by Tina Turner
When I wanted romance, I found it with Raymond Hill, a handsome young man who was more my type than Ike. He played saxophone with the Kings of Rhythm and lived in Ike’s house with the other musicians who worked in the band. Romance led to sex, and in short order, I became pregnant. Muh was not pleased. Especially after Raymond broke his ankle and moved home to Clarksdale, Mississippi, to recover, and that was the last of him. I was all alone. In 1958, at the age of eighteen, I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy I named Raymond Craig. I was young, strong, and quick to recover, and I wanted to make a good life for my son.
When I wasn’t singing, I was working as an aide at a hospital to support us, and I flirted with the idea of studying to be a nurse. Who was I kidding? I liked dressing up in the fancy clothes Ike bought me—long gloves, sparkly earrings, and pretty dresses—and enjoyed stepping out on the stage like a star. I wanted to sing. That meant more Ike, more time spent at his house, and then, the night when we crossed the line.
There was a party at Ike’s house. I was staying over, and one of the guys made some comment about coming to my room later. There was no lock on my door so, to protect myself, I stayed with Ike. That wasn’t unusual. I had spent innocent nights there before, like a sleepover. This time, we drifted into something sexual. It was inevitable with Ike. I think we were both surprised, uncomfortable, unsure of how to move forward. I was so young. What did I know? Since it was easier to keep going than to try to get back the friendship we’d had before, that’s what we did. Then, in 1960, I discovered I was expecting Ike’s child.
Sex was awkward for us, but that wasn’t the real problem. Looking back, I realize that my relationship with Ike was doomed the day he figured out that I was going to be his meal ticket, his moneymaker. He was scheduled to record “A Fool in Love,” a song he’d written for a male singer named Art Lassiter, until they had some sort of falling out. The studio was booked, so I was called in to replace Art on the vocals. I made the song my own. Ironically, “A Fool in Love” tells the story of woman who’s fallen in love with a man who abuses her in some way. The lyrics, “You know you love him, you can’t understand / Why he treats you like he do when he’s such a good man,” ended up being prophetic. Juggy Murray, the head of Sue Records, heard my version, loved it, paid Ike $25,000 for the rights, and told him to make “that girl” the star of his act.
What went through Ike’s head when he heard that advice? He had to find a way to protect his interests, and that’s when the trouble began.
When I think about Ike all these years later, I’m trying to understand. The older I grow, and the longer I’m away from him, the more clearly I can see Ike. You can analyze a person when you have that kind of distance, and that’s what I’ve been doing—looking for the reasons behind his behavior, trying to figure out where he was coming from, telling myself “Oh, that’s why he did what he did.”
Like me, many of Ike’s struggles began at birth. He came from Clarksdale, Mississippi, angry and a fighter. When he was a boy, he watched his father die a slow, painful death after he was beaten mercilessly by white men who wanted to teach him a lesson for fooling around with a white woman. Ike held that hate deep inside him and never let it go.
When he was older, he had a hard time at school. Children were so cruel to him because he wasn’t attractive. Girls would meet him behind the school building because he was fun to fool around with, but they refused to be seen with him in public. That led him to feel even more anger and hate. Success would be his revenge. “One day I’ll have a big car, and all the women I want,” he promised himself. He would do anything to get that.
The more time I spent with Ike, and saw how he behaved offstage, it was clear to me that he wasn’t schooled properly. I knew the difference because the schools I’d attended had intelligent teachers and students from good homes. I was bussed in (I was orphaned at the time—I say that because my parents were gone and I was living with my grandparents or the Hendersons), but I was surrounded by educated people and I had the good sense to watch them.
When I was in school, I never wasted a minute. I sang in the choir. I played on the basketball team. I was a cheerleader. There was something I had that the teachers liked. They always took me under their wing in some way. And if they offered me advice, I listened. The school librarian told me to hold in my stomach for better posture, and I’ve been doing that my whole life. The principal said he expected good behavior from me, and I vowed not to disappoint him. I wanted to know the better way to do things, so I could improve myself and grow.
