Musician Ike Turner was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi on November 5, 1931. He started playing the piano at age five, was a piano accompanist at age eleven, and worked as a disc jockey for a local radio station as a teenager. He joined the R & B group the Kings of Rhythm and played the piano on Jackie Brenston's Rocket 88. Besides being a musician, he was a talent scout and producer. In the late 1950s, he met Anna Mae Bullock, later called Tina Turner, and she joined his group The Rhythm Kings. Starting with A Fool in Love, they had five Top Ten R & B hits in two and a half years and the group was renamed the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. He later married Tina and their musical partnership last until 1976. They had several hit singles including It's Gonna Work Out Fine, River Deep - Mountain High, I Want To Take You Higher, and Proud Mary. Tina left him in 1976 after a violent altercation and they divorced in 1978.
Ike had little success as a solo artist and after two failed albums, he was convicted of drug-related charges and served several years in a California state prison. While there, he and Tina were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. In 2001, he released the Grammy-nominated Here & Now album and published his autobiography Takin' Back My Name where he admitted to abusing his wife. In 2007, he won his first solo Grammy in the Best Traditional Blues Album category for Risin' with the Blues. He died on December 12, 2007.
(Bowker Author Biography)
