R.I.P. TINA TURNER
The world lost a bonafide musical legend and singing icon as it was announced that Tina Turner had died on Wednesday at her home in Küsnacht, Switzerland, near Zurich, at the age of 83, confirmed by her publicist Bernard Doherty.
Though no cause of death was disclosed, Turner was in declining heath in recent years, recovering from a stroke and known to be struggling with a kidney disease, among other late life maladies.
Anna Mae Bullock was born on Nov. 26, 1939, in Brownsville, Tenn., near Memphis, spending her beginning years on the Poindexter farm in Nutbush, and singing in the choir of the Spring Hill Baptist Church. Her father, Floyd, oversaw the farm’s sharecroppers and was mentioned as having a "difficult" relationship with his wife, Zelma.
Young Anna would live with her grandmother after World War II and her parents separating, eventually re-locating to St. Louis to live with her mother and attend local public high school. While also still a teen, she first saw a young Ike Turner and his band perform at the local Manhattan Club, eventually gaining up the nerve to ask him if she could try singing during a performance intermission.
She eventually became a backup singer and was involved romantically with Ike, who christened her with a new stage name, inspired in part by character Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. The Ike Turner Revue would score a Billboard #2 on the R&B charts with 1958’s “A Fool in Love”.
Ike and Tina would eventually marry in 1962, marking more musical success for the pair and band, but also a tumultuous and often violent fourteen-year period, before Tina would finally leave. Their fame increased with hits along the way, notably their version of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary”- a song in her canon so much made her own definitive version, many people still don’t realize it is a cover. Ike Turner would have diminished musical and personal success post-Tina, eventually passing away in 2007 from a cocaine overdose.
The 1993 award-winning theatrical film (based on the book of the same name), "What’s Love Got to Do With It" chronicled much of that life and career-tipping period of time. The later 60s and into the 1970’s proved more challenging for Turner, whose 1966 Phil Spector-produced single “River Deep, Mountain High” was a musical milestone, but failed to sustain her popularity, more so in the U.S. than in the UK and overseas.
Meeting manager Roger Davies (who also managed Olivia Newton John) in the late 70s would eventually spark a return to her musical/stage essence and rejuvenate her career path to even bigger heights. Covers of “Ball of Confusion” and Al Green’’s “Let’s Stay Together", would pave the path for her May 1984 breakthrough album, Private Dancer which would go on to sell over 10 million copies, and win three main categories at the following year’s Grammy Awards.
She would set a Guinness World Records for attendance at a futbol stadium concert in Brazil and by 2000, would sell more concert tickets than any other solo performer in history. We were lucky enough to see her live at Sandstone (now Azura) Amphitheater in Bonner Springs KS in 1997 for a memorable show that featured a towering staircase she and her backups would first appear on, sing from, and dramatically leave from. Her 2008 World Tour (which would be her last) was launched that October in Kansas City, with two dates at the (then) Sprint Center.
In theaters, she would appear as The Acid Queen in The Who’s film, “Tommy” and Aunty Entity in 1985’s “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” providing the theme song for the film’s soundtrack, which would become yet another mega-hit.
Among her numerous accolades, she was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame along with Ike in 1991, and again as a solo artist in 2021, received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2005, and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement award in 2018.
Related, there was a recent critically acclaimed documentary on HBO simply called “Tina” and “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical,” the 12-time Tony Award-nominated stage musical based on her life opened in London in 2018, on Broadway in 2019. The show is currently touring, having recently run in Minneapolis in March and is scheduled in Kansas City for December 8, 2023.
She would eventually retire to Switzerland (also becoming a Swiss citizen) with her husband, German producer and music executive Erwin Bach, who survives her.
| John C ([email protected]) ♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ twitter.com |
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