Ike never had that opportunity. I don’t think he finished grade school, and even when he knew what he was talking about, he sounded ignorant, which gave him a complex about the way he spoke. A lot of his fight came from the fact that he was embarrassed about his lack of education and his poor manners.
Ike was very smart in other ways, though: he was what we called street-smart, and he had tremendous musical talent. Thanks to his magic on the guitar and the piano (and his fierce ambition) Ike got himself the big car, the big house, and all the women he could ever want. And he got one hit record. Then he stalled, and when he thought he wasn’t going to get more than that, the anger and frustration came back.
When “A Fool in Love” looked like it would be a hit, Ike had a brainstorm: he turned the Kings of Rhythm into the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, a new act that was supposed to give us a chance to appeal to a broader audience. But, if the new revue worked, and we were successful, Ike needed to control me, to own me, economically and psychologically, so I could never leave him. The economic part was easily accomplished. Ike wasn’t a singer. He wanted to be a star, but the only way he could do it was through me. So, he said to himself, “Okay, I’ll change her name and call the group the Ike and Tina Turner Revue—that puts me right there in the title, so she doesn’t exist without me.” My new first name rhymed with “Sheena,” a character he remembered from a television series. And “Turner,” my new last name, implied that we were married (which, of course, we weren’t). Ike always had a strategy. He actually registered a trademark on the name “Tina Turner” so it belonged to him, not me.
What’s in a name? Everything. With those two words, I became Ike’s property.
To control me psychologically, Ike worked several angles. Before our relationship became sexual, he preyed on my better nature by begging me to be loyal to him. In his hangdog way, he told me that every time he wrote a song for someone, if it became a hit, they left him. I was grateful for everything he did for me—if Ike liked you, he would give you the shirt off his back—so I promised him that I was different, that he could trust me, that I would never, ever, leave him. As long as I can remember, I was always honest and never told lies. It was just my way. When I said something, I meant it. A promise was a promise, and that was it. My promise to Ike meant something to me and I intended to keep it.
But Ike didn’t trust me. Actually, Ike didn’t trust anyone. Just in case I changed my mind, and decided not to honor my promise, he wanted insurance, so he found another way to keep me tied to him: fear. When he proposed the new Ike and Tina Turner idea, claiming that I needed a better stage name, my instincts told me I was moving into something that wasn’t going to be good. I didn’t know better then. I dared to question him and said I didn’t want to change my name and wasn’t sure I wanted to go out on tour, which was his plan. First, he was verbally abusive. Ike had a nasty tongue and I was hearing the worst of it. Then he picked up a wooden shoe stretcher and came toward, me, intending to teach me a lesson I wouldn’t soon forget.
Ike knew exactly what he was doing. If you play guitar, your hands are your most valuable asset, so you never use your fists in a fight. He protected his hands and used the shoe stretcher to strike me in the head—always the head, I learned through experience—and it really hurt. I was so shocked I started to cry. My mother and father fought constantly, but I’d never seen a man beat a woman so violently. This was new to me, and I was still trying to figure ou
t what was happening. I never, ever, expected what came next. Ike put down the stretcher and ordered me to get on the bed. That was really awful. I hated him at that moment. The very last thing I wanted to do was make love, if you could call it that. When he finished, I lay there with a swollen head, thinking, “You’re pregnant and you have no place to go. You really have gotten yourself into something now.” Tina Turner was born that night, and “Little Ann” disappeared forever.
In the early days of the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, it was Ike who behaved like the star. I was the Cinderella, the slave girl, really and truly. The revue consisted of me, Ike and the band, and the “Ikettes,” three female singers who backed me onstage. I left baby Craig in St. Louis with a sitter, tucked my pregnancy bump behind a maternity girdle—I was skinny enough so that nothing showed—and hit the road for my first grueling, multicity tour.
You can’t imagine the condition of the clubs we played in those early days—especially the black clubs. They didn’t have proper dressing rooms. We were lucky if there was a storage room or a closet we could use to get ready, and we usually had to clean it first. We sat on our little Samsonite suitcases, or on a keg instead of chairs, and we set up our own mirrors, hoping there was a light, even a bare bulb, so we could see to put on our makeup. As for toilets—there were none. We’d use a cut-off bottle, then walk outside to throw it away. Later, once we graduated into some of the white clubs, the conditions were a little better, but not much.
