![]() Their coldness on the telephone spoke volumes: it didn’t matter if Ike was part of the “T’N’T” team that sold millions of records-today he was an outcast, an untouchable. Quick to remind me that Ike had been off their label for years, spokespeople said they knew nothing about royalties. Then I contacted his old record companies-labels like Kent, United Artists, and EMI (formerly Liberty)-to see if Ike was still collecting royalties. Again, just more mythology, but once again, not implausible: Ike had been arrested and charged five times-for guns, assault, drugs, and most recently, shooting a newsboy in the leg (although the “newsboy” was 49 and had a gun, too)-but he spent only 30 days inside, on the drug rap. county jails, because I heard that’s where he was currently residing. When I started looking for him, I first checked L.A. And not entirely that, either-more like laying very low and trying to be forgotten. If medium-range industry people hadn’t been laughing at him, though, you wouldn’t have noticed even that spark in the fog. King and Little Junior Parker and who once hired a kid he saw a lot of potential in, Jimi Hendrix by name Ike, who designed himself into the perfect backup role after he finished designing what was at the time the perfect incarnation of an R&B rock and roll crossover band, had dissolved into, but was not completely obscured by, murky oblivion. The sweet sweetback of rock, who put the S-E-X into Tina’s swagger, who cut what is arguably the first rock record, “ Rocket 88,” in 1951 who discovered B.B. hotel, here was lke, recent Villain of the Piece in the wide-open book of recollections (sort of a Hubby Dearest)-and no patron saint to the California tax people either-making a comeback, or at least reemerging, sort of. Instead of meeting an unmourned death in some nameless alley or fleabag L.A. A part of me now feels sorry for the guy.” He didn’t even leave us a phone number, so afterwards we just laughed. “He talked on and on about a national tour, but it didn’t make any sense. “It was to be another Ike and Teena revue,” said Marie’s former manager Allan Mink. Then last December, an item in The Los Angeles Times: Ike Turner contacts Teena Marie about a possible collaboration. Shot-by who? police, dope dealers, a pimp, some dude he owed money who cared?-the devil himself was gone, apparently. ![]() No one knew for sure, but word was that Ike Turner had met a Hollywood-bad-guy death. The word on the street was that Ike was dead.
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