Ike Turner Jr., musician and son of Tina and Ike Turner, has died aged 67.
The news was confirmed by the singer’s family over the weekend to TMZ. The musician’s niece, Jacqueline Bullock, told the outlet that Turner Jr. had died on Saturday (October 4) in Los Angeles, just one day after his birthday.
The musician had suffered from kidney failure after several years of ill health. His niece also told TMZ that he had struggled with heart problems and had a stroke last month.
“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of my cousin, Ike Turner, Jr,” Bullock said in a statement. “Junior was more than a cousin to me, but rather a brother, as we grew up in the same famed household together.”
The musician, who largely stayed away from the spotlight despite the fame of his parents, lost his father, Ike, in 2007 at the age of 76, followed by Tina, who died at 83 in 2023.
Ike and Tina married in 1962 and shared four children. Tina adopted Ike Senior’s two sons from his previous relationship – Ike Jr. and Michael Turner.
“Tina raised me from the age of 2. She’s the only mother I’ve ever known,” Ike Jr. previously told the Mail on Sunday. As per The Sun, Ike Jr. previously told The Bobby Eaton Show his mother was “no joke” at home and was “extremely strict”.
“We had to do our chores, we had to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at the same time,” he said back in 2017. He also went on to say that his mother had been a huge influence on the music he eventually went on to make.
“My first instrument was drums, until my mother started making me break my drums down every day, so the piano was always there,” he told Eaton. “So I started playing piano. I play guitar and bass. Everything except horn.”
When he was a teenager, Ike Senior took his son out of the studio to join him in running his recording studio. He also worked for a short time as Tina’s sound engineer.
Both Ike Jr. and his father went on to win a Grammy for best traditional blues album in 2007.
“I got a Grammy for Risin’ with the Blues, I produced an album of my [father’s], and my second Grammy, I started another category, an album produced and engineered by the same person,” he told Eaton.
In other news, earlier this year, a new, never-before-heard Tina Turner was released. Recorded at Capitol Studios in Hollywood, it was originally intended to be an album track on Turner’s fifth record, ‘Private Dancer’ (1984).
‘Hot For You Baby’ was believed to be lost, but the recent unearthing of the tune “introduces a fresh chapter in the ‘Private Dancer’ story”, per a press release.
Written by Australian musicians George Young and Harry Vanda, and produced by John Carter, the new song appeared on a 40th anniversary edition of Turner’s Grammy-winning breakthrough LP.
