Tina Turner Read online

  To round out the show, Ike added a singing and dancing background trio of girls; he called them “The Ikettes.” The initial set of The Ikettes included Robbie Montgomery, Jesse Smith, and Vanetta Fields. They were the first of what was to become an ever-changing lineup of girls throughout the years.

  “A Fool in Love” peaked on the charts in August of 1960. That’s the same month that “The Ike & Tina Turner Revue” made their debut at the famed Apollo Theater in Harlem. Tina was eight months pregnant at the time.

  At the Apollo that night, Ike and Tina shared the bill with Hank Ballard and the Midnighters (“Finger Poppin’ Time”), Ernie K-Doe (“Mother-In-Law”), Joe Jones (“You Talk Too Much”), Lee Dorsey (“Workin’ in a Coal Mine”), and a young comedian by the name of Flip Wilson.

  On October 3, 1960, Ike & Tina Turner made their American national television appearance on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. They were seen performing their first big hit, “A Fool in Love.”

  As if all this wasn’t exciting enough, the next major gig they had was in Las Vegas. They arrived in Vegas, checked into their hotel, and performed their first show there as planned. That night after the show, Tina undressed in the room they were sharing. Ike took one look at her stomach, and asked her when it was that she was supposed to have the baby. She told him that she had no idea, as her mother was with her when she had Craig.

  Frightened that she was going to give birth right then and there in a Las Vegas hotel room, Ike canceled the rest of the gig, and the entire entourage immediately got on the road for Los Angeles. Ike knew that he could find more work out there, while Tina gave birth and recuperated. They arrived in Los Angeles at seven in the evening and ordered some food. That’s when the labor pains started, and Tina knew that she was going to give birth any moment.

  On the morning of October 27, 1960, Tina Turner gave birth to her second son, Ronald Renelle. When he was born, both Ike and Tina lied to Lorraine as to who the father of the child actually was. And so, the vast marital complications in the Turner household continued to mount and intertangle.

  Ike had always dreamed of one day moving to Los Angeles, and this seemed like as good a time as any to put down some roots there. This was the beginning of their long and rocky West Coast life together.

  There were times when Lorraine would come out on tour with the band, and Tina recalls that she felt very ashamed of the situation that she was in at the time. Lorraine would be in the backseat of the car with Ike, and Tina would be in the front seat of the car, feeling very much like the girlfriend with the illegitimate baby. She also suspected that Ike was simultaneously sleeping with one of The Ikettes.

  Only days after the birth of Ronnie, Ike insisted that Tina get out of the hospital—against doctor’s orders—to perform at a gig in Oakland, California. This time, she had to comply with the doctors. However, she was later to find out that to make money and capitalize on the hit record, Ike hired another singer who masqueraded as “Tina Turner.” Tina was furious over this. To make matters worse, the woman turned out to be a hooker and apparently turned several tricks also using the name “Tina Turner.” According to the real Tina, because of this event a false rumor that she was a prostitute followed her for years. Welcome to the complicated world of Ike Turner.

  During this time, Ike was called back to St. Louis, as he was embroiled in a legal case. It seemed that he had somehow procured several thousands of dollars of bank money, which he needed to buy the band new outfits. He claimed that he had no involvement in any shady deals, but Tina was always convinced that he was quite guilty of something illegal.

  One of the next key dates for The Ike & Tina Turner Revue was the Howard Theater in Washington, D.C. Prior to the show there, Tina decided to get her hair bleached blonde. The hairdresser made a big mistake when she left the heat cap on for too long, and all of Tina’s hair fell out! Tina had nothing left but stubble—she was horrified! This chance occurrence became a precedent-setting event, as it marked the beginning of Tina wearing long wigs on stage. She had little choice in this decision, as she wasn’t about to set foot on stage without hair!

  That night, Tina fell in love with her new hairstyle. She adored the way it moved when she danced on stage, and it became part of her trademark look during this era.

  In December of 1960, the group’s next single, “I Idolize You” peaked at No. 5 on the R&B chart and No. 82 on the Pop chart in Billboard in America.

