Life-Changing Art: Ike Turner

What piece of art/music changed your life? How did it affect you?

When I saw Pinetop Perkins, he was with Sonny Boy Williamson. We were comin' home from school, and we heard this music. Ernest Lane's father lived on Yazoo Street in Clarksdale, right behind Centennial Baptist Church, in them shotgun houses there. We were on our way home, and we would pass Ernest's daddy's house on our way to Fourth Street.

As we were walkin', I heard this f**kin' music. I had seen a piano in church, but I had never really noticed no piano before. I heard this music, and me and Ernest ran across the street to his daddy's house. His daddy had a piano in the living room. We looked in the window, and I saw Pinetop playin' that piano. I never saw nothin' like that in my life. You could hardly see his fingers, man. And big ol' Sonny Boy Williamson was singin', `Don't start me to talkin'/I'll tell everything I know,' or some kinda s**t like that.

I went home and told momma, `Momma, I want me a piano.'

Ike Turner died a year ago today.