Ike was so cheap that we had to do everything ourselves. And he was strict! For someone who was so reckless and self-indulgent in his personal life, Ike insisted on controlling everything that had to do with the revue. He fined the musicians and the dancers for the smallest infractions. A torn stocking, a late arrival to a rehearsal, or a defiant word would arouse his ire, and he’d slap the offender with a ten-dollar fine. One rebellious Ikette complained that she ended up owing Ike more money than she made. Someone asked me if I got fined for breaking a rule (meaning, did I get preferential treatment?). That was a joke. I didn’t get fined because I didn’t get paid. I just got shelter, food, and some pretty things on the rare occasion when Ike was feeling generous.
That’s why I never became a prima donna. I came from a time when nothing was given to me. My philosophy was, never complain when things get tough—or tougher—just accept it, and keep going. Deal with what you have—good or bad—and find a way to make it work.
The Ikettes and I always tried to make the best of it, and we had fun together. We were on the road so much that our companionship was the only life we had. We were like sisters. Robbie Montgomery, who was one of the original Ikettes (and is now best known as the founder of the popular soul food restaurant Sweetie Pie’s) used to lend me money because she knew Ike never paid me. It meant so much to me to know I could always depend on her.
I loved dancing with the girls, and sometimes it was my only pleasure. We rehearsed constantly—even in the car traveling from one show to another—and we worked hard on our choreography, making up steps or taking steps and making them our own. (Sham, Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba, Freeze, Freeze, Turn! You go up, I come back.) The Pony, our signature footwork, came from—I don’t remember where exactly—but it was meant to mimic a pony when a lady rides it. You know, the lady sits, and the pony does this and that with his legs, prancing. For us, the Pony was a traveling step—it kept us moving back and forth across the stage, like Michael Jackson did much later with his Moonwalk. We really enjoyed it when Ike had the music going fast. We’d say, “Oh, ho, it’s on the track tonight.” I mean, you had to be a great dancer to move that quickly, and we had a good time showing off our talents to the audience.
We also loved planning our “look.” Through trial and error, we learned to wear costumes that emphasized movement and called attention to our legs, the shorter the better. Maintaining a hairstyle on the road was always a problem, especially without a proper dressing room. Even as a child, I had a complicated relationship with my hair. I pulled my braids out because my hair was woolly and big and didn’t want to be contained. When I got older, I had it straightened, which meant spending hours at a salon, dripping with harsh chemicals, while a beautician tugged and tugged to get rid of the kinks. All that time spent on processing was futile. With black hair, if you’re singing, dancing, and sweating, when you reach up to touch your head, it springs right back, natural again.
It took an accident, one that turned out to be a blessing in disguise, to prompt me to get my first wig. I was at a hair salon with the Ikettes and the beautician let the bleach stay on my head a little too long. My overprocessed hair started to break and fall out, and it was a disaster because I had a show that night! There was no choice but to hide the damage under a wig. The wig was a lifesaver, but more than that, I loved the way it looked, how the hair moved when I moved, how it was straight and pretty and held a style, no matter what I did.
This happened in the early 1960s, when wigs were primitive, with hair that was full, heavy, and blunt. I didn’t want to look like I was wearing a curtain of fake hair, so I taught myself how to customize the wigs to appear natural. I started by thinning the hair in certain places, the first step in making it look right. Then, I took a needle and sewed on wefts, small pieces of extra hair, positioning them wherever I thought volume was needed. I bought high-quality hair, and eventually, with careful sculpting and styling, my wigs were the best in the business. We’d wear them onstage, wash and set them after the show, and they were ready to go the next day.
Ike left all of those details to me, but he controlled the music. Even though I was fairly new to the business of performing, I had my own ideas about how to use my voice. There was music I wanted to sing, and music I didn’t want to sing. For example, I’ve never been a jazz person. I grew up on country-western music, and when I got older, I liked listening to great singers like Faye Adams and LaVern Baker. I especially loved Baker’s hit, “Tweedle Dee.” I also liked listening to Mahalia Jackson and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Gospel singers could really sing! And they had so much personality and presence.