  In 1961 Sue Records released the debut album by the group, entitled The Soul of Ike & Tina Turner. It included the Tina Turner classics “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine,” “Poor Fool,” and “You Shoulda Treated Me Right.” In September of 1961, Ike & Tina scored their highest charting single of this era, “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine.” It hit No. 14 on the Pop chart, and No. 2 on the R&B chart in America.

  Tina was later to recount that she would have loved to have left Ike Turner at this point. “I was caught in his web,” she claimed with resignation (5).

  As their hit records began making them stars, Tina knew that this was going to change her life as well. Of her complicated existence with Ike, she explains, “I was his vehicle to get him to being a star. That’s why I had no say. He was being a star through me. I even saw it then” (5).

  As early as this point in her relationship with Ike, she began to envision leaving him. “I was helping him,” she recalls. “And one year into our relationship, I said, ‘After I help you get where you want to, I’m not going to stay.’ Because we weren’t each other’s type” (8).

  Describing his sexual relationship with Tina, Ike was later to recount, “Out on the road, though, I started to have sex with Tina again. As far as that side of our relationship was concerned, I’ve always felt that Tina was attractive, but not really sensuous in bed. She felt more like my sister, not my wife. To be honest I felt that having sex with her was almost a duty” (17).

  The glamorous life of stardom was turning out to be quite disillusioning. Tina was either on the road, going from one gig to the next, or she and The Ikettes were rehearsing, recording, or performing. Besides, Tina had two babies to take care of as well. She recalls this as being the beginning of the truly unhappy times for her. She was trapped in a nightmare not of her own design.

  Even before he was to actually marry Tina, the physical abuse had begun. Describing Ike during this period, Tina recounts, “When he was fun he was fun, but he just had a real mean streak. I can only tell you there was genuine love there, but it wasn’t a passion, a husband-and-wife love” (18).

  The mean streak seemed to come from out of nowhere. According to Tina, she would be sitting across a table from Ike, and suddenly he would get this look in his eyes, he would begin emitting an odd sort of hum, start tapping his fingernails on the table, and the next thing she knew, his fist was coming at her face. With tears in her eyes, Tina would ask what she had done, and he would again sock his fist into her face.

  Before long she would become a professional makeup artist, due to having to devise new ways to disguise a blackened eye or a swollen and split lip. He would start fights with her for no apparent reason. One time on the road, Ike came back from the grocery store with a pound cake. When he presented it to Tina, she asked why he had purchased it. He told her that one of the band members had told him she wanted it, and he made her sit and eat the entire cake. She did as she was told for fear that he would beat her up again.

  In 1962, the Ike & Tina Turner song “Poor Fool” made it to No. 38 on the Pop chart, and No. 4 on the R&B chart in the United States. In an interesting move, Ike was able to record a song, “I’m Blue (The Gong Gong Song)” by The Ikettes (with Tina singing in the background), and sell it to a different record label than the one to which Ike & Tina were signed. “I’m Blue” peaked at No. 19 on the Pop chart. Meanwhile, the Ike & Tina single, “Tra la la la La,” peaked at No. 50, and “You Shoulda Treated Me Right” only made it to No. 89.

  There was suddenly a new pressure on Ike to produce more hits
. According to Tina, this only made him more irritable. More often than not, he would become frustrated, and his violence would be unleashed upon Tina. She had made Ike Turner a star, only to be used as his own personal punching bag. Recalling the beatings that became a regular event, Tina says, “I went home, put on an ice pack, found a way to sing the next few days. Just kept going” (8).

  Tina later recounted with horror how Ike would beat her with his fists, with his shoes, and even with his wooden shoe trees. He was like a ticking bomb, but she never knew when she was going to get hit, or with what.

  What was the best thing that Tina could have hoped for at this time? Was the prospect of becoming Mrs. Ike Turner such a big prize? According to her, “I had gotten to the stage where I started to think that I didn’t want to be Ike’s wife, and I didn’t care about the money. I was thinking the whole time, ‘How could I fulfill my promise and get out of it all right?’ ” (5).

