Jaime Danehey

It’s about time I got to some stuff from Outta Season, an album of mostly blues covers they released in 1969. I’m currently reading Takin’ Back My Name: the Confessions of Ike Turner, a fascinating and entertaining autobiography. He mentions that he recorded both Outta Season and The Hunter in four hours. [Unrelated, but too interesting to omit: Ike says he wrote most of his songs with Little Richard’s voice in mind, and that he considered Tina a female Little Richard, vocals-wise.]

Have you ever seen Outta Season in a used record store? The cover images are of Ike and Tina in white face winking and eating watermelon. This subtle commentary was chosen because so many white bands were having hits covering old blue tunes in the late ’60s, so that it seemed outta season for a black group to do so.

They included the B.B. King tune “3 O’Clock in the Morning Blues” on the album’s first side.

B.B. was the first one to encourage Ike to record his music, and helped set up the “Rocket 88” session at Sun Records. Later on Ike played piano on B.B.’s recording of “3 O’Clock Blues” also at Sun, a song that was a big hit in 1951.

Jump ahead to 1969, with Ike playing both the piano and the guitar parts. Tina gives a good performance, selling us that old blues story about a lover gone missing. Ike opened his own recording story in LA the next year, a pleasure dome light years away from Sun Studio in almost every way.