Jaime Danehey

Live! The Greatest, Wildest Show of All
The Ike & Tina Turner Show
Soul and Rock That Do Not Stop

Yes, thanks to the excellent stock at Offbeat Music, I finally own the 1965 Ike and Tina live albums. (Originally two separate releases, volumes I and II are combined on one CD, released in 2006 by Warner Bros.)

Now people, when you see a track called “Tight Pants” on an Ike and Tina album, you know you are in for a treat. This is a steady rockin’ number, featuring Ike’s always-solid blues guitar. This song is real fun to sing along to:

Put on your tight pants, baby / Put your toupee on your head, oh yeah / Put on your tight pants, baby / Put your toupee on your head, all right / You CAN BET YOUR BOTTOM DOLLAR / Baby you know you’re gonna knock em dead.

In the first verse Tina exhorts her man to bring his .45 “in case some fool might want to fight.” But Tina, how in the world is he going to carry a gun in those tight pants? Is there a shoulder holster involved? Or maybe he keeps his gun in the car?

Sidenote 1: This CD reprints the original liner notes for Vol. I, written by a California DJ named Curtis (Gene) Price. On the spectrum of crazy DJ-penned liner notes, this is relatively sane. However, it makes me think how much I’d like to go back in time and be a DJ in the ’60s. I’d just sit around with my turntable and typewriter and crank out wacky liner notes. Maybe I’d hang out with Richard Meltzer and make up new, nutso rocknroll slang. Yeah, that’s it. . .

Sidenote 2: Robbie Montgomery, one of the original Ikettes, is featured as a singer on this live album.  Just last weekend I was in St. Louis and discovered that my aunt and uncle and cousins have fallen in love with the food at Sweetie Pie’s, Robbie’s soul food restaurant.  She opened a location on Manchester, in an old ice cream parlor.  I’ll have to try it next time I get out to St. Louis.  They rave about the catfish.