TINA TURNER

(26 November 1939 - 24 May 2023)

Tina Turner was a singer-songwriter, author and occasional actress, who has died in Switzerland, aged 83, after years of poor health. She had a career first with Ike Turner, her first husband, in his band Kings of Rhythm, from 1957. Then, as Ike & Tina Turner, they were a very successful duo until they parted in 1976. She more or less forced Ike into taking her on, but it certainly paid dividends. Tina then became a solo artist and had the most profitable time of her musical life, culminating in her record-breaking concert in Rio de Janeiro with an audience of 180,000, the most ever for a solo female performer. Her first record was ‘Boxtop’ in 1958 and then, as Tina Turner, she joined Ike for the duet of ‘A Fool in Love’ and her path to success was assured.

Tina Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock in Brownsville, Tennessee, to Floyd Bullock, an overseer of farming sharecroppers, and his wife Zelma. Anna Mae had two older sisters, Evelyn and Ruby, the latter a songwriter. The girls were separated during World War II when their parents worked at a defence facility in Knoxville, but were reunited after the war. Anna Mae sang in her church choir but when she was eleven her mother left to get away from her husband’s abuse. As the family split up, the girls stayed with their grandmother, with Anna Mae feeling she was unloved. In her teen years she did housework and after her grandmother died she returned to her mother in St Louis, graduated and became a nurse’s aide.

Having joined Ike Turner, Tina, as she became, released many hit records with her partner such as ‘It’s Gonna Work Out Fine’, ‘River Deep, Mountain High’, ‘Proud Mary’ and ‘Nutbush City Limits’. Later she had hits of her own with ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’, ‘Better Be Good to Me’, ‘Private Dancer’, ‘Typical Male’, and, of course, ‘The Best’ which was simply her best recording.

In 1975 she took on acting roles, beginning with The Who’s Tommy, directed by Ken Russell, a rock opera based on the group’s album, which starred Roger Daltrey, Ann-Margret, Oliver Reed, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Jack Nicholson and Tina Turner, who played The Acid Queen, a prostitute and drugs dealer. She also appeared in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) playing Aunty Entity, the Amazonian ruler of Bartertown. Her autobiography, I, Tina: My Life Story, was turned into the 1993 film What’s Love Got to Do With It, for which Angela Bassett was nominated for an Oscar for playing Tina. Then, aged seventy, she completed the Tina! 50th Anniversary Tour in 2009 and retired shortly afterwards. Later, she was the subject of Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, a jukebox dramatisation of her life, which played in the West End, on Broadway and all over the world.

Throughout her long career, Tina Turner won many awards, notching up twelve Grammys and a Lifetime Achievement Award and in total sold over 150 million records, something of a record in itself. On a personal level, she had a relationship with the saxophonist Raymond Hill and had a son by him, Craig. She also had a son with Ike Turner, Ronnie, and eventually they all lived together with Ike and his girlfriend Lorraine and Ike’s two other sons (who Tina adopted). Ike died in 2007, although Tina had divorced him in 1978 on account of his drugs habit, and she did not marry again until 2013 when she wed the German music executive Erwin Bach, after their 27-year relationship.

MICHAEL DARVELL