  Marriage to Ike Turner was only useful in legal circumstances. Describing his personal life during the 1940s and 1950s, he was later to recount, “The first woman I married was Edna Dean Stewart from Ruleville, Mississippi. I was fifteen or sixteen. . . . Edna and I stayed together a while, but she didn’t want to stay up in Clarksdale, so she ran away. . . . After her I met Thelma Dishman, who at that time was a pretty girl. Thelma was pregnant, not by me, but I liked her. . . . When I moved to West Memphis I married Rosa Lee Sane. Her mind flipped on her. . . . Then I started going with ‘Snow’—her real name was Etta Mae Menfield. But I never married her. . . . The next time I married, I married Alice. . . . After I married Alice, the next Mrs. Turner was a girl named Anna Mae Wilson” (17).

  And, this doesn’t even take into account all of the girlfriends and the one-night-stands. Ike’s trail of wives and women and children is more complicated than that of any three characters on Dynasty or Dallas!

  There came a time in the early 1960s when marriage again became a useful solution to one of Ike’s problems. It seemed that his last legal wife, Anna Mae Wilson, showed up to demand her percentage of his belongings. According to Tina, “This woman was asking for money, so Ike felt he’d better marry me so she couldn’t get [community] property” (5).

  Ike took Tina down to Tijuana for a quickie Mexican marriage. She had wanted to be Ike Turner’s number one woman, and instead—by marrying him—she was being used as an excuse to save him money.

  All that Tina remembers about the wedding she had once dreamed of is that somebody pushed a piece of paper across a table, and she signed it. She took a look around the tacky room she was in, and thought to herself, “THIS is my wedding?” (1). The next day, Tina called her mother in St. Louis and told her the news. Zelma said she was very happy, as she assumed that Tina was happy as well. Tina wanted to tell her the truth, but couldn’t. She wanted to tell her mother to keep her congratulatory words, for what was being passed off as a marriage was a sham designed to keep money in Ike Turner’s pockets. Now she was really stuck because now she was truly Mrs. Ike Turner.

  According to Ike, he never took the marriage seriously, since he had never divorced his former wife. It seemed like some sort of sad masquerade from the very start. Tina was later to state with disgust, “As far as I’m concerned, I’ve never been married” (5).

  Furthermore, Ike never had any intention of being faithful to Tina. According to him, “I was not a great believer in monogamy anyway. I wanted my cake and wanted to eat it, too. I want my home woman and other women outside to run with—that’s the dog in a man” (17).

  Yet, somehow—knowing all of this—Tina chose to stay with him. “Still—I kept my word. I promised that I would be there for him,” she recalls (12). Was Tina Turner just a fool in love, hopelessly devoted to Ike Turner? In many ways she was. But she didn’t know where to go if she left him. Ike was not only the man who was tormenting her and beating her physically, he was also the man who was making her a singing star. So she stayed, as she became more and more entrenched in his web of lies, deception, and abuse. From this point forward, she knew that one day she would leave him—if she survived long enough.

  6

  RIVER DEEP-MOUNTAIN HIGH

  Based on the first few hit singles that they had, Ike recorded three very similar “Ike & Tina” albums for Sue Records in 1963. They were Dynamite (including “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine,” “A Fool in Love,” “Poor Fool,” “I Idolize You,” and “Letter from Tina”), Don’t Play Me Cheap (with “Love Letters” and “Don’t Play Me Cheap”), and It’s Gonna Work Out Fine (featuring “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine,” “Poor Fool,” and “Foolish”). The albums began to overlap with regard to the material that was on them.

  What was quite ironic is the fact that the songs Ike Turner wrote for Tina to sing during this era were all songs in which she confessed her undying and irrational devotion toward her man. This must have been the ultimate ego trip for Ike—who considered himself the quite a ladies’ man. “I Idolize You,” finds Tina worshipping at the feet of Ike. In “Letter from Tina,” she sings about how her man controls her every movement of her life, and how she gladly surrenders all will to him. In “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine,” she describes what bliss would come from marrying him. Nothing could be further from the truth. Marriage to Ike was more like a prison sentence than a love connection!

  Many performers talk about their preparations before going on stage. Some people meditate or pray for a good performance. Others quietly, mentally, center themselves right before the curtain’s rise. Tina Turner’s life, however, had a completely different tone. She found herself living in perpetual fear of what Ike was going to do to her, before or after a show. Her time spent on stage was the only hours in which she knew she was truly safe.

