Jaime Danehey

Baby, baby, baby, I feel so all alone. Sometime I just CRY, I SIGH. Sometime I even moan. Because Baby, I don’t know what it is, But I FIND MYSELF livin’ at your will.

This is a bit out of line, because this is not an Ike & Tina song. But, but, but. . .when Jim Davis played it on 8-Track Flashback yesterday, my jaw almost hit the floor.  I didn’t recognize the singer’s voice, and I was thinking: Is this a male Tina Turner impersonator?

Take a few minutes and listen to the entire track, which is fantastic:

I Don’t Know What You Got (But It’s Got Me)

The delivery (especially the spoken word interlude in the middle) is pure Ike and Tina style.  The rhythm, the cadence. . I mean, even the way he is enunciating his words is the same.

So who sings it? None other than Little Richard.

This track was released in 1971, on an album of stuff Little Richard recorded for Vee Jay in the mid-60s. Go ahead and refresh your memory of Ike & Tina’s 1965 version of All I Can Do Is Cry.  (My old post on that song here.)

In the Ike Turner autobiography, Takin’ Back My Name, both Ike and Little Richard weigh in on the question of Tina’s singing style and who gave it to her.  (I’ve mentioned this before, but I know TBMN is very hard to find in the U.S., so I realized I should actually type out the related passages for you.)

Little Richard, in the book’s introduction:

When they first came to Los Angeles, I used to go over every day and Ike would be there with Tina and all of them. I remember when Tina couldn’t sing like she can today. Ike came and asked me to teach her. He asked me, ‘How would you sing this song?’ And when I sang, he would tell Tina, ‘Now, that’s what I want you to do.’ But when she talks today, she never mentions my name.

Ike, on his songwriting for the Ike and Tina Turner Revue:

I’d be writing songs with Little Richard in mind, but I didn’t have no Little Richard to sing them, so Tina was my Little Richard. Listen closely to Tina and who do you hear? Little Richard singing in a female’s voice.  Little Richard taught Tina how to sing my compositions, so Tina concentrated on singing like a man while I honed her stage performance.  I gave her attitude; I gave her movements to make on stage.

Furthermore, Tina, in her autobiography I, Tina:

I guess I had achieved success of some kind, but the truth was, it was constant hard work. If we weren’t onstage, we were on the road to the next show; if we weren’t on the road, we were in the studio–in every city, no matter where we were, he’d find a studio to work at. If we weren’t recording, we were rehearsing–running down songs, working out steps. It was nothing to drive seven hundred miles from one show to the next, Ike sitting in the backseat with his guitar, me and maybe an Ikette or two there with him, singing and practicing new tunes all the way. It never stopped. And the music — I know some people say those old records are classics now, but I hated them. And onstage, the music was so loud, so noisy, and the keys were all too high. Ike always had me screaming and screeching.

OK, that’s it for the literature review.

First, obviously Ike and Little Richard are overselling their influence on Tina.  You can teach someone to sing like Little Richard all day long, but you are never going to find a talent like Tina. Her voice is something else, and the whole world knows it.

Little Richard is Ike’s friend from way back, and in this introduction he also chastises Tina for demonizing Ike and for moving to Europe and turning her back on all her old acquaintances. Both Ike and Little Richard take time in TBMN to make the case for why Tina should sign up to do one last reunion tour with Ike.  I mean. . .please. Ike made millions of dollars off of Tina, it’s just ludicrous to make it sound like she owed him anything. And I know Little Richard is sensitive to slights, but he’s being an idiot recounting how she wouldn’t talk to him at some awards dinner, after her solo success. Any sane person can understand that a woman wouldn’t feel like socializing with the friends of her abusive ex-husband.

But second: I think the basic facts that a) Ike wrote with Little Richard’s voice in mind and b) Little Richard gave Tina pointers on her delivery are plausible.  I mentioned this in regards to This Man’s Crazy, which is super-duper-Little Richard-esque.

Ike and Tina released their first single in 1960, when Little Richard was very popular — it makes sense that Ike would try to emulate his schtick. Tina is upfront about what an all-around control freak that Ike was about their revue, and you notice that she drops all that Little Richard style completely in her solo act.

I hope that someday an impartial biographer takes on the story of Ike and Tina Turner and publishes something comprehensive. Reading their autobiographies raises so many questions that I wish someone would investigate for corroborating evidence or further detail. The Little Richard-Tina Turner relationship is just one of them.

Well, I’m back, thanks to two key purchases:  1) I found a copy of What You Hear Is What You Get: Live at Carnegie Hall at Nice Price — so exciting! and 2) finally got that Ike Turner: The Bad Man CD, which includes some Ikettes cuts worth talking about.

So, to begin: my first Ikettes post. I chose a 1962 single called “Prisoner in Love (No Bail in This Jail).” You can hear it here.

Robbie Montgomery sings lead on this one, a fairly standard man-done-me-wrong single, but Robbie and the Ikettes elevate the material with a bit of attitude when they can.  Robbie lucks out and gets one of the most fun lines I’ve heard on an Ike single: “I get the fibble-gibble-skibble-dibble-libbles,” which she takes up and down the scale playfully.  I also really love the Ikette’s delivery of the first chorus when they sound so put out on “I believe he’s lost his key, ’cause he never really cared about me.”

