Ike & Tina Turner
Nutbush City Limits / Help Him

1)

I've always considered the jukebox to be a magical object and those black plastic discs to be magical too.

Ah, I worship forty-fives.

And I'm crazy about all those little stories of garage punk fanatics with their floors littered with rare finds from flea markets, basements, stairwells, storage rooms, and whatnot.

Besides, one of my possible ideas of paradise is an endless stretch of stalls with infinite discs, perhaps accompanied by a kind of Poison Ivy in sixteenths.

One of my ideas, I said, let’s forget about the others for the moment, also because they would be a bit inappropriate.

Let's go back to the forty-fives, then, and to an object even more magical than the jukebox.

And that object is a plain old white shoebox. A plain old white shoebox filled to the brim with small sound sarabands, ranging from a guy who wanted black skin to another who said you’re my free song...

From a fabulous rube parodying universal love in fake macaronic English to an angel with a blue suitcase.

There were other fabulous things, like the absolute esoteric of a certain Alice who seemed not to know anything or the endless list of a thousand sad little figures under an ever-bluer sky... little things like these that I can't even try to tell you the effect they had on me back then... and I’ll simply get by saying it was a new language, even if maybe only to my child’s ears.

What to say then about the glittering kaleidoscope of the foreign section: "Come together" "Angie" "Hey Jude", including the almost disco incongruity of "Reach out" which at the time seemed a mysterious and dark whirlpool.

Oh, there was something there that lacked in Italian things, not to talk about it.

And then the best was "Nutbush city limits" with that sticky, rough, and dirty sound, with that initial killer guitar riff almost glam, the funk breath, and Tina's raucous voice.

Ah, "Nutbush" I liked it for that old affair known as move your ass, but also because it reminded me of the wolf girl, who was none other than my aunt.

And my aunt was the owner of that shoebox.

2)

Now everyone has an aunt. But not like this. Mine was madly free and unimpressed by anything and anyone. If she liked something fine, but if she didn’t like it there was no way.

This freedom was also reflected in her appearance.

She was indeed a bundle of nerves that moved only by impulse, a slim body at the mercy of gusts of wind. And she was beautiful with a boyish, clever face and very lively black eyes, also full of wind.

Yes, she was beautiful.

And of an unconventional beauty, moreover. Looking at her, you immediately noticed the disproportion of a big nose and a huge mouth and the incongruity of a strange dimple in the chin, but these details added uniqueness and expressive strength as if her face had been sculpted by an inspired mad sculptor.

Her hair was long, messy, rebellious and she dressed in short, low-cut floral dresses.

She was therefore a living provocation for the village peasants who, however, were also frightened of her.

Moreover, I must add that her voice, hoarse and deep, gave an ultimatum tone to the curt replies that the baker, the greengrocer, or whoever had the misfortune to address her felt flung at them.

She did absolutely nothing to please others and possessed an incredible natural authority. I even saw little stars of energy sparkling around her. And I don’t think I was the only one.

In the village they called her the wolf girl. A perfect image. But I needed to find my own. And this image was Tina’s voice, it was that sound full of energy...

And it may certainly seem strange that a woman tormented by her husband, which Tina was, lent her voice to a legend of freedom.

3)

But it wasn’t just the aunt, there was also her friend Big Mama/Sugar Loaf.

Big Mama/Sugar Loaf was an elementary school teacher and was an incredible creature. Beautiful and gigantic, she had the physique of a dockworker and the face of a doll. Her body, squared and soft at the same time, moved imposing and graceful, without hesitation.

She could make you think of a big tree, or mama bear and in a fairy tale, she would have many children all just like her.

Her face was wide and so were her eyes, of a childish clear and not glassy.

She almost always wore her hair tied up and when she let it down it was like witnessing natural phenomena, the wind, the rain, the arrival of the sun.

Her voice with the slightest dialect accent made you think of a grandmother child and for this reason, it was incredibly reassuring, almost therapeutic.

She was a female animal with calm strength and you wanted to hug her.

Big Mama/Sugar Loaf was not from the village and had moved there shortly after turning twenty when she was assigned the teaching position.

She was on the riverbank looking for stones for the next day's lesson when she and my aunt saw each other for the first time. Big Mama had already piled up quite a bit of them on the grass, and was studying one intently, when my aunt noticed her.

