ike-arumba!

its a shame ike turner was known primarily as the badass wife-beating crackhead. his notoriety for domestic violence pretty much completely overshadowed the enormous influence he had on blues and soul music, ever since he wrote arguably the first ever rock and roll single, Rocket 88, in 1951, which is incidentally also the first ever example of guitar distortion (caused by a broken amp, a happy accident that would be emulated in pretty much the majority of rock music of the following decades). 

ike is perhaps most famous for his formation of the ike and tina turner revue. although tina was mostly in the spotlight, and ike sang on few recordings, it was ike that essentially had to take on the role of songwriter, band manager, and general co-ordinator of everything going on with the revue, and quite clearly if you get a crackhead doing all these jobs at once, somethings going to go wrong along the way. as a consequence of his downward spiral of drug/wife abuse, tina left him in 1976 and went solo, leaving the revue in tatters.

as well as the pioneer of the rock and roll sound, he lived the rock and roll lifestyle most hipsters this day an age would never dream of. on top of opening a can of whoop-ass on tina on a regular basis, he was coked off his tits for most of his career, even pretending to be an LA police man to confiscate crack off street dealers and fuel his naughty little habit, and was behind bars for 4 years. he pretty much defined the term ladies' man, owning the keys to 32 women's apartments in the '50s. for any of you aspiring to follow in his footsteps, here's some words of wisdom from the man himself :

"Stay handsome and hard to get. Keep 'em wonderin' all the time what you gonna do and wonderin' how you feel about 'em. Do you love 'em? 'Cause once they are sure that you do, you got a problem"

oh ike you player.

sadly, the coke finally got the better of him in december 2007, and he died in his home in san diego at the age of 76. 

here's a selection of my favourite ike moments youtube has to offer:

(fully only just realised that the piano loop from this is the one used in jurassic 5's 'concrete schoolyard!')