Name: The Bad Man
Brand: Night Train
SKU: 243970
Price: 14.46 USD
Availability: InStock

The Bad Man

Rating

Album: The Bad Man
#	Song Title	Time
1)	Drag, The
2)	Crazy in Love
3)	So Fine
4)	Prisoner in Love
5)	If I Can't Be First
6)	Here's Your Heart
7)	Pee Wee
8)	So Blue Over You
9)	I'm Going Back Home
10)	My Good Loving
11)	Those Words
12)	Anything-To Make It With You
13)	You Can't Have Your Cake (And Eat It Too)
14)	Gettin' Away
15)	Cott'n Pick'n
16)	I Love the Man
17)	Bad Man, The
18)	Lonely Soldier
19)	I Love Nobody But You
20)	Won't Nobody Cha-Cha With Me

Album: The Bad Man
#	Song Title	Time
1)	Drag, The
2)	Crazy in Love
3)	So Fine
4)	Prisoner in Love
5)	If I Can't Be First
6)	Here's Your Heart
7)	Pee Wee
8)	So Blue Over You
9)	I'm Going Back Home
10)	My Good Loving
11)	Those Words
12)	Anything-To Make It With You
13)	You Can't Have Your Cake (And Eat It Too)
14)	Gettin' Away
15)	Cott'n Pick'n
16)	I Love the Man
17)	Bad Man, The
18)	Lonely Soldier
19)	I Love Nobody But You
20)	Won't Nobody Cha-Cha With Me

Performer Notes

Personnel: Ike Turner; Fontella Bass, Vernon Guy, Jimmy Thomas, The Ikettes, Tina Turner, Dee Dee Johnson, Robbie Montgomery.
Liner Note Author: Kevin Goins.
The Bad Man chronicles Ike Turner's attempts in the early '60s to launch his own record labels. After moving to Los Angeles in 1963, Turner bought a house, set up a home studio, and began recording some primal R&B and soul featuring Tina Turner, the Ikettes, Fontella Bass, and others. None of the labels (Innis, Prann, Sonja, Sony, or Teena) amounted to much commercially, but quite a few of the sides on this disc stack up well against the hits Ike & Tina were having at the time for Sue. All of them have the quick and nasty sound that Ike always favors. Fidelity and a crisp clean sound were never priorities for Turner; instead, he wanted excitement and sweat, and that is what he usually got. The most successful and fully realized songs on The Bad Man feature Tina, as she was the perfect foil for Ike's clattering wall of sound. She sounds demure and cute on "I'm Going Back Home" and tough as nails on the strutting "If I Can't Be First." The competition is pretty strong though. The Ikettes turn in some fine performances on the folk-rock-styled remake of "So Fine," the Lee Hazlewood (!) production "Here's Your Heart," and the sweet "So Blue Over You." Fontella Bass's two songs sound terrible (like the masters were soaked in beer for 30 years), but her performances are rock-solid soul, and Vernon Guy's sweet and mellow Sam Cooke-styled ballad "Anything to Make It With You" might be the best song on the disc. The end of the disc drops off some as featured artists like Bobby Johns, Jimmy Thomas, and George Jackson are about as exciting as their names promise, and their tracks exhibit a touch of the production-line mentality Ike was sometimes prone to. Overall though, The Bad Man is a fine addition to Night Train's The Ike Turner Diaries series. ~ Tim Sendra

Professional Reviews

Living Blues (pp.72-73) - "Fans of Ike's greasy guitar chops will dig the two instrumentals from the Turnabouts..."