“Nuttin’ Up” is your next assignment then. I’d want to know that there was more than one track of merit as well. Get on the Youtubes and search the track “Getting Nasty.” That’s all you should need to convince you. This foot stompin’ “soul jazz” album (for lack of a better descriptive) is in the Young Holt Unlimited vein. I’m only writing 'cause I can’t believe no one’s been here yet. Turner came up with some fine grooves like “Thinking Black,” “Getting Nasty” (with Billy Preston on piano), “Scotty Souling,” “Nuttin’ Up,” and the monumental “Funky Mule.” However, the record lacks Turner’s usual fire and flair and ultimately is too polite and slick to be very memorable (“Funky Mule” aside). The band is tight and laid-back at once, with horns at the forefront most of the time. Whenever he had some spare time he would drag the band into a local studio and lay down tracks, resulting in these 12 funky soul jams that sound like they were lifted from the soundtrack to a blaxploitation film. When he was out on tour in 1969 with his regular gig, the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, Ike Turner found the time to cut the instrumental album A Black Man’s Soul. “Funky Mule” was later included on important compilations such as ‘DJ Pogo Presents The Breaks’, 'B-Boy Anthems Volume Three’ and 'Solid Steel Presents Hexstatic - Listen & Learn’….Alain_Patrick ….~ Undervalued LP “A Black Man’s Soul” by Ike Turner’s Kings Of Rhythm reached the level of a primar influence to all those genres for its rich content, specially for Marvin Holmes’ dance hit cover “Funky Mule”: its energetic, very intense and powerful opening drum solo by Mack Johnson would become a timeless Breakbeat standard.Īs a result, “Funky Mule” breaks would be sampled and used on several kinds of music, from Hip Hop to the avant-garde Breakbeats of 4 Hero, Techno icon Luke Slater, and the Drum n’ Bass artists Paradox, Senses, and JMJ & Flytronix duo, among other. Despite this fact that the journey of these talented musicians would be affected by Ike’s form of leadership, the ensemble of their music became a standard not only for Rhythm & Blues and Rock n’ Roll, but also Soul, Funk and even more recent genres of music (Hip Hop and Electronic Music included).
This kind of behavior Ike Turner had was deeply unfortunate, specially because it would affect the lifes and the careers of all those artists that were part of Ike’s bands (and most specially Tina Turner, of course). Of course the “Kings Of Rhythm”’s musical talent cannot be condemned because of Ike’s bad actions even though, it’s almost impossible to have as a hero a leader that would use psychological threats and physical violence on a regular basis, specially against his wife. Even Jimmy Hendrix played on the band during the sixties, before being acclaimed as a solo artist.
Not that I would doubt their potential, it’s just because, for most of the people that felt in love with Tina Turner’s music, it was very hard to accept Ike’s dehumanized behavior as her husband and partner (he was known to beat her wife Tina Turner several times during their marriage and partnership).įormed on the end fourties, Ike Turner’s band Kings Of Rhythm got their place on the Rhythm & Blues history as well as Rock n’ Roll for their brilliant releases, from their partnership with sax player Jackie Brenston and the release of “Rocket 88” under the name Jackie Brenston & His Delta Cats (known as one of the very first Rock & Roll releases in 1951) to the fifties R&B hits and more than three decades of influential music, including the underrated album “A Black Man’s Soul” from 1969. I have no words to describe how difficult it was to realize how important was Ike Turner’s Kings Of Rhythm band for the next generations of music artists.
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