Their first hit, “A Fool in Love,” was recorded in 1961 when another singer failed to show up for a session. After several early ‘60s hit R&B singles, including “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine” in 1961, they became major stars in England.
A 1971 cover version of John Fogerty’s “Proud Mary” reached No. 4 on the pop chart. Ike and Tina divorced in 1976.
TIMELINE
November 5, 1931: Ike Turner was born.
November 26, 1939: Tina Turner was born.
March 1, 1951: Sam Phillips records “Rocket 88” with singer Jackie Brenston and Ike Turner’s band. for Chess records. This recording is widely considered the first rock and roll record.
October 17, 1960: Ike and Tina Turner hit #27 on pop and #3 on R&B with the Sue records single “A Fool In Love”.
September 18, 1961: Ike and Tina Turner #14 on pop and #2 on R&B “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine”.
1961: Ike and Tina Turner hit #4 on the R&B chart and #38 (1/27/62) on the pop chart with “Poor Fool”.
July 2, 1962: After getting hurt during a jump, Jimi Hendrix gets an honorable discharge from the Army. Over the next three years, he will play numerous gigs and studio sessions with such R&B stars as Little Richard, the Isley Brothers, Ike and Tina Turner and Sam Cooke.
March 27, 1971: Ike & Tina Turner hit #4 with “Proud Mary.”
November 17, 1973: Ike & Tina Turner hit #22 with “Nutbush City Limits”.
(2) As husband and wife, Ike & Tina Turner headed up one of the most potent live acts on the R&B circuit during the '60s and early '70s. Guitarist and bandleader Ike kept his ensemble tight and well-drilled while throwing in his own distinctively twangy plucking; lead vocalist Tina was a ferocious whirlwind of power and energy, a raw sexual dynamo who was impossible to contain when she hit the stage, leading some critics to call her the first female singer to embody the true spirit of rock & roll. In their prime, the Ike & Tina Turner Revue specialized in a hard-driving, funked-up hybrid of soul and rock that, in its best moments, rose to a visceral frenzy that few R&B acts of any era could hope to match. Effusively praised by white rock luminaries like the Rolling Stones and Janis Joplin, Tina was unquestionably the star of the show, with a hugely powerful, raspy voice that ranks among the all-time soul greats. For all their concert presence, the Turners sometimes had problems translating their strong points to record; they cut singles for an endless succession of large and small independent labels throughout their career, and suffered from a shortage of the strong original material that artists with more stable homes (Motown, Atlantic, Stax, etc.) often enjoyed. The couple's well-documented marital difficulties (a mild way of describing Ike's violent, drug-fueled cruelty) eventually dissolved their partnership in the mid-'70s. Tina, of course, went on to become an icon and a symbol of survival after the resurgence of her solo career in the '80s, but it was the years she spent with Ike that made the purely musical part of her legend.
Izear Luster "Ike" Turner, Jr. was born in Clarksdale, MS, in 1931; initially a pianist, he formed his first band in high school and put together the Kings of Rhythm in the late '40s. In 1951, that group cut the pivotal "Rocket 88," a tune often pinpointed as the first ever rock & roll record; however, since sax player Jackie Brenston took the vocal, the song was credited to Brenston & His Delta Cats rather than Turner & the Kings of Rhythm. Not long after, Turner switched from piano to guitar, and he and his band became a prolific session outfit in Memphis, backing various Sun artists and bluesmen during the early '50s. Turner moved the Kings of Rhythm to East St. Louis in the mid-'50s, where they became kingpins of the local R&B circuit. In 1956, he met a teenage, gospel-trained singer from Nutbush, TN, named Anna Mae Bullock, and promised her a chance to sing with his band. That chance kept failing to materialize, until one night Bullock simply grabbed the microphone and started belting. Impressed, Turner made her a part of his revue, changing her name to Tina. After Tina became pregnant by the band's saxophonist, Raymond Hill, she moved into Turner's house, an arrangement that led to their own relationship; the two were married in 1958 and soon had a child of their own.
