Lawrence.com

The most startling thing about Ike Turner, up close, is that he's 69 years old. Trim, lively and what they used to call dapper, he could pass for half his age on style alone.

You could safely call him "bad," except that in Turner's case, that's a word he's probably heard enough for one lifetime.

Here, after all, is one of the most important figures in rhythm and blues music history � a man whose best-known work, the hard-working, heavy-sweating Ike and Tina Turner hits from "A Fool in Love" to "Proud Mary," are only one modest corner of his legacy.

He was playing piano with Sonny Boy Williamson before he was a teen-ager. After he formed his own band, he hustled extra dollars by scouting the South for rhythm and blues artists, which put him on seminal records by the likes of Howlin' Wolf, Buddy Guy and Otis Rush.

His "Rocket 88," credited to vocalist Jackie Brenston, was one of the matches that ignited rock 'n' roll.

"I don't remember all the records I cut," he admits. "There was a lot."

Now he's back with his first record in 23 years, a strong blues set called "Here and Now" on Ikon.

"I always expressed myself through Tina or someone else," he says. "This record is me."

Trouble is, for the last 20 years, the musical Ike has disappeared behind the Other Ike, the one played by Laurence Fishburne in "What's Love Got To Do With It" (1993). The Other Ike was bad in the old sense � drugs, nasty attitude, slapping Tina around.

"There's an image of me out there that isn't me," says Turner. " � We've all made mistakes we regret. But womanizing, running around hitting people, physical violence, that wasn't me."

The calmer truth, he says, is that he was a music man and a showman who followed the jukeboxes and the business to give his act an edge, and eventually he decided to mold Tina into the image of Nyoka, the jungle goddess heroine he remembered from pre-World War II movie serials.

It worked. But eventually Ike's drug use broke up the act and landed him in prison.

Now, Turner says, that's all over. "I've been clean since '93," he reports. "I'm boring these days. Music is my only vice. But I'm 69 and I feel like 19. Music is the best high I've ever found."