RIP Ike Turner

Extremely busy with work, but couldn't let Ike's passing pass me by.
Oh, and yes, this is the same Ike who slapped the same Tina.

How many other people are known for hitting their wives?

1. OJ
   

So to everyone that feels the need to mention that particular fact in the second sentence (after "Ike Turner died." Who? "You know, that guy who hit Tina "We Don't Need Another Hero" Turner?" Oh. Yeah. That asshole.), there are sovereign countries and respected religions that sanction and even encourage wife beating and punishing rape victims. They can't play blues for shit, and yet they get away with both.

Saudi author and cleric “Dr.” Muhammad Al-’Arifi, the "Dr." Phil of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, recently reached out to all those young, recently married kids who may not yet have gotten the hang of the whole "wife thing", or better yet, the whole "woman thing." “Admonish them – once, twice, three times, four times, ten times. If this doesn’t help, refuse to share their beds. And if that doesn’t work? Beat them.”

Ok? Ike had already tried admonishment. And I think at some point he also probably refused to share his bed with Tina. What else was left???

(Seriously, I love all this moral relativism that Ike somehow brings up every time he's mentioned. When it's a whole people that beat their wives we say, "well, that's their culture," as if it were some complex, yet beautiful, mosaic of ancient traditions and aromatic spices. Ike, though, should have been hung by his balls. OK!)

A New Breed, Ike.

PLAY: Whole Lotta Love - Ike & Tina Turner
PLAY: Whole Lotta Love - Led Zeppelin

PLAY: Keep On Pushing - The Impressions
PLAY: Keep On Pushing - Ike & Tina Turner

People Get Ready

My weakness for gospel is once again on display. This being the season to celebrate a little Special Someone's birthday, I suppose that weakness is actually very contemporary.

"It was warrior music," said civil-rights activist Gordon Sellers. "It was music you listened to while you were preparing to go into battle." Mayfield wrote the gospel-driven R&B ballad, he said, "in a deep mood, a spiritual state of mind," just before Martin Luther King's march on the group's hometown of Chicago. Shortly after "People Get Ready" was released, Chicago churches began including their own version of it in songbooks. Mayfield had ended the song with "You don't need no ticket/You just thank the Lord," but the church version, ironically, made it less Christian and more universal: "Everybody wants freedom/This I know." -RS

And god damn, Curtis Mayfield is the SHIT. You can hear him solo on the original, or the greatest version ever that features his band, The Impressions, with some incredible backup and harmonies.

Praise Curtis!

PLAY: People Get Ready - Curtis Mayfield
PLAY: People Get Ready - Curtis Mayfield & The Impressions
PLAY: People Get Ready - Aretha Franklin
PLAY: People Get Ready - Dionne Warwick
PLAY: People Get Ready - Al Green
PLAY: People Get Ready - Spencer Bohren