He was most famous as Tina Turner's musical partner and former husband, but Ike Turner's
life was also filled with plenty of other marriages, frequent legal troubles, and a
fiery disaster.
Born on November 5, 1931 in Clarksdale, Mississippi, Ike Turner's formative years coincided with
the Great Depression.
Steak was a rare delicacy while he was growing up, and a mere crust of bread was an indicator
of wealth.
As the economy took a turn for the worse, young Ike worked a series of blue collar jobs
to help his parents make a living.
This included picking eggs on a chicken farm, but soon afterwards, he wanted to make some
more money.
As he recounted to Spin in 1985,
"First I sold scrap iron, did odd jobs, any hustle I could think of to have a few extra
quarters in my pocket.
Then I ran away from home, to Memphis, where I worked as a hallboy at the Hotel Peabody.
I wound up sleeping on Coca-Cola crates, so I think I stayed away for about four days."
Alas, Turner's mother Beatrice wasn't exactly impressed with his efforts, and he was beaten
regularly.
When he was just five, Ike Turner's father suffered a tragic, brutal fate.
Izear Luster Turner Sr. had engaged in a clandestine affair, which led to a mob of infuriated men
storming his home.
Young Ike saw them arrive and carry his father out, and then they took him to a river that
smelled like a swamp.
"They brought him back, and they threw him in the yard.
They had kicked holes in his stomach."
Turner Sr. was so brutally beaten that his insides ended up perforated.
Even worse, he couldn't receive proper medical care because of the color of his skin.
A temporary space was set up for him to stay put as he recuperated.
The severity of his injuries was clear from a foul smell that reeked from the shelter.
"I lived at the second house from the corner in Clarksdale, Mississippi, 304 Washington.
And when you were turning the corner when the wind was blowing a certain way, you could
smell his intestines and things."
Turner Sr. eventually succumbed to his wounds after ailing for about two years.
After the death of her husband, Ike Turner's mother Beatrice Cushenberry eventually had
a new man in her life, but he wasn't exactly the most pleasant person to be around.
Philip Reese overindulged in alcohol, and there was hardly any peace when he was inebriated.
As Ike Turner recalled in his memoir Takin' Back My Name,
"He'd get drunk and if my mother was sewing, he would come in and snatch the material from
under the machine."
Unsurprisingly, there was no love lost between Turner and his stepfather.
An altercation between them was the reason that the budding musician fled to Memphis
in the first place.
But after the death of his mother, Turner took Reese under his wing.
As he wrote,
"I took care of him until he died in 1961.
He was OK, but you know with kids, man, they brand you as mean and it sticks with them."
When he was only six years old, Ike Turner was a victim of statutory rape, though he
tried to pass the encounter off as him beng a ladies man.
As he admitted to Spin in 1985,
"There was this woman, Miss Boozie, I'd feed her chickens every morning on my way to school.
She'd give me a nickel a week if she could put me on top of her and show me how to move."
Sexual assault accusations with him as the perpetrator eventually became a significant
part of Ike Turner's life story.
In the 1993 biopic What's Love Got to Do with It, the onscreen version of Ike played by
Laurence Fishburne molests Tina Turner, as played by Angela Bassett.
"I guess you're gonna leave me, now.
Huh?"
However, Ike's daughter Mia Turner vehemently denies that this happened in reality.
Another alleged incident came to light in the leadup to the release of backing vocalist
P.P.
Arnold's 2022 memoir Soul Survivor: The Autobiography, as she claimed to The Telegraph that she was
sexually abused by Turner in the '60s.
As she put it,
"What can I say?
It was awful.
I despised Ike on that level, but I didn't know how to express myself."
Right from the get-go, Ike Turner took a practical, rather than theoretical, approach toward music.
Thanks to his brilliance in school, he earned himself a piano, which meant that he could
practice at home.
But he didn't exactly take music classes seriously.
As he recalled in an interview,
"I started [...] learning stuff by ear and taking the money [my mother] would give me
to go to music lessons, and I would go to the pool room with that, and then I would
just learn how to make something up on the piano."
Turner eventually began his own group called the Kings of Rhythm and worked as a talent
recruiter.
He also put in uncredited work on a song called "Rocket '88,'" which is considered by many
writers to be the first rock and roll record.
When he became a star in his own right with a string of successes, his lack of education
was the elephant in the room.
As he told Spin in 1985,
"I liked being in the background.
I was really scared to talk to the press."
The backing vocalists for Ike and Tina Turner were popularly known as the "Ikettes."
It was a high-profile gig, but it was also often short-lived.
A number of Ikettes have been open about the poor management and unfair pay that they were
subject to, as their compensation was a mere nightly pay of $30 if they were close to Los
Angeles.
Sometimes their work was unpaid in addition to not receiving recognition for their vocal
services.
And there were also penalties in the event of misconduct like laughing boisterously or
stockings with untangled stitches.
