Ike & Tina Turner: The Kent Years (1964-1967)

It is difficult to understand why the music Ike & Tina Turner produced together in the 60s has been so completely overlooked for years, being excellent as it is. This compilation tries to make up for some of that by including many of their strongest numbers made for Kent and Modern Records in the period 1964-67, their most prolific and exciting period. In addition to 45s and album tracks that came out at that time, included are five cuts that are seeing the light of day for the first time for a total 26 songs. We can find here their popular upbeat singles outings such as 'I Can't Believe What You Say' (a Top 100 entry), 'Gonna Have Fun', 'Chicken Shack' and 'Flee Flee Fla', together with their flip sides and other important songs from their Kent albums. There are many other quite revealing sounds, too. Listen, for example, to the soulful strings on 'Makin' Plans Together' and the Mayfield-inspired vocals on 'I Don't Need'. It's not all dance music either - for bluesier numbers, there's Ike's guitar behind Tina on 'Give Me Your Love' and on Eddie Boyd's 'Five Long Years'. Virtually all tracks feature the wonderful Ikettes, horns are liberally sprinkled and Ike's distinctive guitar and piano are prominent. He also adds a few vocal moments on the ultra-fast 'Goodbye, So Long', and on ‘Something Came Over Me’, a sort of sequel to their most famous hit, ‘A Fool In Love’, which it references musically throughout just as ‘Hard Times’ harks back to ‘It's Gonna Work Out Fine’. Tina Turner's vocal style at this time was a world away from that with which she dominated the world in the ‘80s and ‘90s, but was aimed at a wholly different audience with whom she was highly successful, and it is excellent news that the confusing clutter of releases from this era are gradually being made sense of and becoming available on compilations such as this one. http://www.amazon.co.uk, http://www.acerecords.co.uk
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Ike & Tina Turner featuring 'Fool In Love' & 'It's Gonna Work Out Fine' medley on the TNT show, 1965: