Risin' with the Blues

#		Title	Length
1		Gimme Back my Wig	3:37	Play
2		Caldonia	2:57	Play
3		Tease Me	3:47	Play
4		Goin' Home Tomorrow	3:05	Play
5		Jazzy Fuzzy	4:20	Play
6		I Don't Want Nobody	3:42	Play
7		Jesus Loves Me	3:57	Play
8		A Love Like Yours	3:26	Play
9		Senor Blues	4:25	Play
10		Eighteen Long Years	3:16	Play
11		Rockin' Blues	4:38	Play
12		After Hours	5:00	Play
13		Big Fat Mama	3:54	Play
14		Bi Polar	3:46	Play
			53:50

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Description

There is no denying Ike Turners place in musical history. While the general public may know about his heyday with the Ike & Tina Turner Revue during the 60s (a meteroic rise to fame that peaked with their early 70 hits Proud Mary and Nutbush City Limits), only hardcore Ike fans and jump blues enthusiasts are aware of him spearheading the formative years of rock n roll with the 1951 hit Rocket 88(cut in Memphis by his Kings of Rhythm but issued on Chicagos Chess Records label under the name Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats). Few know of Turners role as a kind of super talent scout of the South during the 1950s for both the Chess brothers of Chicagos Chess Records or the Bihari brothers of Los Angeles Modern/RPM Records. Fewer still know of Ikes participation on several early 50s RPM recordings by B.B. King (including his piano accompaniment on Kings 1951 hit Three OClock Blues and his 1952 follow-up You Know I Love You), his playing second guitar on classic 1958 Cobra sessions for Buddy Guy and Otis Rush (including Rushs signature pieces Double Trouble and All Your Love (I Miss Loving)), or hammering the 88s behind the likes of Howlin Wolf, Muddy Waters, Elmore James, Little Walter, and Willie Dixon during the 1950s.

While playing as a house pianist in West Memphis "blacks only" blues clubs, Ike often snuck in a young white truck driver to sit next to the piano to study Ike's boogie style and dance moves: that kid was Elvis Presley.

In the 1960's, Ike's influence on several of the most recognized names in Rock continued: Janis Joplin sought Turner for vocal coaching, and a young Jimi Hendrix played in Ike's Kings of Rhythm for a time. As a teenager, Bonnie Bramlett was briefly a member of the Ikettes, prior to starting her own rise to stardom a few years later.

In retrospect, Ikes early innovations seem to have been overshadowed by his notoriety in later years. Following the breakup of Ike & Tina in 1976, Turner entered a dark period of self-imposed exile marked by his heavy cocaine addiction. I just went into a 15-year party, is how he put it. The 90s were further marred by his incarceration for cocaine possession at the outset of the decade and the public besmirching of his name by the 1993 movie Whats Love Got To Do With It?, which portrays Tinas take on their tumultuous 18-year relationship. But like the mythical phoenix, Ike would eventually rise from the ashes of his fallen career and begin life anew.
With 2001s triumphant Here and Now, one thing was eminently clear: the swagger was back in Ike Turners stride. That comeback album took critics by surprise, proving that, at age 70, he still had plenty of fire left to give. The album received a GRAMMY nomination for "Best Traditional Blues album" in 2001, and a 2002 W.C. Handy Blues Award in 2002.

On Risin' with the Blues, the R&B icon and Rock & Roll Hall of Famer takes the intensity level up a notch or two with typically slashing-stinging guitar work, rollicking boogie woogie piano flourishes and some of the nastiest, rawest, most potent vocals hes ever summoned up in a fabled career that dates back more than 50 years.
All my life I was afraid to come out front and sing, says the longtime bandleader who throughout his career stood behind a dynamic front person, whether it was Jackie Brenston, Billy Gayles or Clayton Love in the early years or Tina Turner during the 60s and 70s. I dont know whether I was too bashful to sing it myself on stage, I just liked it better in the background.
Ike is in the background no more. Throughout Risin' with the Blues, he wails with ferocious authority as the vocal front man while wielding a wicked ax and pumping the piano keys with the energy of a man half his age. On an ultra-funky Gimme Back My Wig, he snarls his way through the humorous lyrics while on a powerful horn-fueled reading of Eddie Boyds Five Long Years (retitled here as Eighteen Long Years to commemorate the span of Ikes marriage to Tina), he screams with cathartic abandon. On the infectious shuffle blues Tease Me, Ike gets downright menacing, then turns around and delivers the country flavored ballad A Love Like Yours with rare poignancy and emotional depth.
Turner cuts a wide stylistic swath on this powerhouse outing. There are bits of jazz extrapolation here in his instrumental Jazzy Fuzzy and also on a faithful reading of Horace Silvers Senor Blues. The urgent I Dont Want Nobody is a dance floor number coming directly out of the Zapp-Bootsy Collins playbook while the gospel-flavored Jesus Loves Me has Turner testifying with evangelistic zeal. As he says of that confessional offering, Behind all the crap that they said I been through, its like, You can call me a bad boy, but when you get to calling me a bad boy, Jesus loves me anyway. And thats the truth.
On a rousing rendition of Louis Jordans 1946 hit Caldonia (cut when Ike was an impressionable 15-year-old growing up in Clarksdale, Mississippi), he pays tribute a jump blues hero of his youth. Thats my favorite guy, Louis Jordan, he says. I grew up with his music -- all those tunes I heard on the jukebox like Caldonia, Let The Good Times Roll and Choo Choo Cha Boogie. That was a golden era, man! I was born in 1931 so I came up with all those great tunes by cats like Joe Liggins (1945s The Honeydripper) and Jimmy Liggins (1947s Cadillac Boogie), Roy Brown (1947s Good Rockin Tonight), T-Bone Walker (1947s Stormy Monday Blues) and Amos Milburn (1948s Chicken Shack Boogie). That was my music, man! And when I finally formed the Kings of Rhythm, we were doing our own versions of all that stuff, just trying to put our own twist on it.
Elsewhere on Risin' with the Blues, Turners guitar stings with a vengeance on Rockin Blues, he belts out vocals in robust style on Goin Home Tomorrow (a New Orleans flavored stroll reminiscent of Earl Kings Those Lonely, Lonely Nights) and digs into some downhome fingerstyle blues guitar work on the humorous Big Fat Mama. The funky instrumental Bi Polar showcases both Ikes guitar and piano prowess while the organ-fueled closer, After Hours, is an Erskine Hawkins slow blues that highlights Ikes soulful restraint on the ivories.
Everything you hear on this record comes directly from the heart, man, maintains the man who has been firmly rooted in the real-deal for over 50 years. This whole album is about feeling.
Amen to that. -- Bill Milkowski

Producers : Ike Turner, Ike Turner Jr. Assistant Producer: Roger Nemour.

Recorded at: Ritesonian Studio, Sun Valley, CA; Track Studio, Ventura, CA; QLA Studio, Hollywood, CA; Bombeat Studio, San Diego, CA; Signature Sound Studio, San Diego, CA. Mastered by Phil Magnotti, in April 2006. Photography: Martin Trailer. Package Design : 3 and Co., New York. Executive producers: Roger Davidson & Joachim Jochen Becker, Becker Davidson Entertainment L.L.C.

Bookings : The Agency Tel 760 727 4471

www.iketurner.com