In late 1959, Turner's band entered the studio to cut a song called "A Fool in Love" for the Sue Records label. The scheduled male vocalist failed to show up for the session, and Tina was pressed into service. Released in 1960, "A Fool in Love" shot to the number two spot on the R&B charts, also making the pop Top 30. Tina was now clearly the focal point of the act, which Turner rechristened the Ike & Tina Turner Revue; with a large, horn-filled ensemble and a group of leggy backup singers dubbed the Ikettes (who complemented Tina's short-skirted, uninhibited gyrating), the Revue eventually developed a reputation for putting on one of the most exciting live shows in R&B. The R&B-chart hits came fast and furious during the early '60s: 1961's "I Idolize You" (number five) and "It's Gonna Work Out Fine" (number two), 1962's "Poor Fool" (number four) and "Tra La La La La" (number nine). It was an impressive run, but the well went dry over the next several years; Ike supplied much of the band's original material, and although he was responsible for many of the early successes, he simply wasn't a world-class songwriter who could deliver hit-caliber tunes with regularity. Much of the Revue's repertoire consisted of bluesy, chitlin circuit R&B that wasn't exceptionally memorable. Ike & Tina branched out from Sue Records and spent the next few years issuing records on additional labels, including Kent, Modern, and Loma. While they had some undeniable high points and several chart entries, none reached the level of their initial run of Top Ten hits.
In 1966, the Turners worked with legendary producer Phil Spector, who was seeking a way to restore his artistic and commercial standing at the forefront of pop music in the wake of advances by the Beach Boys and Beatles. The powerful instrument that was Tina's voice appealed to Spector's sense of grandeur, and he conceived of a massive-scale production framing that voice that would rank as his greatest masterpiece. Ike already had a reputation for demanding control, and Spector struck his deal accordingly: although the records would be fully credited to Ike & Tina Turner, Ike would not be allowed to enter the studio or alter the finished recordings (in effect, Spector was paying him not to meddle). The centerpiece of Spector's collaboration with Tina was "River Deep - Mountain High," a monumental pop symphony that cost over $22,000 to produce (in 1966, this was a whopping sum for an album, let alone a single). The single represented Spector's so-called Wall of Sound style at its most gloriously excessive, and Tina's was one of the few voices in popular music strong enough to cut through the monolithic orchestral backing. With the high cost and his own slipping stature, Spector was betting the farm on "River Deep - Mountain High," and although it rocketed into the British Top Five and made Tina a star in the U.K., it flopped in America, where its mixture of black and white musical aesthetics was still slightly ahead of its time. A crushed Spector retreated from the music business not long after, and his Philles label yanked the accompanying album of the same name from American release (Spector wound up producing only five of the 12 cuts). Although some critics dismiss "River Deep - Mountain High" as overproduced bombast, many still consider it one of rock's greatest singles; George Harrison famously described it as "a perfect record from start to finish."
After the Spector deal fell through, Ike & Tina returned to their somewhat mercenary recording habits, cutting songs for Modern and Innis, then moving to Minit and Blue Thumb in 1969. That year, they went on the road as the opening act for the Rolling Stones, and Ike slightly retooled the Revue's sound to appeal to white rock audiences in addition to their core black following. In 1970, they signed with Liberty/United Artists and recorded Come Together, which incorporated contemporary rock & roll covers into their repertoire; versions of the Beatles' title track and Sly & the Family Stone's "I Want to Take You Higher" made the R&B Top 30. Released later that year, Workin' Together became the most popular album of their career, making the Top 25 on the strength of a storming reinterpretation of CCR's "Proud Mary." Featuring a notorious spoken intro by Tina, the "nice...and rough" version of "Proud Mary" gave Ike & Tina their first Top Five hit on the pop charts, and returned them to the same heights on the R&B side as well; it also won them a Grammy. The covers gimmick couldn't last forever, though, and their formula soon grew predictable; their last major success was 1973's "Nutbush City Limits," a semi-autobiographical song written by Tina that made the R&B Top 20 and just missed that placing on the pop side. By that point, Tina had grown increasingly uninterested in the duo's well-established act, and was tiring of the largely unchallenging material she continued to perform.
