total control. After torn with the rolling stones, Tina was sick.
She'd driven herself into the hospital, where she was admitted
and treated for TV, an illness that was practically a
(28:10):
death sentence.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Up until about.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Nineteen forty making Keys sent flowers, but Ike nothing, not
a He never even visited. Not much later in the relationship,
Ike would humiliate Tina daily by openly sleeping with three
other women who he kept at their house. At their house,
Tina felt powerless and visible. She began to think of
ways to escape. She went to the doctor for sleeping pills.
(28:33):
After dinner one night, she retired to the master bathroom
and swallowed them all.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
She placed each of the fifty pills.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
On her tongue one at a time, filled the paper
cup with water, and gulped hard. It would be over soon,
thank God, she thought. She awoke in the hospital to
Ike clutching her shoulders and shaking her, screaming into her face,
calling her a failure. She wasn't even woman enough to
kill herself to finish the job, Ike repeated to her,
over and over again she should just fucking die do
(29:01):
him a favor. When she didn't, he told her she
better have her ass out of bed on the quick
because they had a gig that night. The abuse continued,
physical and emotional. As Ike's use of cocaine increased, he
took to beating Tina with more regularity, and the beating
seemed born just as much from Ike's short coke addled
fuse as they were some sick sexual kink. Somehow, Tina
(29:24):
held on for dear life, becoming a pro at excuse
making and applying makeup and just the right way to
mask the darkness she was living through while it manifest
about her repeatedly swollen face and head. Until nineteen seventy six, anyway,
en route to Dallas from La Tina in a window
seat scrunched up uncomfortably next to her husband's new pregnant girlfriend,
(29:48):
with Ike in the coveted aisle seat next to them.
Unfucking believable, Tina thought Ike had some golf and he
had zero self awareness. Furthering the insult, Ike stretched himself
out and lay his long legs across the laps that
both of the women he thought belonged to him. For Tina,
there was something about the way he imposed himself, draping
(30:09):
his body across her and his girlfriend that got to her.
The way I put his big shiny shoes on the
freshly pressed slacks of her pretty white suit. The weight
of him on her body, the weight of him on
her life. At this moment, it was too much. Internally,
Tina had reached a tipping point. But on the outside,
Tina remained in her seat, still afraid to move. She
(30:32):
didn't want another beating. The beatings were bad, but what
was almost worse was the time just before the beating,
the anticipation, when you felt that dreg when you knew
it was coming. Throughout all of the beatings, Tina had
managed to acclimate herself to the fucked up ways of
her abusive husband. The way she saw it, he was
so goddamn mean that once he was around, he didn't
(30:53):
want him to leave, because then he'd have to deal
with the dread of knowing he was eventually going to
come back. But for Tina, in this moment the plane,
something was shifting in the limo on the way to
the hotel, Ike was feeling playful. He tried feeding Tina
some chocolate. Normally, she'd have gone along with it and
taken what he offered, even when she didn't want it.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
But she I kept insisting.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
And he eventually shoved the melting chocolate into Tina's face
and it dripped onto her white suit. Normally should have
brushed us off, But not today, I said.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
No, Tina shouted. Predictably, Ike flew into a rage.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
But on that day, in that limo, somewhere in the
middle of that big state of Texas, Tina Turner did
not endure the beating.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
She fought back.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
She fought rough and hard with her teeth and her
nails and her stilettos. And when the couple emerged from
the car at the hotel, they were bloody. Ike's shirt
was torn and Tina's white suit was turned red with
her blood. Once in the room, he raped her, then
fell asleep. Tina, shaken but determined, quietly dressed and gathered
a few belongings and escaped. Staggering from her injuries, she
(32:02):
split from the hotel across the highway on foot, unafraid
of the oncoming traffic. She'd survive worse. At the counter
of a small one star motel, she introduced herself as
if she needed any introduction. I'm Tina Turner. I need
a place to stay. I have twenty six cents in
my pocket, but if you give me a room, I
promise I will pay it back. The clerk took a moment,
(32:25):
surveyed her cuts and bruises, and looked through the eye
and said, welcome, missus Turner.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
Let me show you then room.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
Back before Tina split from Ike, the two were the
picture of domesticity on the outside, despite the horror show
that was their actual relationship. Their home near suburban Englewood,
with their massive Imperial Oil painting portrait the couple, state
of the art, high five high pile shag, elaborate fish tanks,
swimming pool, revolving door of coming and going musicians, in
(33:07):
a steady flow of children being shuffled to and from
sports practices, seemed to say nothing to see here, just
a slightly eccentric rock and roll couple living the white
picket fence life in our mildly ostentatious way. Tina ran
the home, Ike ran the business, and taking care of
business at home wasn't going to happen. So Ike built
Bullock Sound his studio, a private studio where musicians were
(33:31):
welcome and Tina could visit, but never unannounced, and of
course Ike's special guests were always around.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
Ballock was a.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Short ride away from the Turner home and operated under
the guise of work, but its other purpose was his
Ike's own personal clubhouse, or as Tina called it, the whorehouse.
Ike had an apartment built upstairs in the studio where
he spent most nights. He decorated the joint with his
own flare, lots of jungle prints, candelabras, Kamasutra murals, gold
(34:00):
played the tables, ten foot tall Romanesque statues, a garish
canopied bed, and a sofa with massive hard ons for arms.
