KINGS OF RHYTHM, THE - are an American rhythm and blues and soul group formed in the late 1940s in Clarksdale, Mississippi and led by Ike Turner through to his death in 2007. Turner would retain the name of the band throughout his career, although the group has undergone considerable lineup changes over time. The group was an offshoot of a large big band ensemble called "The Tophatters". By the late 1940s Turner had renamed this group the "Kings of Rhythm". Their early stage performances consisted largely of covers of popular jukebox hits of the day. A 1951 lineup of the group recorded the song "Rocket 88", which was an early example of rock and roll. In the 1960s they became the band for the "Ike & Tina Turner Revue". For a few years in the early 1970s they were renamed "The Family Vibes", and released 2 albums under this name, both produced by, but not featuring Ike Turner. The band have continued, for a time under the leadership of pianist Ernest Lane (himself a childhood friend of Turner's), and continues to tour with vocalist Earl Thomas. The group has been running for at least 64 years.
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In high school, a teenage Ike Turner joined a huge local rhythm ensemble called The Tophatter, who played dances around Clarksdale, Mississippi, playing big band arrangements from sheet music. Members of the band were taken from Clarksdale musicians, and included Turner's school friends Raymond Hill, Eugene Fox and Clayton Love.
At one point the Tophatters had over 30 members, and eventually split into two, with one act who wanted to carry on playing dance band jazz calling themselves The Dukes of Swing and the other, led by Turner becoming the Kings of Rhythm. Rivalry between the two former factions of the Tophatters lasted for some time, with the two staging an open air 'battle-of-the-bands' where they played from atop two flatbed trucks every fortnight.
The Kings of Rhythm had a regular Wednesday night residency at Clarksdale's Harlem Theater. This got them bookings around the Mississippi Delta region. Their early stage performances consisted largely of covers of popular jukebox hits. In March 1951 whilst driving between gigs, the Kings of Rhythm dropped in with B.B. King on a blues club date in Chambers, Mississippi. Turner persuaded King to let the band sit in and play a number with him. King contests this, remembering that it was only Turner who sat in with his band. They were well received and the club owner booked them for a weekend residency, whilst King recommended them to Sam Philips at the Memphis Recording Service in Memphis, Tennessee. In the 1950s, The Kings received regular airplay from live sessions on Clarksdale radio station WROX-Am, at the behest of disc jockey Early Wright. The band would sometimes play a session that lasted an hour.
Sam Phillips invited the Kings of Rhythm down to Memphis to record at the Memphis Recording Service, and the group had to devise an original song at short notice for the session. The saxophonist, Jackie Brenston, suggested a song about the new Rocket 88 Oldsmobile. Turner worked out the arrangement and the piano introduction and the band collaborated on the rest with Brenston on vocals. "Rocket 88" came out with the group credited as Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats and went on to sell half a million copies, reaching the top of the Billboard Rhythm And Blues charts in June 1951. The success of the record caused divisions within the group, with Brenston believing he was now the star and should front the group, and Turner and Raymond Hill bitter that they had received little recognition or recompense for writing and recording a hit record. The group's regular singer was signed away to a contract with King Records, but Turner still refused to allow Brenston to take over as singer, so the saxophonist left to pursue a solo career, taking half the group with him. However Turner held onto the name and reformed the Kings of Rhythm with a new lineup.
In 1951, when the band was touring, they were going to record a song ''Juiced'', so they had Billy Love as the pianist to record it for them. It was well known, and it was also known as a follow up hit to ''Rocket 88'', but the song ''Juiced'' was just a minor hit. They kept making more songs from 1951 to early 1953, but kept getting a little less success.Some of their famous recordings were ''Tuckered Out'', ''Leo The Louse'', ''Independent Woman'', ''Starvation''.
In 1955, Turner took a reformed version of the Kings of Rhythm north to St. Louis, including Kizart, Sims, O'Neal, Jessie Knight, Jr. and Turner's third wife Annie Mae Wilson Turner on piano and vocals. It was at this time that Turner moved over to playing guitar to accommodate Annie Mae, taking lessons from Willie Kizart to improve.