As Ikette Ester Jones told Esquire in 1974,
"You can get fined for breathing if Ike decides he doesn't like you or if he happens to be
on a downer."
All those little cuts really added up for the Ikettes.
As Jones put it,
"We only make money on the weekends, and with our usual fines that leaves me with a little
more than two hundred dollars for three nights' work."
For much of his life, Ike Turner was notorious as a philanderer, a reputation he actually
wore with a badge of honor.
According to him, Tina Turner was aware of this lifestyle way before they got married.
As he detailed to Spin in 1985,
"Tina even got girls for me.
I didn't do anything with her that I wasn't doing when we first met.
She'd get Ikettes for me.
I was with them, she knew that."
Ike also insisted that Tina was no stranger to open relationships.
But that supposed approval clearly didn't mean that she was always treated kindly.
Details of the abuse that Tina suffered at Ike's hands made news long after she'd moved
on from him.
Ike has admitted that there were instances of physical violence in their marriage, while
also claiming that at times both of them were violent towards each other.
"I have slapped her, she have slapped me, she have kicked me.
I'm not, I'm not, I'm not- When you're together 24 hours a day, uh, uh, uh, it's difficult."
In an interview with Ebony, Ike and Tina's son Ronnie Turner said that his father never
really moved on after splitting up with Tina and that he was always trying to find a way
to make contact.
Although Ike Turner's marriage to Tina Turner was his most publicized one, he had tied the
knot at least ten times by 1985.
As he recalled to Spin that year,
"I started getting married when I was 14.
First there was Edna Dean Stewart.
A few months later it was Velma Dishman, then Dolores Ward.
I don't remember her last name, but then it was Alice."
According to Ike, getting married during those times was as easy as pie.
All you needed was five dollars to make things official.
Divorce was unheard of back then, though separation was seamless.
By the mid-2000s, he'd been together with singer Audrey Madison for years.
They met through music, and things eventually became romantic.
They performed together, but he was suffering from emphysema.
As he admitted to The Independent in 2005,
"It comes all at once, I'm never gonna have to cancel a gig, but that's one reason I have
Audrey there.
Just in case.
She can carry right on, and sometimes she's done more of the climax of the show than me."
On October 8, 2006, Ike Turner and Audrey Madison walked down the aisle in Las Vegas.
She became his fourteenth and last-known wife, though they divorced after just two months.
In Audrey Madison's 2016 memoir Love Had Everything to Do with It, she alluded to her ex-husband
having bipolar disorder that was often triggered by cocaine.
"All I ever did, straight up, was cocaine."
It was an illness she was familiar with from her own childhood.
As she revealed in an interview with Afro,
"My mother would fly into a rage and hit me, and then come back a little while later, and
hug me, and call me her pretty little girl... and I began seeing that in Ike.
One minute we're talking and the next he's slapped me, and then just as quickly, he was
apologizing and we are both making excuses for why he did it."
According to Madison, Turner eventually sought help.
He received medication, and he eventually became stable enough to have a taste of his
former glory.
And in 2007, his final body of work, Risin' with the Blues, won him a Grammy for Best
Traditional Blues Album.
In the years leading up to his divorce from Tina Turner, Ike Turner ran into a bit of
trouble with the state of California.
Back in 1985, he had amassed $12,802 in unpaid tax bills, but he wasn't exactly bothered
by the situation.
As he told Spin that year,
"I owe California money, but I don't care about that.
I'm sure there's other people out there that I owe money."
A bulk of Ike's financial woes came from his failed marriage to Tina, as he put all of
his eggs in one basket and had nothing left beyond taking care of his family.
On top of that, the couple had no written agreement in place.
His day of reckoning came when her lawyers took him to the cleaners.
As he recalled,
"Tina cries splitting with nothing, but man, her attorneys worked it out so I got all the
pink elephants.
They gave me a big mirage, the things that didn't mean much, like the mortgaged studio,
and all of the Ike and Tina royalties from United Artists, which were $1 million in the
red.
They gave me nothing."
Ike Turner had multiple run-ins with the law over the course of his life.
One incident involved assaulting a nightclub patron with a handgun.
He was also apprehended for firing a bullet through the foot of a newspaper delivery person
who attacked his dog.
And he was charged for ownership of so-called "blue boxes," devices that allowed long-distance
calls without the phone company's knowledge.
Somehow, though, he always managed to avoid doing time.
On top of all that, drugs became synonymous with Ike Turner's way of life.
In June 1985, police intercepted an alleged cocaine trade involving Turner and two accomplices.
A few years before that, a white substance thought to be cocaine that was seized from
Turner's car turned out to be sodium bicarbonate.
Another arrest occurred in 1989 when Turner violated traffic rules in an alleged cocaine-fueled
incident.
He looked back on this side of his life during an appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show, as
he recalled:
"Thirteen times I've been arrested, not once have they ever found me with any drugs, not
once."
"Thirteen times?!"
"Yes."
