Jackie Brenston & Ike Turner

Jackie Brenston & Ike Turner – Broadcast Oct 2008

Over recent sessions we have covered music from the likes of Moon Mullican, Wynonie Harris and Roy Brown all of whom we have mentioned as key influences on the early days of rock n roll. We are going to stay with this theme today and cover the 1950s output of two others who are the artists who cut what is generally accepted as the first r n r record. These cats are Ike Turner and the vocalist in his early 1951 Kings of Rhythm lineup – Jackie Brenston.

You can have a whole lot of fun on the net if you Google ‘first Rocn ‘N Roll record’ and there was even a book published in 1992 on the subject which lists fifty possible contenders.

The question is a bit like asking ‘who invented television, or the motor car. The answer is ‘a whole lot of people’. But nevertheless, this is the track, recorded in March 1951 in Memphis by 28 y/o Sam Phillips, just starting out in the record business that seems to be on top of most lists.

20 y/old Singer/saxist Jackie Brenston was backed by Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm, a well rehearsed band that Brenston had joined the previous year. Turner was young, self confident and ambitious, and the Rocket 88 track they recorded had an incredible raw sound, with a strong back beat by drummer Willie Sims, Brenston's enthusiastic vocals, Turner’s own piano, and tenor saxophone solos by 17 year old Raymond Hill (later to be the father of Tina Turner's first child, before she married Ike). A broken speaker cone in the bands amplifier caused the sound of Willie Kizart’s guitar to give a fuzzy, distorted sound.

1 Rocket 88 – March 1951 – The Mistreater – Tk 1 – 2.48

The song described the joys of the Oldsmobile "Rocket 88" automobile, which had just been introduced in 1949, but the number 88 also referred to the number of keys on a piano.

The band made four more recordings that day, with Ike Turner singing on two of them while Brenston stood back on second tenor sax. Sam Phillips wasted no time. Although Turner thought the tracks would be released by Modern under his own name, Philips sold them to Chess Records in Chicago, who were ecstatic. Chess released two singles by the group in mid-April. The coupled sides that featured Turner's voice were credited to Ike Turner and His Kings of Rhythm. The other single, however, was credited to Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, much to Turner’s displeasure.

The Brenston single was a huge success, reaching #1 in June for five weeks Its success stirred Sam Phillips's determination to found Sun, as he realized that the large profits from the recording he had produced could have been his rather than the Chess brothers'. And Turners displeasure at being upstaged caused Ike Turner and Jackie Brenston to part company after one more session in mid 1951.

Going back a little now, Jackie Brenston was born on August 15, 1930, in Clarksdale, Mississippi, which of course is pretty much ‘blues central’ in the Delta. After a stint in the army during WW2, he returned to Clarksdale in 1947, and fell in with a local character named Jesse Flowers, who taught him the saxaphone.

Izear Luster Turner, Jr. just over a year younger than Brenston, was born November 5, 1931, also in Clarksdale. His father was beaten to death by a mob of angry whites, and growing up in a hostile environment unquestionably hardened Turner. He found his calling in music from an early age; he learned boogie-woogie piano firsthand from Pinetop Perkins, and as a teenager talked himself into a DJ slot on the local radio station. He formed his first band while still in high school, and by the late '40s had assembled an outfit which he called the Rhythm Kings

Turner’s lead singer was picked up for a solo career by Cincinnati based King records at the end of 1950 and Turner found Jackie Brenston to take over. The rest, as they say, is history

After the release of Rocket 88, Brenston’s follow up, "My Real Gone Rocket" was released at the end of June. However, perhaps because it was too much like its antecedent - it failed to sell. His next single, "Independent Woman," the remaining recording from the first session, was put out in July. It also failed to sell.

2 Independent Woman – March 1951 – The Mistreater – Tk 5 – 2.52

Two tracks from a Dec 51 session, both released by Chess in Jan 1952, the first with female vocalist Edna McRaney, the other a Louis Jordan styled jump blues number

3 Hi Ho Baby – Dec 1951 – The Mistreater – Tk 7 – 2.24

4 Leo the Louse – Dec 1951 – The Mistreater – Tk 8 – 2.34

"Starvation," his last Chess single, recorded in that same Dec 51 session, came in 1953

5 Starvation – Dec 1951 – The Mistreater – Tk 10 – 2.12

And so, little more than a year after it had begun, it was over. "I was a greenhorn," Brenston later reflected, "I had a hit record and no sense.