Unfortunately, the music itself wasn't the only factor in Ike & Tina's downturn. As a bandleader, Ike had long been a disciplinarian, but during the '60s he developed severe addictions to alcohol and, especially, cocaine. Wanting to maintain control over the star of his show at any cost, Turner kept his wife in line through an increasingly violent pattern of emotional and physical abuse; often drug-related, his flights of rage could result in severe beatings or burns that pushed Tina to attempt suicide in 1968, according to her autobiography. She continued to endure Ike's dominance through the early '70s, and her performances were clearly weary by the end; finally, she walked out on her husband and generally declined to pursue claims for financial compensation from their work together. Their divorce became official in 1976. After a long period of struggle, Tina re-emerged triumphantly in the '80s as a superstar solo act; Ike, meanwhile, ran his own recording studio for a time, but his drug problems worsened, resulting in several arrests. Sadly, and perhaps fittingly, he was serving prison time when he and his former wife were jointly inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991, and was unable to attend the ceremony. ~ Steve Huey, Rovi
You Don't Love Me
Ike & Tina Turner Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
And I grew to love you more each passing day
Before too long I'd filled my world around you
Yeah and I prayed you loved enough of me to stay
Oh if you love me let me know
If you don't then let me go
I can't take another minute of this day without you in it
If you don't set me free
Take the chains away that keep me loving you
I'm talkin' 'bout the arms that open wide to hold me closer
And the hand that run their fingers through my hair
And the smile that says hello it's good to see you
Any time I turn around and find you there
Oh it's this and so much more that makes me love you
What else can I do to make you see
You know you'll have whatever's mine to give you
But a love affair for one get there with you
So if you love me let me know
If you don't let me go
I can't take another minute of the day without you near
If you love me let it be
If you don't then set me free
Just take these chains away that keeps me loving you
If you love me let me know
And if you don't let me go
Just take these chains away that keeps me loving you
The lyrics to Ike & Tina Turner's song "If You Ask Me" are a heartfelt plea for clarity and assurance in a relationship. The singer starts off by describing how they were happy and content in their own life before the other person came along. As time passed, they fell deeply in love and built their world around this person. However, there is an underlying uncertainty about whether this love is reciprocated. The singer prays that the other person loves them enough to stay.
The chorus of the song expresses the singer's need for transparency in the relationship. They yearn for a clear answer from their partner - if they truly love them, they want to be assured, but if not, they want to be set free from the chains of loving someone who doesn't feel the same way. The singer desires a love that is open, with open arms, comforting gestures, and genuine smiles. They are willing to give everything they have, but they need the other person to meet them halfway and fully commit to the relationship.
Overall, "If You Ask Me" showcases the vulnerability and longing for security in a romantic relationship. It reflects the universal desire for mutual love and devotion, urging the other person to either let them know and stay or set them free and allow them to find the love they deserve.
Line by Line Meaning
You came when I was happy in your sunshine
You entered my life when I was content and full of joy because of you.
And I grew to love you more each passing day
As time went on, my love for you continued to grow stronger and deeper.
Before too long I'd filled my world around you
In a short amount of time, you became the center and entirety of my world.
Yeah and I prayed you loved enough of me to stay
I hoped and wished that you loved me as much as I loved you, hoping you would stay with me.
Oh if you love me let me know
If you truly love me, please express it openly and honestly.
If you don't then let me go
If you do not feel the same way, please release me from this relationship.
I can't take another minute of this day without you in it
The thought of spending even a moment without you in my life is unbearable.
If you love me let it be
If your love for me is genuine, let it flourish and be.
If you don't set me free
If your feelings for me are not true, please set me free from the chains of this love.
Take the chains away that keep me loving you
Remove the emotional restraints that bind me to this unrequited love for you.
I'm talkin' 'bout the arms that open wide to hold me closer
I am referring to the loving embrace of your arms, welcoming me and drawing me closer.
And the hand that run their fingers through my hair
The touch of your hand gently running through my hair, bringing comfort and tenderness.
And the smile that says hello it's good to see you
Your smile that greets me with warmth, expressing joy and happiness upon our meeting.
Any time I turn around and find you there
Whenever I need you or seek your presence, I can always rely on you being there for me.
Oh it's this and so much more that makes me love you
It is not just these gestures, but also numerous other qualities, that intensify my love for you.
What else can I do to make you see
I am desperate to find a way to make you truly understand and recognize my love for you.
You know you'll have whatever's mine to give you
I am ready to offer and provide you with everything that belongs to me.
But a love affair for one get there with you
However, a love relationship cannot exist if it is only one-sided and not reciprocated by you.
So if you love me let me know
Therefore, if you genuinely love me, please communicate and show it.
If you don't let me go
If your feelings for me are not true, then it is crucial to set me free.
I can't take another minute of the day without you near
Every passing minute without your presence feels unbearable and agonizing.
Just take these chains away that keeps me loving you
I implore you to remove the emotional shackles that bind me to this unrequited love for you.
If you love me let me know
If you truly love me, please let me know and confirm it.
And if you don't let me go
If your love for me is not genuine, then it is essential for you to release me from this relationship.
Just take these chains away that keeps me loving you
I beg you to remove the emotional restraints that hold me captive in my love for you.
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA AMCOS
Written by: John Henry Rostill
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Broonzied
I got this great track on CD called Universal Masters Collection: Classic Ike & Tina Turner. It cost next to nothing and has many more (mainly blues infused) great cuts like this. Tina sounds great as always & Ike's raw stinging guitar really stands out and gives whole album an edge. Well worth checking out.
Arnold
Great stuff , and the dancing !!
engine-54
I love you!!! yes you know!!!
ALAIN DEWAELE
thank for the sharing thegreatmarkjohnson love this track