It's Gonna Work Out Fine - Ike and Tina Turner
Maybe it's in the nature of all powerful people to be deeply manipulative. And maybe they feel the need to show everyone what they're up to as an expression of that power.
I remember one time I was a fourth on a table outside a pub where there was an extremely wealthy young guy with his recently married wife sat next to him. He stroked her arm possessively while looking into the eyes of the third man at the table, my friend, who all four of us knew was in love with her. The husband's actions were clearly indicating: she's mine, there's nothing you can do about it. 14 months later she left him for my friend, walked out, out of nowhere, and no-one was more surprised than he was.
"A Fool in Love" hit the US charts in June 1960 (see last post) and Ike and Tina Turner's next sizeable hit, "It's Gonna Work Out Fine" came a year later. This was another parallel rendering of the couple's real situation, with Tina trying to corner her man, specifically named as Ike in the song, into marrying her. There is irony, not only in the fact that, having had his baby the preceding year, Tina did indeed want Ike to "make an honest woman" out of her, but also in that the male vocalist on the record isn't Ike, but Mickey Baker, one half of the duo Mickey and Sylvia, both of whom helped on the production of "It's Gonna Work Out Fine". Similarities, both in repartee and tempo, with Micky and Sylvia's most famous record, the wonderful "Love is Strange", recorded 5 years earlier (see https://www.unclestylus.com/single-post/2018/11/05/love-is-strange-mickey-and-sylvia ), are therefore more than coincidental. Mickey's knowing vocal as Ike comes across as ultra-masculine, cool and complacent, and the real Ike, on guitar, knocks out some terrific Bo Diddley style chords, but Tina's vocal, yearning and straining so hard that it gives you a sore throat just listening to her, steals the show.
The final irony of "It's Gonna Work Out Fine", of course, is that it didn't.
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