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Ike & Tina Turner: Sing the Blues

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Late ‘60s blues sides from soul dynamos

A year before climbing into the top-40 with “I Want to Take You Higher,” and two-years before attaining rock immortality with their 1971 cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary,” Ike Turner produced a pair of albums, “Outta Season” and “The Hunter,” that he leased to Bob Krasnow’s recently founded Blue Thumb records. Turner had been self-producing sessions throughout his career, fanning out the results to a variety of labels, including several of his own imprints, in an effort to keep fresh material in the stores as he toured with the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. For this pair of releases he reached back to his beginnings as a blues musician, selecting titles from T-Bone Walker, Lowell Fulson, Robert Johnson and Jimmy Reed, and adding just a few originals. Sung by Tina Turner in a bluesy wail that’s sadly familiar with love gone very, very wrong, many of the tracks are arranged without the backing singers or horns of the Revue, but decorated generously with Ike Turner’s twangy guitar riffs and leads.

The sparse settings show off both Turners in a stark light that their frenetic hits with the Revue rarely captured. Ike Turner is offered here primarily as a lead and rhythm guitarist, and Tina Turner creates emotionally informed first-person vocals from standard blues progressions. Highlights include a chillingly distraught rendition of Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long,” the bedspring guitar twang on “Five Long Years” and the original instrumental “Grumbling,” the Motown vibe given Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Crazy About You Baby,” Tina Turner’s sassy holler on Lowell Fulson’s “Reconsider Baby,” her strutting, self-assured reading of “The Hunter,” and a terrifically convincing take on Don Robey’s “I Smell Trouble.” The albums’ biggest commercial success was the funky soul workout “Bold Soul Sister,” which reached #22 on the soul charts and crossed over to #69 pop. Both Turners show a deep connection to the blues, both as the roots of their soul sides with the Revue, and particularly in Tina Turner’s case, a very personal expression of her life’s troubles.

Acrobat’s anthology cherry-picks 18 of the combined albums’ 22 tracks, replicating most of the selections on the out-of-print Bold Soul Sister, but falling short of Blue Moon’s import two-fer (which, to be fair, is twice the price of this set for only four more tracks). Blame U.S. royalty rules for the disparity in track counts. More notably absent is the Grammy-winning album cover of Outta Season, which famously depicts the Turners in whiteface eating watermelon – a visual complaint about white musicians cashing in on the blues while many of the genre’s originators struggled for recognition. The audio quality of these masters is excellent, with plenty of presence in the vocals and detail in the instruments. New liner notes provide a concise history of Ike & Tina Turner’s musical career and brief context for these specific recordings. This isn’t the place to start an Ike & Tina collection, but it’s a great place for fans to stretch out their appreciation of the Turner’s talents. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]

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Otis Redding: Live in London and Paris

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Soul master at the peak of his powers

Redding’s live performances of the mid-60s are surprisingly well documented. Individual pieces of his work on Stax’s package tours of Europe can be heard on Live in Europe, The Stax/Volt Revue: Live in London, the Ace Records collection 1,000 Volts of Stax, and the DVD Stax/Volt Revue Live in Norway 1967. His stateside performances have turned up on several Monterey Pop artifacts, and two albums worth of tracks document his shows at the Whisky A Go Go (1 2). What separates this new release from the rest is the full picture of Redding’s set at the top of the Stax ticket. Stretching to over an hour, the nineteen tracks collect performances from back-to-back concerts in London and Paris, showing off not only the incendiary songs, but the excitement of the shows, from Emperor Rosko’s name-spelling introduction in London to the climactic renditions of “Try a Little Tenderness” that leave both audiences chanting for more.

Heading up a bill that featured Arthur Conley, Eddie Floyd and Sam & Dave, and backed by Booker T. and the M.G.’s and the Mar-Keys, Redding’s headlining slot found the party already well under way. Even so, his introduction was enough to take the crowd to a new level of excitement. With the M.G.’s kicking off the pulsing intro of “Respect,” Redding hits the stage like a soul hurricane at full speed, pulling the band into the cyclone with all his might. In the shorter London set he slows for a cover of “My Girl,” burning with emotion on what had been his first hit single in the UK. The band plays more grittily than Motown’s funk brothers, with the Mar-Keys’ horns stretching to hit high notes and Redding scatting to close the song. The rolling drum and horn intro of “Shake” elicits a cheer from the crowd, dialing up the electricity as the crowd shouts along to Redding’s exhortations.

Redding included two British Invasion hits in this set, working the Beatles’ “Day Tripper” and the Stones’ “Satisfaction” into Stax-styled soul shouts. The former found Redding weaving his way in and around the lyrics at double-speed with the horn section on his tail, the latter revs up Redding’s soul testimony to a frenzy. The London show closes with a tour de force seven-minute version of “Try a Little Tenderness,” opening with melancholy horns that segue into the opening stanza from Redding and organist Booker T. Jones. It’s the calm before the storm, as the song rises to crescendo after crescendo, sustained for three minutes by the emcee and crowd’s invitations for more, and culminating with most of the Stax revue joining in the finale.

The Paris program opens similarly to London’s with a call-and-response introduction and the pounding intro of “Respect.” Unlike the London show, which had a curfew, Redding’s Paris set was longer, and kept up the pulsing rhythm with “I Can’t Turn You Lose” before turning to the showcase ballad “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.” The song’s starts and stops leave the crowd breathless, and Redding’s vocal pyrotechnics elicit both shouts and applause. The set list reprises several selections from London before adding a somber version of “These Arms of Mine” and closing the show with yet another barn-burning version of “Try a Little Tenderness.”

Remixed from the original multitrack masters (recorded originally by the legendary Tom Dowd), the results are crisp and punchy, with Redding’s vocals forcefully at the fore and the Stax band solidly underneath. The disc is delivered in a digipack with a 16-page booklet that includes period photos and poster art, and liner notes from Bill Belmont, Ace Records’ Roger Armstrong, French author Jean-Noel Orgouz, and M.G. guitarist Steve Cropper. Redding’s return to Europe was a triumph, and his stage patter showed deep appreciation for his audiences as he playfully acknowledged “it’s good to be home.” Home for Redding was anywhere that people loved soul music, and at the height of his powers there were few who could unleash anything more soulful than this. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]

Listen to “I Can’t Turn You Loose”