Early Years

It's reasonably well known by serious fans of 1950s rock & roll that Ike Turner played guitar and piano on many records during the decade, as well as acting as a talent scout for independent labels. These tracks, however, really haven't been heard by that many people, in part because none of them (except Jackie Brenston's seminal 1951 single "Rocket 88") were hits, in part because it really hasn't been that easy to determine just how many discs benefited from Turner's participation. This compilation certainly doesn't include all of them, but it does assemble 29 tracks on which Turner played in the five years or so following "Rocket 88" for labels such as Sun, Modern, and Chess. On a few of these, Turner was the featured artist; more often, he was backing, on guitar and piano, obscure R&B singers such as Clayton Love, Eugene Fox, Bonnie Turner, or Johnny O'Neal. As the liner notes candidly admit, much of this stuff remains obscure because it really wasn't that original, either f