"It's nice to see someone paying attention to things." she said.

"Oh I like to look at knick-knacks."

"Knick-knacks?"

"It's the name I give to little things. To the stones, but also to the minutiae I find on the street, which for me are like treasures. You know I’m a bit of a gatherer and if I find a jack of clubs, a hair clip, a colored button, I put it in my pocket. Also because I like pockets a lot and I like them because I can put so many knick-knacks in them."

And my aunt, immediately captivated, thought: “How can a giantess speak like a child? And, above all, why are her eyes so calm?”

Now, Big Mama was not the type of person for a killer guitar riff, which legend has it, and I am for the legend always and forever, that that riff is the work of Marc Bolan himself No Big Mama was more of a "Angie" "Hey Jude" type.

Besides, "from contrasts beautiful harmony" someone said.

4)

Big Mama and my aunt started seeing each other frequently then. Together they made cinnamon pudding and drank little liqueurs, listening to the discs from the white box.

After a few glasses they started mangling the words, at first just one every now and then, then a few more, then all or almost, inserting foreign words mostly French... and a bit of Latin... and whistles... and raspberries.

Then they imitated all the fart-pants they knew, from Harry Bad Breath (which was my favorite and spat goat poop saying madame) to Bernard Rat Butt.

I listened to them, spied on them, and when I entered they composed themselves, then started dancing close together, picking me up in their arms.

"This one smells of honey and not of shit..."

“Blessed is she who will kiss you!!!”

And that mix of sweat, liqueurs, and cinnamon was much better than fragrant linden... and I didn’t understand anything anymore...

5)

I remember when we all walked along the riverbank together.

My aunt always took out a little red notebook (where the brother, my uncle, had copied his favorite verses) opened it at random, and began to read.

When a verse particularly inspired us, we repeated it more and more, closing our eyes until one of the three of us shouted. Then we started running.

The one I liked best of all said: "In the heart is almost a cry of joy. And everything is calm" and it was by an Italian poet, Sandro Penna.

Many years later, I wasn’t surprised reading the words of a critic who defined those verses a masterpiece limit, a talisman. We, a ten-year-old child and two extravagant country girls of twenty-five, understood it very well.

Even though I mostly liked running and shouting.

During those walks sometimes my aunt and Big Mama pretended to challenge each other to a duel to establish who owned my heart, and imaginary swords whistled through the air, until one collapsed to the ground and the other dragged me onto the grass filling me with kisses.

"Marry me my knight!"

And then the fake dead one would get up (usually saying something like "dying isn’t bad, but only for a bit, because in the long run, death is boring") and celebrated the wedding:

"In wealth and poverty, in sickness and health, you will love each other to madness."

But one day the aunt who was pretending to be dead said:

“Big Mama, today we marry each other, take our hands and bind them, dear child.”

“But two girls can’t marry each other.”

“Oh really?”

Then she lowered her voice, pretending to be a man:

"I’m a man now, marry us!!"

I took their hands and those hands, those hands trembled...

"In wealth and poverty, in sickness and health..."

After the ceremony, their lips touched. As we returned home, a silence followed, that silence was not new with them and was beautiful like everything, but that was a silence of no return. Things could no longer be the same as before, the aunt had thrown the stone.

6)

Many days later Big Mama came to visit us. It was evening and she brought some sweets and there was again the usual cheeriness and not that silence.

They tucked me into bed and when I woke up in the middle of the night I entered my aunt's room. They were there, naked, in the big bed, my aunt nestled in the shadow of the big mountain and I felt like a smell of rain, something electric and sweet that took away the breath.

I lay down under the bed and navigated their breath, the night, the rain... "in the heart is almost a cry of joy and everything is calm...in the heart is almost a cry of joy and everything is calm...in the heart is almost a cry of joy and everything is calm..."

7)

But now I must confess something: in what I have written there is nothing true. "Nutbush city limits" I heard for the first time on the radio.

And all the aunts I remember were horrible monsters wandering around with a headscarf.

But, coming out of a country record player or a city squeaky little box, Tina Turner's voice was for me the first embryonic idea of rock, the first truly other sound...

The first thing resembling a legend of freedom.

Ah, there is something true and that is that white box. Only it didn’t contain black plastic discs, but fake cassettes bought from an electrician.

Imagination always needs a little foothold.