Late ‘60s blues sides from soul dynamos
A year before climbing into the top-40 with “I Want to Take You Higher,†and two-years before attaining rock immortality with their 1971 cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary,†Ike Turner produced a pair of albums, “Outta Season†and “The Hunter,†that he leased to Bob Krasnow’s recently founded Blue Thumb records. Turner had been self-producing sessions throughout his career, fanning out the results to a variety of labels, including several of his own imprints, in an effort to keep fresh material in the stores as he toured with the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. For this pair of releases he reached back to his beginnings as a blues musician, selecting titles from T-Bone Walker, Lowell Fulson, Robert Johnson and Jimmy Reed, and adding just a few originals. Sung by Tina Turner in a bluesy wail that’s sadly familiar with love gone very, very wrong, many of the tracks are arranged without the backing singers or horns of the Revue, but decorated generously with Ike Turner’s twangy guitar riffs and leads.
The sparse settings show off both Turners in a stark light that their frenetic hits with the Revue rarely captured. Ike Turner is offered here primarily as a lead and rhythm guitarist, and Tina Turner creates emotionally informed first-person vocals from standard blues progressions. Highlights include a chillingly distraught rendition of Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long,” the bedspring guitar twang on “Five Long Years†and the original instrumental “Grumbling,†the Motown vibe given Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Crazy About You Baby,†Tina Turner’s sassy holler on Lowell Fulson’s “Reconsider Baby,†her strutting, self-assured reading of “The Hunter,†and a terrifically convincing take on Don Robey’s “I Smell Trouble.†The albums’ biggest commercial success was the funky soul workout “Bold Soul Sister,†which reached #22 on the soul charts and crossed over to #69 pop. Both Turners show a deep connection to the blues, both as the roots of their soul sides with the Revue, and particularly in Tina Turner’s case, a very personal expression of her life’s troubles.
Acrobat’s anthology cherry-picks 18 of the combined albums’ 22 tracks, replicating most of the selections on the out-of-print Bold Soul Sister, but falling short of Blue Moon’s import two-fer (which, to be fair, is twice the price of this set for only four more tracks). Blame U.S. royalty rules for the disparity in track counts. More notably absent is the Grammy-winning album cover of Outta Season, which famously depicts the Turners in whiteface eating watermelon – a visual complaint about white musicians cashing in on the blues while many of the genre’s originators struggled for recognition. The audio quality of these masters is excellent, with plenty of presence in the vocals and detail in the instruments. New liner notes provide a concise history of Ike & Tina Turner’s musical career and brief context for these specific recordings. This isn’t the place to start an Ike & Tina collection, but it’s a great place for fans to stretch out their appreciation of the Turner’s talents. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com] 
