[Marxism] "Mayor won't proclaim Ike Turner day"

[Fred Feldman]

I want to solidarize with Ike Turner as an artist, for the moment.  I am
glad that the exposure of his brutality to his wife, the also great Tina
Turner, including in the film "What's Love Got to do With It," hasn't
finished off his career. The film was certainly basically true as far as the
way he treated Turner was concerned, but I saw it as problematic, to say the
least, in its dismissal of his talent as a guitarist, and of the blues as
simply repetitive etc.

Turner was attracted to the Beatles and even more the Rolling Stones, and
she did great work with their music.  I always remember their wonderful
Proud Mary where she caught me with her or their introduction to the great
John Fogarty song: "Sometimes people ask us to do something  nice and easy,
problem is, we never do anything nice and easy, we only do it nice and
rough."  

Not realizing this was a comment partly on the violent character of his
relationship with her, I identified with this phrase completely as the story
of my life. Anything good I've ever done has definitely been done with more
trouble than it might seem to be worth.


A problem both of these artists have is that, though both have done some
good or or even great work  since, I think they were never better overall
than when they were together, a situation she was right to terminate.  Such
is the very strange story of art.

At any rate I have no problems with Tina Turner days, Ike Turner days, or
"Ike and Tina" days, which my CD player proclaims all the time.  
Fred Feldman


Mayor Won't Proclaim Ike Turner Day
Jul 20, 11:23 AM EST
Ike Turner will have the stage, but not the day, when he performs in St.
Louis in September.

Mayor Francis Slay has turned down a request to make Sept. 2 "Ike Turner
Day." The 75-year-old singer is scheduled to perform that day at the Big
Muddy Blues Festival.

Cathy Smentkowski, an aide to Slay, said that when the request "was brought
to the mayor's attention, he did not feel comfortable issuing it." She
declined to elaborate.

"We were only looking to celebrate his contributions to the music industry.
Many entertainers have checkered pasts," festival director Dawne Massey told
the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "He helped put St. Louis rhythm and blues on
the map."

Turner's past troubles include a 17-month stint in jail on a 1990 drug
conviction.

He was depicted as a violent and abusive husband in "What's Love Got to Do
With It," a 1993 movie about ex-wife Tina Turner's life. In his 1999
autobiography, he disputed the movie's characterization of him.

Once a fixture of the nightclubs around St. Louis, Ike and Tina Turner met
at a show in East St. Louis, Ill. They married and toured together before
ending their tumultuous relationship in the late 1970s.

Bridget Brennan, executive director of the St. Louis Healthy Marriage
Coalition, was among those who didn't want the mayor to honor Turner.

"We believe there is a zero tolerance for any kind of violence," Brennan
said. "We would not want to honor someone who has publicly stated they have
hit their wife."

Scott M. Hanover, a manager at Thrill Entertainment Group, which represents
Ike Turner, said it was a "shame" that Turner's troubled history still
follows him.

"People are living in the past," Hanover said.