Ike Turner

When you see the post title, what is the first thought you have?

Be honest, do you think monster? Wife beater? Saw the movie "Whats Love Got to Do With It"?

Ever wonder what the other side of the story was?

You do know there are two sides to every story right?

Back when we interviewed JC Martin from Black Angel in January, one of the many things we touched on was his working relationship with Audrey Turner, who coincidentally was married to Ike Turner.

JC knew a different Ike Turner.

Ok, I'll just say it now, yes, he did beat Tina. Ike even admitted as much in his book "Taking Back My Name".


Forget the movie for a second.


In the words of JC Martin "Ike wasn't nearly as bad as people thought, and Tina wasn't as good as Oprah thought she was."

First, in reality, Ike was always buying his grand kids clothes, always having them at his ranch, when his kids got in trouble with drugs Ike was the one that got them off the street, got them into rehab, and cleaned up.

My favorite story is when Ike took his grandson Randy out, and got him a whole cowboy outfit. He bought him the 10 gallon hat, the vest, the cowboy shirt, the belt with the big cowboy buckle, the jeans, chaps, boots, the whole nine yards.

The next day Randy came out dressed in this outfit, and Ike came out wearing an identical outfit to go ride horses with his grandson.

On the other side, when Tina came to town one time, Ronnie (Ike and Tina's only son) was living in a two bedroom apartment, in fact the kids had to share a bed. Tina picked up Ronnie in a limo (Tina didn't like Ronnies wife) spent a bunch of money on him, gave him a bunch of cash, bought him a Lincoln Continental, didn't see her grandkids because she didn't like their mother.

Three days later Ronnie went to a recording session with Black Angel, he had blown the money on drugs, wrecked the Continental, ect.

So compare the two stories.

Ok, granted Ike was a different person when he was on drugs. In fact according to JC, Audrey left him when he got back on drugs about 3 to 6 months before he died. When he was on drugs he was a totally different guy. I understand that you can't blame the drugs, at the same time as Deb pointed out when we were talking about Ike last night, we've all seen people change when they get on drugs, or alcohol, lets be honest people do change when they are wrecked on drugs.

Here's an interesting point....

Right when Deb's show Unsigned Musicians went on the air, she had been talking to Audrey Turner about helping to launch the "Unleashed" show. The day after Deb talked to Audrey, Ike passed away.

Deb did a tribute show to Ike Turner (and does every year on December 12, the date Ike passed away) and made sure that the musicians she plays on the tribute show were ok with it, afterall Ike Turner is a controversial guy.

The response was overwhelming, people who knew Ike, had no problem with it.

We talked about Ike Turner at length this week. The show is in the archive, and if you are interested in hearing more about the real Ike Turner, listen to the show we did with JC Martin. I have it featured on my showpage on blogtalkradio right now, but if you can't find it, the original air date was January 11, 2009. The best way to listen to the part about Ike would be to download the show, open it in your own media player, and scroll down to the 2 hour mark.

As I said, none of us are perfect, go try walking on water.

Otherwise, be sure to get both sides of the story.



On another note, we are still working on the petition to President Obama, I'll be sure to post here when we have it ready.

We have to stop the Performance Rights Act folks.