He took a job playing saxophone with Lowell Fulson's band in 1953, and he stayed with Fulson, on and off, through 1955.

After they split, Turner and his band became session regulars around Memphis - they went on to back artists like Howlin' Wolf , Elmore James, Otis Rush, Robert Nighthawk, Buddy Guy, and Sonny Boy Williamson II, plus an assortment of Sun artists. During the early '50s, Turner switched from piano to guitar, and also doubled as a talent scout for the Bihari Brothers' Los Angeles-based Modern Records, where he helped get early breaks for artists like Howlin' Wolf and B.B. King.

Turner became frustrated when Sam Philips did not issue much of his work. With the help of Joe Bihari, he rented a disused bus station in Clarkesdale and turned it into a recording studio. Here are a few tracks recorded during this period, in the bus repair workshop, with Turner playing either guitar or piano, and sometimes both.

Track recorded in 1954, with Ike on vocals under the pseudonym Lover Boy

6 The Way You Used To Treat Me – 1954 – Rhythm Rockin Blues – Tk 2 – 2.39

7 Love Is Scarce – 1954 – Rhythm Rockin Blues – Tk 20 – 2.19

Track with vocalist Denis Binder in front of the Kings of Rhythm, singing about a brand of whiskey:

8 Early Times – 1954 – Rhythm Rockin Blues – Tk 8 – 2.26

Track with Billy Gayles on vocals and great piano work by Turner

9 A Woman Just Won’t Do – 1954 – Rhythm Rockin Blues – Tk 17 – 2.13

Despite all this work Turner, had still not managed to come up with a hit record of his own, and this may have influenced his decision to bury the hatchet with Brenston, who reunited with Turner in 1955, holding down the baritone sax chair until 1962.

During the mid-'50s, Turner moved the Kings of Rhythm to East St. Louis, where they rose to the top of the local R&B circuit. Track recorded in St Louis, in late 1955, Turner on guitar, Johnny Wright on vocals

10 The World is Yours – late 1955 – Rhythm Rockin Blues – Tk 9 – 2.49

Adopting a revue format for their live performances, the Kings of Rhythm worked with a revolving group of vocalists during this period. One was a 17 yo singer originally from Tennessee named Anna Mae Bullock, who met Turner in 1956. She joined the revue, and moved into Turner's house after becoming pregnant to sax player Raymond Hill. Soon, she and Turner began their own relationship and had a child of their own, marrying in 1958.

Brenston did the vocals out front of the Kings of Rhythm on two great tracks in 1956: "Gonna Wait for My Chance" and "Much Later" which were both released by Federal.

11 Gonna Wait for my Chance – Sept 1956 – The Mistreater – Tk 21 – 2.08

12 Much Later – Sept 1956 – The Mistreater – Tk 24 – 2.15

These were the only two of the many singles that the band had out during that time that featured Brenston's vocals. He was reduced to being Ike Turner's baritone sax-player. Turner allowed Brenston to sing a few songs when the band performed in public, but he forbade him to sing "Rocket '88."

By the late 1950s, Brenston had developed a big alcohol problem. A singer in Turner's 1958 lineup said in an interview of Brenston and tenor sax-player Raymond Hill "They was drinking that really bad shit, boy," he recalled. "That stuff they used to drink you probably wouldn't allow it in your house. Not even to wash the floor. I'm telling you, man, it's really amazing... them cats, they could put away some alcohol, man."

In mid 1960 Ike Turner, with the help of Tina Turner, finally got his hit record, "A Fool in Love," the first of several for the Sue label. In New York that same summer Brenston cut a single of his own for Sue, "Trouble Up the Road" and "You Ain't the One," which was released during the Christmas season.

Brenston and Turner parted again, for the last time, in 1962, and Brenston made just one more record, in Chicago with Earl Hooker's band, released in 1963.

While Turner went on to a big career thanks largely to the talents of his wife Tina, Brenston sank further in his alcoholism, first in St Louis, then returning to Clarksdale, a hopeless drunk. He had a heart attack in Dec 1979 and was taken to an army veterans hospital in Memphis where died on December 15, 1979 aged just 49.

We will close out with a track that takes us back to where it all began for Jackie Brenston, when he had the world at his feet. The follow up track to Rocket 88, from July 1951. Listen out for the words:

“When I cruise through your town like the Great North Western, you can tell everybody that was mighty Jackie Brenston’.

13 My Real Gone Rocket – Jul 1951 – The Mistreater – Tk 4 – 2.12 but fade after 1.30