Tina Turner thrilled Topeka audience in 1982. Here's what show meant for her opening act.

Rock star Tina Turner was the most exciting performer Ric Barron has ever seen.

The Topeka guitarist fondly recalled Wednesday how Turner paid a compliment to his musical group, the Scatband, as it was about to open for a concert she performed in 1982 at Topeka's Grand Theatre.

Barron said Turner spoke to him in the green room, where performers relaxed before and after appearances.

"You guys are pretty good," she said. "I heard you rehearsing."

"That really stoked me up," Barron said.

Turner then put on an electrifying show, which thrilled the audience, Barron said.

He and Scatband bass guitarist Danl Blackwood were "in awe" of her, they told The Topeka Capital-Journal on Wednesday.

Tina Turner left Ike Turner with only 36 cents and a Mobil credit card

Turner, known as "the Queen of Rock and Roll," died at her home in Switzerland after a long illness. She was 83.

Turner was 42 when she appeared in Topeka at the aging Grand Theatre, 615 S.W. Jackson, which would be torn down just two years later.

Turner had risen to prominence while performing from 1960 to 1976 with her husband, Ike Turner, as lead singer for the Ike and Tina Turner Revue.

But Ike Turner physically abused Tina Turner. She fled their Dallas hotel room as he slept in July 1976 carrying only 36 cents and a Mobil gas station credit card. She filed later that month for a divorce, which was finalized in 1978.

Tickets were $10 each for Topeka Tina Turner performances

Turner then re-emerged with a sexier image, and went on tour with a new band.

Tickets were $10 each for each of the two concerts they performed in Topeka on Jan. 22, 1982.

The opening act was the Topeka-based Scatband, which was also a rock group but performed songs that were "jazzier" than Turner's, Blackwood said.

Blackwood played bass guitar and Barron played guitar for the Scatband, which was formed in January 1981. It had Jaisson Taylor on percussion and Charlie Harrison and Nancy Engelken on keyboards.

All five members sang. Engelken and Barron handled lead vocals.

Barron and Blackwood feel honored to have opened for Turner and saddened to learn that she died, they said.

'The room went wild'

At the time of her Topeka concert, Blackwood said, not everyone knew that Ike and Tina Turner were no longer together.

Blackwood personally didn't find that out until about two months before the concert, he said.

Early on in that concert, Blackwood said, people started asking, "Where's Ike?"

Joan Schultz, who was part of the audience that evening, recalled Wednesday how Tina Turner addressed that.

"She stopped and said, 'By the way, I don't give a damn where Ike is,'" Schultz said. "It was great, that raspy voice and her stance. The room went wild."

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Turner went on to top the charts with 'What's Love Got To Do With It?'

Turner's fame "exploded" soon afterward, Blackwood said.

She recorded 14 songs that made it onto Billboard's American Top 40 between 1983 and 1993, topping the charts in 1984 with "What's Love Got to Do With It?"

That was also the title of a critically and commercially successful 1993 movie starring Angela Bassett, which illustrated how Turner emerged renewed and revitalized from her devastating situation with her husband.

Blackwood and Barron said it made them feel great to see Turner do so well and know they had opened for her.

The Scatband broke up in 1984, playing its last engagement that September.

It was inducted in April 2019 into the Kansas Music Hall of Fame.

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Contact Tim Hrenchir at threnchir@gannett.com or 785-213-5934.