Turner maintained strict discipline over the band, insisting they lived in a large house with him so he could conduct early morning rehearsals at a moment's notice. He would fire anyone he suspected of drinking or taking drugs, and would fine or physically assault band-members if they played a wrong note. He controlled everything from the arrangements down to the suits the band wore onstage. Starting off playing at a club called Kingsbury's in Madison, Illinois, within a year Turner had built up a full gig schedule, establishing his group as one of the most highly rated on the St. Louis club circuit, vying for popularity with their only real competition, Sir John's Trio featuring Chuck Berry. The bands would play all-nighters in St. Louis, then cross the river to the clubs of East St. Louis, Illinois, and continue playing until dawn. In St. Louis for the first time Turner and the band were exposed to a developing white teenage audience who were excited by rhythm and blues. Clubs the Kings played in St. Louis included Club Imperial, which was popular with white teenagers, The Dynaflow, The Moonlight Lounge, Club Riviera and the West End Walters. In East St. Louis, the group would play Kingsbury's, Club Manhattan and The Sportsman.
In between live dates, Turner took the band to Cincinnati to record for Federal in 1956 and Chicago for Cobra/Artistic in 1958. He befriended St. Louis rhythm and blues fan Bill Stevens, who in 1958 set up the short-lived record label, Stevens, financed by his father Fred. Turner recorded numerous sessions for Stevens with various vocalists and musician lineups of the Kings, of which seven singles were released (these are collected on the Red Lightnin' compilation "Hey Hey - The Legendary Ike Turner and the Kings of Rhythm" (RL0047). None of the Stevens records had wide distribution and the operation ceased after a year. In addition the band appeared on local television shows. They toured the "Chitlin' Circuit" of black southern clubs for many years.
After the addition of his new wife Anna Mae Bullock (Tina Turner) as lead singer, Turner changed the name of the band from The Kings of Rhythm to the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. The creation of the revue was in a large part the birth of the soul revues of the 1960s. The band and Tina were joined on stage by the Ikettes who contributed backing vocals and choreographed dance moves. As backing band to the duo, the band played on many substantial soul hits, including the million sellers "A Fool In Love" (1960) and "It's Gonna Work Out Fine"(1961) both for Sue Records.
KIRBY SISTERS, THE - In the mid-1950s, the sisters Bette and Mary, were appearing regularly at Chaylor's Starlight Club in Texarkana. It was a regular gig that drew a steady stream of musicians to the area. The owner of the club had a daughter named Johnnie, who was variously described as "strange" and "very unusual". At some point, Johnnie wrote (or took credit for writing - there is some suggestion that her mother also wrote lyrics) a song called "The Blond In Red Velvet".
The song, like Johnnie, is a far cry from ordinary. Like most people living around the fringes of the music business, Johnnie wanted fame and fortune to smile on her.
It didn't help that the Kirby Sisters were in the spotlight every night. At some point in late 1955 the Kirbys made some demos at the Starlight Club. The recordings were rough, but they were good enough to demonstrate a world of potential. The tapes were sent to Sam Phillips in Memphis by Bette, renowned to be the most business-oriented of the lot. The Sun label was hot at the time with Elvis Presley, and Sun Records seemed an ideal place to start. Phillips liked what he heard and invited the girls and their band to come to Memphis so that they could experiment in the studio.
LOVE, BILLY ''RED'' - Billy Love was a serious talent, as a solo artist, a session pianist, and sometime leader of Rosco Gordon's road band. But he spent his life in and out of the armed forces, in and out of employment, in and out of jazz clubs, and in and out of the attention of law enforcement officers.
Billy Love led a full, short frustrating and strange life. Sam Phillips remembered him as ''a super-good musician'', but one who didn't focus on his musical gifts.
Milton Morse Love (aka Billy ''Red'' Love) was born on December 8, 1929 in Memphis, Tennessee, the son of Morse Love, senior and Lizzie Elliott. They were living on Florida Street just south of downtown Memphis in the summer of 1944 when Milton was fourteen years old and about to start work at the St. Louis Warehouse in Memphis.
Love joined the Army in February 1946 when he was a year under age, but by the late 1940s Love was back in Memphis gaining a good reputation as a piano player and teacher. He met budding saxophonist Richard Sanders just in from Yazoo County, Mississippi and they formed a band. Lillie Sanders remembered living on Florida Street near Milton Love and Rosco Gordon: ''Around the year of 1948 through 1951 musicians including my older brother Baby Richard Sanders Jr., Johnny Ace, Billy ''Red'' Love, Earl Forrest, Little Milton, and Rosco Gordon used to rehearse almost every day at Rosco Gordon's family home across the street. While walking home from school daily, I had the opportunity to hear great sounds of blues singing and music... This fair-skinned, freckled-faced, slenderframed, handsome blues singer from across the street used to whistle and wink his eyes at me every time he'd see me. He was Billy ''Red'' Love. He seemed to be a nice, quiet and very mannerable person - but I never forgot the music he'd sing''. Years later, she encouraged her daughters, the Jubert Sisters, to record some of Love's songs.