Robbie and the Ikettes trade lines back and forth during a borderline-alarming revenge fantasy section of the song:

“I wish I had the strength of  a man / I would grab him in his collar and let a left hook follow, mmm hmm! / and that ain’t ALL I’d do! / I would knock him to his knees and make him beg me to please / he would never wanna hurt me again / then I’d be satisfied ’cause I’d know I’d hurt his pride, mmm hmm!”

Readers of this blog know that I don’t fantasize about beating up men, but instead dream of ’60s Tina Turner covering Screamin’ Jay Hawkins songs.  So imagine my delight: Tina does not sing on this single but she does contribute big crazy-lady cackles throughout! Very Screamin’ Jay style. These demented laughs make “Prisoner in Love” a memorable single but don’t make all that much sense within the song–it’s not like the lyrics lead you to believe the woman has gone completely around the bend. Tina sounds like she’s in a straight jacket, which makes the listener wonder what exactly the fibble-gibble-skibble-dibble-libbles are.

Tina’s Theme!

Forget about “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” this is the most iconic song on the album.

It was written by Holly Knight, who is the rock talent behind “Love Is a Battlefield” and Tina’s later hit “The Best.” (She also wrote Rod Stewart’s “Love Touch,” that ’80s hit with the video set in a courtroom. And if you think that’s a bad song, keep in mind the stuff he unleashed upon the world in the ’90s. If only he’d stayed with material as harmless as “Love Touch”!)

In “Better Be Good to Me” Tina blows my mind right off the bat. She starts out with an overheated description of a dramatic love affair:

A prisoner of your love / Entangled in your web. / Hot whispers in the night / I’m captured by your spell . . .(whispered) Captured!

It’s that last “captured!” that charms me. It’s like a wink at the ridiculousness of the preceding descriptions. Then Tina adds just a touch of sarcasm to her tone:

Oh yes I’m touched by your show of emotion. / Should I be fractured by your lack of devotion?

After that the song gets real and begins describing what a more sensible relationship would look like, the give and take of a modern romance between equals.

I can’t resist pointing out a discrepancy between the lyric sheet and Tina’s performance. Those little differences always make me imagine the singer changing the meaning to better match their own feelings. Here it is:

As written:

And I think it’s only right / That we don’t meet at night. / We stand face to face / And you present your case.

As sung:

I think it’s oh-so right / That we don’t need to fight. / We stand face to face / And you present your case.

Soon she turns up that bold voice with:

But did you think I’d just accept you in blind faith? / Oh sure, baby! Anything to please you! / But you better be good to me!

She kills me on this song! Women’s liberation! Feminism forever! That’s how it’s got to be now!

I love the little guitar hook that replays throughout this song. Unlike a lot of the instrumentation on this album, it doesn’t sound dated to me at all. It’s a nice counterpoint to the melody of Tina’s singing. Thanks, Jamie West-Oram! The whole thing rocks. When I hear it I’m tempted to get one of those lion wigs.

I know the secret combination!

It’s Tina’s birthday today, so in her honor I thought I’d write up a few songs from her fabulous solo album, Private Dancer. If you haven’t listened to it in a while, I recommend a revisit. It’s still powerful–whatta comeback!

Anyway, the song I want to highlight first is “I Might Have Been Queen,” which wasn’t a single, but it’s the song she chose to begin side one of the album with. It’s a rock song about reincarnation and Tina gives a controlled, yet dramatic, performance.

As you may (or may not) know, Tina is a believer in past lives. According to her autobiography, one of her comforts during the pain of her marriage was to sneak off and meet with seers and psychics. One told her, and she came to feel within herself, that in one past life she had been an Egyptian queen, specifically Hatshepsut.

Reading about all this in her autobiography it seemed a little comical–what could be more ’80s than a celebrity who believes in reincarnation? However, in Tina’s case it’s more complex than that. This idea that she had been a powerful person in a past incarnation was part of the fire that helped her leave Ike and start over from scratch. It was part of a new story she was telling herself about her worth, her ability to change and be happy.

Years later she was talking to her new record’s producer, Rupert Hine, and his girlfriend, Jennette Obstoj, about her beliefs and then they wrote “I Might Have Been Queen” for her. She mentions in her autobiography how meaningful the song was for her.

Anyway, back to the listener’s perspective: the track starts the album off on a mysterious note and slowly shows you the strong and self-assured Tina in store for you on this LP. (Keep in mind that the album that preceded this was her disco flop, Love Explosion.)

For every sun that sets / there is a new one dawning. / For every empire crushed / there is a brand new nation / Let the waters rise / I have ridden each tide . . . And I might have been queen / I remember the girl in the fields with no name. / She had a love. / Ohhh but the river won’t stop for me.

I really love the river in this song. What a perfect way to refer to her past (“Proud Mary”) in a wholly new context. She isn’t out hustling in this song, the river is a mystic metaphor for time. Time keeps passing and she has the chance to recreate herself.  I feel like I can feel hope coursing through Tina in her delivery.  It’s awesome.

In the end she proclaims that she is a “soul survivor,” and a chorus starts a refrain:

A Soul Survivor / On the river / But it won’t stop