Claudia Lennear

One of Ike and Tina Turner’s Ikettes, Lennear was a powerful voice in the late 60s. She dated Mick Jagger, and is rumoured to have inspired Brown Sugar, as well as David Bowie’s Lady Grinning Soul; later, she sang with Joe Cocker and Leon Russell, and recorded her own ludicrously funky 1973 album, Phew! . One note in 20 Feet of Stardom feels sour to her, though: when University of Southern California professor Todd Boyd compares Ike to a pimp with the Ikettes as his whores. “I didn’t know who he was, but that was a lie. We were treated well and worked hard– how dare he?” A languages teacher since the 1980s, she gives new classes “three weeks before a student finds out who I used to be”