Ike & Tina Turner
(Acrobat Music)
As Tina Turner leans into the first big note of Otis Redding's tortured Memphis soul gem "I've Been Loving You Too Long," the track that starts this 18-song anthology, one possible reaction would be "Man, that girl was sure no Otis Redding." Then, she really starts to pour it on, and by the time she's pulled back from the full-tilt gospel wailing for the stuttered promises of everything she'll do "if ya, if ya just stay and make and make love to me," that first reaction may have given way to something on the order of "She was, however, Tina Turner."
And as she would be the first to tell you, she and Ike never did anything nice and easy. They preferred it nice and rough. And for the most part, nice and rough is how they serve it on these little-known recordings from The Hunter and Outta Season, two albums of blues-based material Ike Turner leased to Blue Thumb back in 1969. There's the smoldering "Three O'Clock in the Morning Blues," where Tina's soulful wails are answered line for line by Ike's electrifying lead guitar, which more than holds its own against the onslaught. And "Grumbling," a gritty guitar instrumental, makes a solid case for Ike as one of rock and roll's most undervalued players. A sassy take on Albert King's "The Hunter" proved a modest R&B hit, while the compilation's highest charting single is also its lone Ike and Tina original, "Bold Soul Sister," which leaves no doubt that someone in that house was cranking the Temptations' psychedelic soul phase and kicks off with a classic Tina Turner moment ("Things and stuff and stuff and things and, and stuff").
But to anyone familiar with the couple's private life, the track that really resonates is "Five Long Years," where Tina takes Eddie Boyd's ballad of being mistreated again and again by an ungrateful woman and makes it her own ("I worked five long years for one man and he had the nerve to put me out").
Standout Tracks: "I've Been Loving You Too Long," "Bold Soul Sister" A. WATT
