Ike Turner

Izear Luster "Ike" Turner Jr. (November 5, 1931 – December 12, 2007) was an American musician, bandleader, songwriter, arranger, talent scout, and record producer. An early pioneer of fifties rock and roll, he is most popularly known for his work in the 1960s and 1970s with his then-wife Tina Turner in the Ike & Tina Turner Revue.

Turner began playing piano and guitar when he was eight years of age. He formed a music group, the Kings of Rhythm, as a teenager. Turner employed the group as his backing band for the rest of his life. His first recording, "Rocket 88" (1951) (credited to "Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats"), is considered a contender for the distinction of "first rock and roll song." Relocating to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1954, he built the Kings into one of the most renowned acts on the local club circuit. There, he met singer Anna Mae Bullock, whom he renamed Tina Turner; the two formed the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, which over the course of the 1960s became a soul/rock crossover success. The two were married from 1962 until their 1978 divorce. Turner recorded for many of the key R&B record labels of the 1950s and 1960s, including Chess, Modern, Trumpet, Flair and Sue. With the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, he graduated to larger labels Blue Thumb and United Artists.

Turner's cocaine addiction and legal troubles, together with accounts by Tina Turner of domestic violence inflicted by him (published in her autobiography I, Tina and included in its film adaptation What's Love Got to Do with It), impacted his career in the 1980s and 1990s. Addicted to cocaine and crack for at least 15 years, Turner was convicted of drug offenses, serving seventeen months in prison between July 1989 and 1991. He spent the rest of the 1990s free of his addiction, but relapsed in 2004. Near the end of his life, he returned to live performance as a front man and, returning to his blues roots, produced two albums that were critically well received and award-winning.

Turner has frequently been referred to as a "great innovator" of rock and roll by contemporaries such as Little Richard and Johnny Otis. Phil Alexander, then editor-in-chief of Mojo magazine, described Turner as "the cornerstone of modern day rock 'n' roll". Throughout his career, Turner won four Grammy Awards, which include two competitive awards and two Grammy Hall of Fame Awards. Turner was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Tina Turner in 1991. In 2001, he was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. In 2018, "Rocket 88" was one of the first songs inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Singles.   Wikipedia