Jackie Brenston born August 24, 1928 or 1930

Jackie Brenston (August 24, 1928 – December 15, 1979) was an American singer and saxophonist who, with Ike Turner's band, recorded the first version of "Rocket 88" in 1951. It was noted in a subsequent interview that Brenston stated "I had a hit record and no sense".

Jack Brenston was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Brenston's birth date has long been the source of speculation. The birth date on his headstone, August 24, 1928, is the same date on his army enlistment records. However, in 1974, Brenston stated that he was born on August 24, 1927. His obituary in the Clarksdale Press Register gave his birth date as August 15, 1930, a date endorsed by researchers Bob Eagle and Eric S. LeBlanc. Brenston had a troubled youth and often ran away from home. It has been theorized that his mother, Ethel Brenston, falsified his age so that he could join the army. Brenston claimed he served more than three years in the 82nd Airborne, but records show that he enlisted on January 19, 1946, and was released on December 18, 1946.

Returning to Clarksdale from army service, Brenston learned to play the saxophone in 1947 from a local character named Jesse Flowers. "I had this $30 horn with a hole in it. I plugged the hole up with chewing gum", Brenston told writer Jim O'Neal in 1978. Before long he linked up with Ike Turner in 1950 as a tenor sax player and occasional singer in Turner's band, the Kings of Rhythm. B.B. King was impressed when he saw the group perform in Chambers, Mississippi, in early 1951 and directed them to Sam Phillips's Memphis Recording Service, where King was recording at the time. Phillips had not yet begun his Sun Records Company ; another year would pass before the first Sun record was made. But he had been operating a recording studio, making and leasing recordings, for almost a year. It was at that studio, at 706 Union Avenue in Memphis, that "Rocket 88" was recorded, on March 3, 1951.

                                  

Though Brenston claimed authorship of "Rocket 88", he had derived it from a song in the band's repertoire, "Cadillac Boogie", which Jimmy Liggins had cut for Specialty in 1947. In the lyrics, Brenston replaced the Cadillac with the new Oldsmobile Rocket Hydramatic 88. The vocalist of the Kings Of Rhythm, Johnny O'Neal, had recently been signed by King Records and Ike Turner chose Brenston as the group's new singer. Of the five sides cut at the historic session, the first two were by Ike himself, with Brenston playing alto sax. Then Jackie laid down his horn and sang three songs, "Rocket 88", "Come Back Where You Belong" and "Independent Woman". During the drive from Clarksdale, guitarist Willie Kizart's amp had fallen off the top of the car, breaking the speaker cone. Rather than submerge the distorted sound of Kizart's guitar, Sam Phillips took a chance and overamplified it, making it the centrepiece of the rhythm track. After the session, Phillips ran off dubs and sent them to the Chess brothers in Chicago the same night. Chess released two singles by the group in mid-April. The coupled sides that featured Turner's voice bore on their labels the credit Ike Turner and Kings of Rhythm. However, much to Ike's dismay, the other single ("Rocket 88"/"Come Back Where You Belong") was credited to 'Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats'.

Turner blamed Phillips for this error. "Rocket 88" reached the R&B charts in May 1951, hit number 1 in June (for five weeks) and eventually became the second-biggest R&B record of the year, after the Dominoes' "Sixty Minute Man". Its success had far-reaching effects. It heralded a wilder wave of rock n roll. It stirred Sam Phillips's determination to start his own label. And it caused Ike Turner and Jackie Brenston to part company after one more session in July (at which the follow-up, "My Real Gone Rocket" was recorded). The success of "Rocket 88" (which Turner felt was really HIS success) went to Brenston's head and he split for a time and formed his own group. The third Chess single by Brenston, "Independent Woman", was the remaining recording from the first session and was coupled with "Juiced", which was credited to Brenston, but in fact sung by Billy Love. Ike Turner defected to the Bihari brothers and their Modern / RPM labels, but Sam Phillips continued to record Brenston, with his new band. "Hi Ho Baby", Brenston's duet with Edna McCraney, was released by Chess in January 1952. "Starvation", a last (instrumental) Chess single, came in 1953. Then, less than two years after it had begun, it was over for Brenston. His records didn't sell.

He took a job playing sax with Lowell Fulson's band in 1953, and stayed with Fulson, on and off, through 1955. Then, humbled and weary, he was taken back into the fold by Ike Turner, remaining there until the early 1960s, when Turner finally started having hits (with the help of Tina). Though he recorded with the Kings of Rhythm throughout those years, Brenston's voice was heard on only two of the many Federal singles that the band had out during that time ("Much Later" from 1957 being the best of those four tracks). He was reduced to being Ike Turner's baritone sax player. Turner allowed Brenston to sing a few songs when the band performed in public, but he forbade him to sing "Rocket 88". Jackie took refuge in alcohol. 

He released two final solo singles for Sue Records (1961, still with the Kings of Rhythm) and Mel London's Mel-Lon label in 1963 (with Earl Hooker's band). He drifted through a number of bands in the 1960s and drove a truck for a living in the 1970s. When Jackie Brenston suffered a heart attack in late 1979, he was a hopeless alcoholic and almost completely forgotten. He died at the Kennedy V.A. Hospital in Memphis on December 15, 1979, and was buried in the military section of the Heavenly Rest Cemetery. According to his Brenston's headstone, he was 51 years old. It wasn't until 2018, that "Rocket 88" was inducted into the Rock and Roll of Fame's Singles Category.

(Edited from This Is My Story & Wikipedia)