Ike and Tina Turner – "Proud Mary" (1970)

And I never lost one minute of sleepin’

Worryin’ ‘bout the way things might have been

[NOTE:  The previous 2 or 3 lines post featured a Creedence Clearwater Revival cover of the Motown classic, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.”  This post features Ike & Tina Turner’s cover of the CCR classic, “Proud Mary.”  Turnabout’s fair play – right?]

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Click here to listen to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s original recording of the John Fogarty-penned song about a riverboat traveling up and down the Mississippi.  (Holy Mark Twain, Batman!)

Note the opening guitar riff, which concludes by moving down a third (from C to A).  Fogarty has said that he liked the famous four-note motif that opens Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the last note of which is also a third lower than the previous note.

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CCR’s “Proud Mary” was a #2 hit for the group in 1969.  (CCR never had a #1 single, but had five #2 hits.)

Ike Turner wasn’t a fan of the song, but he did like the cover of it by Checkmates, Ltd.  Click here to listen to that record.

Ike and Tina first performed their version of the song on Playboy After Dark in December 1969.  The Turners’ cover of “Proud Mary” is good, but when you see it performed live, it really comes into its own.  Tina’s introduction and the Ike-Tina rendition of the first verse are performed at a very deliberate pace, but then all hell breaks loose and BOOM GOES THE DYNAMITE!

Click here to watch Ike & Tina Turner performing “Proud Mary” live on Italian television.

Click here to hear the album version of the song.

Click here to order that record from Amazon.