By the end of the 1940s Love was a formidable singer , pianist, songwriter, arranger. Rosco Gordon told John Floyd, ''Love and I we lived about two blocks apart... my mother got rid of the piano (from our house) so I would go to Billy Love's house periodically, two or three times a week, and I would learn from him. He had so much talent. If you couldn't learn from him you couldn't learn from anybody. He would show you note for note how to make the chord''.
Much of the music scene in those days was across the river in West Memphis, Arkansas where there were a number of clubs and other drinking and gambling houses centered an 7th and 8th Streets and all of them helped support a number of blues musicians. Many of the players who recorded for Sam Phillips worked at Jack Brown's club while Joe Hill Louis held sway at nearby Suggs cafe. The Be-Bop Hall was where the ''better'' musicians played, according to local musician Bo Pete, who gave as examples the likes of George Coleman and Billy ''Red'' Love.
In 1951 Sam Phillips was very busy in his part-time studio (the Memphis Recording Service), recording as much of the local blues and rhythm and blues talent as he could. He had not yet started his Sun label and leased most of his product to Chess and RPM/Modern. Billy Love did some session work for Phillips, backing Walter Horton, Rufus Thomas and Willie Nix, before he got the chance to cut his own record as a singer-pianist. This resulted in the storming drinking song "Juiced", probably cut on July 24, 1951. Phillips was under pressure from Chess to come up with a good follow-up for Jackie Brenston's "Rocket 88" (a number 1 rhythm and blues record, produced by Phillips, his first big success), after "My Real Gone Rocket" had bombed. It was decided to issue "Juiced" under Jackie Brenston's name (Chess 1472). Brenston was a better sax player than a singer and hardly had time for recording, as he was in constant demand on the road. Love was a better singer, wrote his own songs and played a mean piano. "Juiced" was the finest record that Jackie Brenston never made - and that Billy Love was never credited with making. But it did not chart. Love's next session took place in October or November 1951 and yielded three songs, two of which, "Drop Top" and "You're Gonna Cry" were issued as a Chess single (1508), this time credited to "Billy 'Red' Love and his orchestra". "Drop Top" was in the same uninhibited style as "Juiced", an attempt to follow in the slipstream of "Rocket 88". There were four sessions in 1952, but only one single was released, "My Teddy Bear Baby"/"Poor Man" (Chess 1516, now very rare). These two singles seem to have received very little promotional support from Chess and sold poorly. Through 1952 (the year in which Sun Records was launched), Love continued to work as a session pianist at Phillips's studio, but Sam's files are completely silent on Billy Love for the whole of 1953.
On January 19, 1954 Love returned to the Sun studio with a new band and cut five titles. He must have had a real expectation of seeing his first Sun record out in the spring, and so must Sam Phillips, who scheduled "Hey Now" and "Way After Midnight" for release on Sun 205, registering their copyrights with BMI that May. Sam assigned Sun master numbers to the two titles (U 118 and U 119), but the record did not appear with the May batch of Sun discs. By July, the first record by Elvis Presley had been released on Sun 209 and Phillips was too busy promoting his hot new property to release Love's disc. It was the beginning of the end for most blues and rhythm and blues singers at Sun and particularly so for Love who had a reputation for unreliability. Phillips told Martin Hawkins: "Billy Love was a supergood musician but he didn't have the gut desire to succeed. Not that he didn't want to, but I didn't have time to waste and I think Billy's problem was lack of patience and devotion to what he was doing. He played well but there is a kind of dedication and belief in your music that extends beyond the doors of the studio. He did not have that."
One more session was recorded at the Sun studio, resulting in "Blues Leave Me Alone" and the promotional record "Hart's Bread Boogie" for the Hart's bakery in Memphis (released on Harts H B-66). Pat Hare played guitar on that session; Billy played piano on Hare's "I'm Gonna Murder My Baby" (recorded May 14, 1954, originally unreleased).
Around this time Love had joined Rosco Gordon's band and he spent a good part of the 1954-1956 years travelling with Gordon, who re-signed with Sun in 1956 (that's Billy playing piano on "Shoobie Oobie"). In 1957 Love disappeared from Memphis and nobody knew where he had gone. It later turned out that he had relocated to Colorado Springs, playing at Duncan's Cotton Club. He was still living there when he got in trouble with the law in January 1974, accused of selling heroin and possessing an illegal weapon, but apparently this did not lead to a jail sentence.
Love's luck ran out the next year. Milton Morse (Billy ''Red'') Love passed away on Friday May 2, 1975 and
was buried at the Memphis National Cemetery. "Drank himself to death", according to Rosco Gordon. (MH)
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