Ike & Tina Turner - Bold Soul Sister (1997)

Make no mistake about it, this 20-track collection culled from their two albums recorded for the Blue Thumb label in 1969 (Outta Season and The Hunter) is as much Ike's show as it is Tina's -- truly the other half of the equation, the blues part of rhythm & blues. His stinging guitar matches Tina's voice lick for nasty lick, and the blues song choices ("Dust My Broom," "Three O'Clock Blues," "Please Love Me," "Five Long Years," "You Don't Love Me," "Mean Old World," "Rock Me Baby," "Honest I Do," "Reconsider Baby") were undoubtedly tunes he and the Kings of Rhythm knew in their sleep, playing them since they were new hits on the charts. These were the last truly pure R&B albums the two of them would ever make, and even the then-current stabs at R&B trends (the title track is little more than Ike's version of a James Brown groove with Tina babbling in true JB incomprehensibility in spots) shine brightly in the spotlight of hindsight. Subtitled The Best of the Blue Thumb Recordings, this makes a great document of what they must have sounded like in the clubs that dotted the landscape of the chitlin circuit way back when.