from the LP The Hunter, Blue Thumb Records, 1969“Sock it to me biscuit!!” Everything about this woman captivates me: her humidor of a voice, the wild wigs, those legs which can make even the gayest of men pant & moan, Beyond the bloody Thunderdome for fucks sake (“…but how the world turns; one day, cock of the walk, next, a feather duster…do you know who I was? Nobody, except on the day after, I was still alive; this nobody had a chance to be somebody… ain’t we a pair, raggedy man…”)!!! It can sometimes be difficult to square the image of this howling & screeching woman, sounding every bit the bold soul sister, with that of a battered wife---but, it’s true that Tina wound up suffering through Ike’s bullshit for nearly another decade beyond this LP’s release, and therein lies the human complexity so common to all of us, yet never any less confounding. That being said, the fact that she left him and managed to re-emerge in the ‘80s as an international superstar (the likes of which Ike never saw) always warms my heart; you gotta love the statement she released through a spokesperson upon Ike’s death in 2007: “Tina hasn’t had any contact with Ike in more than 30 years. No further comment will be made.” That pretty much sums it up.
