After the triumphant comeback and the tell-alls, the VH-1 behind-the-scenes specials and the A&E docu-footage, there's barely a person alive who can come to a recording by Ike & Tina Turner without baggage.
But to reduce the Turners to a Lifetime Television storyline (battered woman summons courage, escapes and makes good) is to overlook their sheer imprint on the course of music. A new box set that hits stores this week, The Ike & Tina Turner Story: 1960-1975, is a three-disc, nearly 50-track retrospective that should help pull the focus back onto the music, where it belongs.
The first two discs cluster Ike and Tina's crossover-pop hits (so many, in such a short span, that Billboard shut down their R&B chart for nearly two years because the Turners had already colonized Pop) and musically-intriguing misses, but it's the third, a remastered live show from 1969, that seals the deal, blowing the roof off of the joint and making crystal clear Mick Jagger's oft-quoted comment that performing with Tina Turner was like being inside a hurricane.
written on Monday Oct 15, 2007
inside a hurricane.
