Dead: IKE TURNER
December 13th 2007 03:58
The man behind the 'private dancer' Tina Turner,former husband, IKE, has died at his home near San Diego at the age of 76.
Born Izear Luster Turner in 1931 in Clarksdale, Mississippi, an area steeped in the traditions of blues music, IKE, as a boy ,learned to play piano and was a disc jockey for a local radio station.
He formed his first band in high school and by 1951 was the man behind the Kings of Rhythm, whose 1951 song Rocket 88 is widely regarded as the first record in the nascent rock 'n' roll genre.
By 1956 he met a woman by the name of Anna Mae Bullock, who changed her name to Tina in 1958 and he later married .
Together, the pair enjoyed such hits as River Deep, Mountain High, Proud Mary and Nutbush City Limits, and they renamed the band the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. In 1972, they won a Grammy in 1972 for Proud Mary.
Following his divorce to Tina in 1976, Ike battled with drugs, namely cocaine and was arrested several times for drug related offences.
As Ike's fortunes dimmed, Tina mounted a huge comeback in the mid-1980s and had hits with songs like Better Be Good to Me and Private Dancer.
The singer also publicly denounced Ike as an abusive husband in a tell-all book, I, Tina, which formed the basis for a 1993 film about her life, What's Love Got To Do With It. Turner signed away his rights to the movie, giving Hollywood wide latitude to dramatise his failures.
Cause of death has yet to be confirmed.
| 72 |
| Vote |
Shared on
Subscribe to this blog