  In reality, before the shows, Ike would often beat Tina up, and then expect her to sing that evening like nothing was wrong. Well, one might rationalize that it must have at least been a high-paying gig for Tina, and that she must have been making lots of money for herself. One would surely think that was the case—and that she could simply save her money and eventually buy her freedom. However, the reality of it was that Tina never saw any of the money. She was expected to wait on Ike hand and foot, have sex with him, get beaten up by him whenever he saw fit, and still be the glamorous and energetic star of the show as if nothing was wrong. Yet she had not a cent of cash to show for her work or her mental anguish. Ike controlled everything about her life and her environment. She wasn’t even allowed to have any of her own friends. In this way, he made it impossible for her to escape. He saw to it that she had nowhere to go, and no one to whom she could turn.

  When their initial recording contract with Sue Records was over, Ike began throwing out albums right and left, taking advances from several different record companies for single albums. In 1964 they released an album called Get It for Cenco Records, which was also released as Her Man, His Woman on Capitol Records. Then came a whole series of “one shot” albums, recorded live. There was The Ike and Tina Turner Revue, Live on Kent Records, The Ike and Tina Turner Show, Live, Volume 2 on LOMA Records—both in 1964—and a totally different album called The Ike and Tina Turner Show, Live on Warner Brothers Records in 1965, which made it up to No. 126 in Billboard in the United States.

  No one could tell Ike Turner how to run his business. He insisted on being the road manager, the stage manager, the songwriter, the booking agent, and the band leader. He was talented enough to have gotten the group this far, but he was unable to take their success to the next level.

  Since Ike was doing all of the booking, and since he insisted on being paid in cash, the places that the revue played were often very rough and downscale. Often fights would break out during the shows. Yet, somehow in spite of Ike’s gross mismanagement and short-sighted judgment, the revue kept on working.

  In 1964, Juggy Murray, the head of Sue Records, paid Ike $40,000 to sign a new recording contract. Ike immediately took the money and purchased something that he had longed for—a house in
the Hollywood Hills. The house he purchased was a one-story ranch style home with three bedrooms. It was located just off of La Brea, in an area called View Park Hills. At the time, the neighborhood was mainly white. However, both Nancy Wilson and Ray Charles had homes in that area as well.

  Now that they had a whole house, they sent for their children. Up until this time, Lorraine had been back in St. Louis, taking care of her two children by Ike. And relatives back in Tennessee were caring for Tina’s two boys. With their cumulative family all in Los Angeles now, Tina and various housekeepers would take care of the four young boys.

  Also in 1964, Ike signed a singles deal with Kent Records. They released only one single on Kent, a song called “I Can’t Believe What You Say,” which only made it to No. 95 in Billboard. During the Christmas season of that year, they recorded the holiday song “Merry Christmas Baby” for Warner Brothers Records. “Merry Christmas Baby” is still a treat to hear, and it often shows up on holiday compilation CDs, including The Best of Cool Yule (Rhino Records). In 1965, as part of the new contract, Sue Records released Ike & Tina Turner Greatest Hits. With all of the competing albums that they had on the marketplace, it failed to reach the charts. Although their act was still popular in clubs, their recording career was quickly sinking.

  It was also in 1965 that Ike recorded several songs with The Ikettes alone. A couple of the tracks became bigger hits than the ones Ike & Tina were releasing. The Ikettes’ “Peaches & Cream” made it up to No. 36, and “I’m So Thankful” peaked at No. 74 on the Pop chart. Due to the popularity of these two songs, The Ikettes were asked to perform on their own, so Ike simply cast a new trio of Ikettes and sent them out on the road, while another three ladies were The Ikettes in The Ike & Tina Turner Revue. When the recording Ikettes found out that three different women had been hired by Ike to sing their hit song and impersonate them, all three of them promptly quit. One of the original Ikettes, Vanetta Fields, went on to become one of the most in-demand background singers in the 1970s, appearing on Barbra Streisand’s Stony End and Barbra Joan Streisand albums.