Ballock Sound had other interesting features as well, like the
three inch thick doors that locked automatically behind each visitor
and required a secret code to exit, and the elaborate
security system. Nothing strange for a recording studio except for
(34:21):
the internal eye in the sky cameras I get installed
throughout the control room in his second floor apartment. Ike
kept himself busy, first with sex near constant orgies, drugged
out sex slaves, burned out starlets from Hollywood. On the backside,
working girls from the CD motels over by lax aspiring,
I gets looking for the next big break, singing back
(34:42):
up behind Tina. They all took their turn in Ike's barrow.
When Ike wasn't partying, he was writing and recording, trying
to keep up with the seventies. George Clinton and James
Brown did not sleep. They had LSD and PCP, respectively.
Ike had to find his own funk. It was a
full time job in a assistance was needed, and that's
where the cocaine came in. Lots and lots and lots
(35:05):
and lots and lots of cocaine. Ike started freebasing in
nineteen seventy four and kept a massive stockpile of coke
around him at all times, once spending as much as
one hundred thousand dollars in a two month period on
cocaine to fuel the constant party. In ongoing recording sessions
of Bolok later, I would estimate that he had spent
(35:25):
eleven million dollars on cocaine over a fifteen year period
from nineteen seventy four to nineteen ninety. During that time,
he burnt a hole cleaned through his septum and would
horrify friends by sticking a pen through it from one
side to the other. He was also arrested ten times,
convicted twice, and served hard time thirteen months of a
(35:45):
four year sentence. The security cameras of Bolock Sound were
not apparently cop proof. The voice on the other side
of the door was clear, open the fuck up now,
or we're coming in. Ike could see them out on
the street from his massive wall of video monitors in
his control room. Local cops yokels LA's mildless. It wasn't
(36:09):
the Feds, so it would take them puttson around for
an hour at least to break through the steel doors
and find their way to Ike through the studio's maze.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
Of car doors.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Ike, standing in the middle of his control room and
nothing but a silk kimono in velvet slippers, calmly sipped
his drink. This was the moment he'd waited for all
of his life to show the invasive authority figures that
he would not go quietly, if at all, he'd make
them work for it.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
This was his fortress.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
He patted his newest girlfriend on her ass, nearly naked
at his side, picked his forty five up off the
studio console. The one with the state of the art
IBM mixed memorizer, and calmly went about trying to locate
the rest of the firearms.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
And cocaine in the studio.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
He was able to squirrel most of the contraband wave
before the cops finally busted in, But what he forgot
the hide were the blue boxes he legal devices that
allowed Ike in his boys to place free long distance
telephone calls, seemingly harmless compared to the drugs and weaponry
Ike had hidden in his possession, but still very much illegal.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Ike Turner was busted.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
It was the first of a series of arrests that
would disrupt the rest of Ike Turner's career in personal life.
It signaled the end Forbolic Sound, a studio that ultimately
caught fire mysteriously and burnt to the ground at a
time later in Ike's life when he was in the
middle of extreme financial hardship. By the time Tina left,
Ike had little but his name, which, by then in
(37:35):
the music industry, at least from the perspective of the
people who wrote the checks, was mud. Tina, on the
other hand, had her name Tina Turner, ironically, a name
I had given her a name Ike had trademarked, and
a name that Ike had tried to claim was his
and the divorce and thus prevent her from using it
going forward in her career, a claim he lost. Tina
(37:57):
Turner took her name and her immense talent out for
under her abusive, controlling, piece of shit husband and turned
herself into literally the biggest pop star on the planet,
a level of success that Ike Turner, despite whatever claims
he had on the invention of rock and roll, would
never attain, and it drove him crazy and deeper into
a coke field madness. Ike finished as he started on
(38:20):
a rough road. His descent ran parallel to Tina's rise,
a nice cap to a rough career. Her nineteen eighty
four single What's Love Got to Do With It from
her solo album Private Dancer, went to number one on
the pop charts and won three Grammy Awards for Record
of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Female
Pop Vocal Performance. Throughout the eighties and nineties, Tina Turner
(38:42):
released several multi platinum albums, appeared in feature length films,
and saw her own biopic, What's Love Got to Do
With It? Cementer's status as a musical icon these days.
At the time of this recording, Tina Turner, the Queen
of Rock and Roll, is seventy nine years old, worth
over a quarter of a billion dollars in shilling in
her Swiss mansion, reportedly planning her own funeral, an affair
(39:04):
she claims will be a bigger and better sendoff than
that of her one time rival, the recently the parted
Queen of Soul Erretha Franklin.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
Ike Turner won't be attending.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
He died of a cocaine overdose at the age of
seventy six in two thousand and seven. Disgrace, I'm Jake
Brennan and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by Yours
(39:37):
Truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits
for this episode can be found on the show notes
page at disgracelampod dot com. If you're listening as a
Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show.
We really appreciate it, and if not, you can become
a member right now by going to disgrace lampod dot com.
Slash Membership members can listen to every episode of disgracelam
(40:00):
Ad free.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
Plus you'll get one brand.
Speaker 4 (40:03):
New exclusive episode every month, weekly unscripted bonus episode, special
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disgraylampod dot com slash membership for details, Rate and review
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slash at Disgraceslampod Rock a Roller
Speaker 2 (40:29):
He then man
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