"That's a lot of times."
Stationed in Inglewood, California, Bolic Sound studios was an ultra-modern facility
erected by none other than Ike Turner.
Its name was inspired by Tina Turner's maiden name of "Bullock".
Boasting high-value recording gear, tight-knit security, and a web of serpentine audio rooms,
the complex was home to some music industry greats.
There was a lot going on at Bolic Sound besides melody making, which forced some of those
close to Ike to distance themselves.
As Clifford Solmon of the Kings of Rhythm told Spin,
"I stopped going there because it seemed like a dope house.
Besides the cocaine and other drugs, there were a whole lot of chicks running around.
There were so many disreputable people there."
Bolic Sound also drew the attention of local law enforcement.
In the wake of his divorce from Tina, Ike was gearing up to sell the place when it went
up in flames.
For 18 hours, he watched helplessly as his most treasured asset disintegrated.
Its complicated design left nothing to be salvaged.
Four years afterward, the spot where Bolic Sound once stood was filled by a commercial
building housing offices and a beauty parlor.
When Spin caught up with Ike Turner in 1985, he was far from the iconic cultural figure
he'd been just a couple of decades ago.
He used to dine out with the biggest names in music, but now nobody would so much as
touch him with a ten-foot pole.
At the time, there were talks that he was eyeing the formation of a so-called Ike & Teena
Revue with "Square Biz" singer Teena Marie.
As Marie's former manager Allan Mink revealed,
"He talked on and on about a national tour, but it didn't make any sense.
He didn't even leave us a phone number, so afterwards we just laughed.
A part of me now feels sorry for the guy."
Tracking Turner down was getting to be as difficult as locating a needle in a haystack.
Record labels from which he would have been receiving royalties hadn't kept in touch with
him, nor did he.
And his New York lawyer maintained that media engagements were off limits.
After a few years went by, he seemed to have a change of heart on that matter.
When he was asked about his whereabouts during an appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show, he
responded that he'd been "everywhere and nowhere," and he revealed that he'd recently formed
a new group.
"When I go into the building, the record company and everything, you could feel the vibes from
it, you know?"
The 1993 Tina Turner biopic What's Love Got to Do with It received plenty of acclaim and
accolades, including Oscar nominations for its stars Laurence Fishburne and Angela Bassett.
But off screen, the impact of its release worsened an already strained relationship
between the real Ike Turner and the public.
The catchphrase "Eat the cake, Anna Mae," which is famous for its use in the Beyoncé
and Jay-Z song "Drunk in Love," was inspired by the flick, but it originated from a rather
violent scene.
"Come on now I’m asking you nicely."
"And I’m saying no nicely."
"You know you want some of this cake, come on, eat some cake.
Eat some cake!"
Ike may have had a say in his image prior to the release of What's Love Got to Do with
It, but alas, he believes that he was the victim of deception.
As he explained in a 2001 interview with ABC,
"During the time I was doing drugs, I signed a contract thinking it was for somebody to
play me in the movie with Tina.
Until I got clean and got my head on like it is now, I didn't realize that the paper
that I signed — my own lawyer got me to sign it — I was signing away my rights to
sue them, and they could portray me any way they wanted to.
So they made a villain out of me."
On December 12, 2007, Ike Turner died at the age of 76.
Reports indicated that he took a nap after his first meal of the day from which he never
woke up.
It was determined that he had overdosed on cocaine and that his emphysema and coronary
heart disease also contributed.
As detailed in Takin' Back My Name: The Confession of Ike Turner, his introduction to cocaine
happened because of two public figures.
Beforehand, he was strictly against drugs to the point that his band members were shown
the door for displaying any signs that they were using.
But then he fell under the influences of Elvis Presley and comedian Redd Foxx.
Abusing the drug eventually landed Turner a four-year prison term in February 1990,
in addition to puncturing his nose.
He was released in September 1991, during which time he vowed to have turned over a
new leaf.
As he announced to the press,
"Going in there was the best thing that ever happened to me.
It brought me back to basics, to the roots I had.
I lost my whole life.
I took everything for granted and it got swept out from underneath me."
Sadly, though, he didn't fully live up to his intentions for the rest of his life.
At the time of his death, Ike Turner had no formal will in place, and there was no clear
indication of the extent of his wealth.
As lawyer Edwin Stegman noted at the time,
"We don't know what the value of the estate is.
Are we fighting over $4.39?
We are suckers, fighting, spending time and money and we don't know over what."
Stegman was referring to an ongoing tussle between Turner's children, his ex-wife Audrey
Madison, and Turner's ex-representative James Clayton.
Both Clayton and Madison unveiled scribbled notes meant to prove that Turner had authorized
control of his possessions to them.
As Madison said at a hearing,
"He said I was the only one who took care of him and if anything ever happened, he wanted
me to be OK."
In October 2009, a verdict was reached that left Turner's children in charge of his estate.
If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National
Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233.
You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.