I didn’t have a typical “girl” voice, so I was also inspired by some of the male singers who were popular at the time. My absolute favorite was Sam Cooke. I had the good fortune to see him perform at the Howard Theater in Washington, D.C., in 1960. He was the prettiest black man I’d ever seen besides Harry, my first boyfriend in high school.
I went to his show with one of the Ikettes, and the place was packed. Sam Cooke was standing there singing—his shirt was open and he was wearing a beautifully tailored, continental suit. He never put chemicals in his hair—it was just natural. He was singing “Darling, you send me,” and he was so cool and absolutely wonderful. I was so mesmerized. I found myself walking to the stage until the girl I was with started pulling at me, saying, “Bullock [they called me Bullock], I will kill you! What are you doing?” The place was going crazy. Sam Cooke was the first performer I saw who had that effect on an audience. They just melted at the sound of his voice.
I finally had the opportunity to meet him a couple of years later at a hotel in Miami. We were all at the pool, and he came over to talk to me. I was surprised that Sam Cooke even knew me—actually, I’m not sure if he knew who I was—maybe he was just being kind. You know how some people can see if you’re sad? I was very sad at the time, probably because Ike was up to no good, and the fact that Sam Cooke took the time to pay attention to me was very special. A short time later, I heard that he passed away. Ike gave me the bad news that he had been murdered. I was so happy that we had that moment together, and I still think about him and his beautiful voice.
I loved Ray Charles. He really knew how to rock the house when he sang “What’d I Say” with the Raelettes. As soon as he came out onstage, the place would jump up and start dancing and kicking. He had another kind of “soul.” It wasn’t traditional church soul. What he had, he brought with him on the planet. Ray Charles was an original.
So many of the black singe
rs at the time were creative in their own way. Otis Redding, he was a suffering one with songs like “The Dock of the Bay.” And James Brown—I remember seeing him at the Apollo. He came out with his little bow legs and did the Mashed Potato (which I took from him), and the audience went nuts. I’d never seen a black man in a light green jacket. He made quite the impression on me, and everyone else. He really had the people at his feet.
Each one of these acts I’m telling you about had something special. This is why the white people who came to their performances never went back to pop music. They liked what the black people were doing, and eventually, the sound crossed over into other kinds of music.
While I was listening to these musical greats, I was developing a sense of my own style, and I didn’t like how Ike wanted me to sing. He favored a delivery that was almost like preaching, all that “Hey, Hey, Heying” and growling. I wanted to really sing, to be more expressive, more melodic, but I wasn’t allowed to use my voice the way I wanted.
Looking back, I realize a lot of the fights I had with Ike happened because I disagreed with the way he wanted me to perform. We had what they call “artistic differences.” I couldn’t come right out and say to him, “I don’t like that song,” or “I don’t want to deliver it this way.” But he was smart. He could read my body language and see how I felt, and he didn’t like being contradicted. “Miss Bullock,” he’d say in an angry and patronizing voice. “Get out there and sing the song.” One night, he actually spit at me when I dared to express my opinion.
There wasn’t much time to think about how life should have been. Ike kept us too busy for that. Our schedule was fast and punishing, an endless loop of traveling, rehearsing, and performing, with on-the-fly recording sessions taking up any free time. The most exciting destination for me was New York City, when we played the Apollo Theater in August 1960. I remember driving over an enormous bridge. I took one look at the skyline and yelled, “New York!” Oh, the beauty that was New York at the time. The sun was even more yellow than yellow. I didn’t know the names of the streets, but I’d never seen such buildings—they were like stretching up to God—high, high, high! The skyscrapers with their gleaming windows, the sounds of the horns, the ladies dressed up in their high heels (not sneakers, like today), scarves, and white gloves, the hot dogs from the little carts on the street—New York had it all. Seeing it firsthand was an exceptional experience, just like watching a movie, and one I would never forget.
