392: Ike and Tina Turner, "Proud Mary: The Best of Ike and Tina Turner"

 

This isn't just a collection of songs featuring an insanely talented singer and an incredibly influential guitarist, it's a tour through the history of rock.  You start off with the familiar girl-group sounds of something like "I'm Jealous" and "I Idolize You" and go through a set of covers of some of the most important songs ever ("Come Together" and "Honky Tonk Women") and end up with some of Tina's own compositions, which shows she's just as capable of Ike, who terrorized and dominated her for years until karma finally came around.  Tina ended up a superstar with a career renaissance and Ike died mostly a broken man.

There are all kinds of fascinating things about this album, but the trhroughline is Tina's incredible voice, that go from a soft croon to a shriek of power and anguish, sometimes within seconds.  Just drop into "I'm Jealous" to see what I'm talking about.

I mentioned the covers, and the one everyone knows is the title track, where Ike and Tina took a Creedence song that was already a huge hit and made it into their signature song.  They broke the song down and gave it a slow, soulful intro, then followed it with an R&B blast to back Tina's wailing vocals.  What I like is that in that slow intro Tina gives you an outline of what's going on:

You know, every now and then
I think you might like to hear something from us
Nice and easy but there's just one thing
You see, we never ever do nothing nice and easy
We always do it nice and rough
So we're going to take the beginning of this song
And do it easy
Then we're going to do the finish rough
This is the way we do 'Proud Mary'

Since this is a Best Of collection, it has to include "River Deep, Mountain High," but be forewarned - it's not the iconic Phil Spector Wall of Sound version, but a later recording that, honestly, sounds like a demo version compared to the Spector cut.  Listen to them back to back andf you'll see what I mean.  They didn't call it the Wall of Sound for nothing.

There's also one weird thing that jumped out at me - "Up In The Heah" is a fine Ike & Tina song, and you're going along just enjoying it, and then BAM Ike's backing vocal jumps out like he's in the room next to you.  It's so high in the mix it's genuinely shocking.  I can imagine Ike, high as a kite and mad as hell, just sitting in that control room, telling the engineer "Higher.  Higher," until his deep voice saying "Up in here": is far and away the loudest thing on the record.  That would fit with what we know about him, anyway.

(Jump to about 1:15 to see what I'm talking about)