Tina Turner
Tina Turner (born Anna Mae Bullock; November 26, 1939 – May 24, 2023) was a singer, songwriter, and actress. Known as the "Queen of Rock 'n' Roll", she rose to prominence as the lead singer of the husband-wife duo Ike & Tina Turner before launching a successful career as a solo performer.
Tina Turner
May 24, 2023 (aged 83)
- United States (until 2013)
- Switzerland (from 2013)
- Singer
- songwriter
- actress
- author
1956–2009
-
Erwin Bach(m. 2013)
4[3]
- Alline Bullock (sister)
- Afida Turner (daughter-in-law)
- Eugene Bridges (first cousin once removed)
Vocals
Born in Tennessee, Turner began her musical career with her future husband Ike Turner's band, the Kings of Rhythm, in 1956.[6] Under the name Little Ann, she appeared on her first record, "Boxtop", in 1958. In 1960, she debuted as Tina Turner with the hit single "A Fool in Love". The Ike & Tina Turner Revue became "one of the most formidable live acts in history".[7] The duo released hits such as "It's Gonna Work Out Fine", "River Deep – Mountain High", "Proud Mary", and "Nutbush City Limits" before disbanding in 1976.
In the 1980s, Turner launched "one of the greatest comebacks in music history".[8] Her 1984 multi-platinum album Private Dancer contained the hit song "What's Love Got to Do with It", which won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year and became her first and only number-one song on the Billboard Hot 100. Her chart success continued with "Better Be Good to Me", "Private Dancer", "We Don't Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)", "Typical Male", "The Best", "I Don't Wanna Fight", and "GoldenEye". She embarked on the Break Every Rule World Tour (1987–1988), which became the top-grossing female tour of the 1980s and set a Guinness World Record for the then-largest paying audience in a concert (180,000).[9] Turner also acted in the films Tommy (1975) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985). In 1986, she published her autobiography I, Tina: My Life Story, which was adapted for the 1993 film What's Love Got to Do with It. In 2009, Turner retired after completing her Tina!: 50th Anniversary Tour. In 2018, she was the subject of Tina, a jukebox musical.
Turner sold more than 100 million records worldwide, becoming one of the best-selling recording artists of all time.[10] She received 12 Grammy Awards, which include eight competitive awards, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and three Grammy Hall of Fame inductions. She was the first black artist and first woman to be on the cover of Rolling Stone.[11] Rolling Stone ranked her among the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. Turner has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and on the St. Louis Walk of Fame. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice: with Ike Turner in 1991 and as a solo artist in 2021. She was also a 2005 recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors and the Women of the Year award.[12]
Early life[edit]
Turner was born as Anna Mae Bullock[13][14][15] on November 26, 1939, in Brownsville, Tennessee.[16][17][18][19] She was the youngest daughter of Floyd Richard Bullock and his wife Zelma Priscilla (née Currie).[16][20] The family lived in the rural unincorporated community of Nutbush, Tennessee, where Bullock's father worked as an overseer of the sharecroppers at Poindexter Farm on Highway 180; she later recalled picking cotton with her family at an early age.[21][22]
Bullock was Black.[23] When she participated in the PBS series African American Lives 2 with Henry Louis Gates Jr., he shared her genealogical DNA test estimates and traced her family timeline.[24] Previously, she believed she had a significant amount of Native American ancestry.[25]
Bullock had two older sisters, Evelyn Juanita Currie and Ruby Alline Bullock, a songwriter.[26] She was the first cousin once removed of bluesman Eugene Bridges.[27] As young children, the three sisters were separated when their parents relocated to Knoxville, Tennessee, to work at a defense facility during World War II.[22] Bullock went to stay with her strict, religious paternal grandparents, Alex and Roxanna Bullock, who were deacon and deaconess at the Woodlawn Missionary Baptist Church.[22][28] After the war, the sisters reunited with their parents and moved with them to Knoxville.[22] Two years later, the family returned to Nutbush to live in the Flagg Grove community, where Bullock attended Flagg Grove Elementary School from first through eighth grade.[29][30]
As a young girl, Bullock sang in the church choir at Nutbush's Spring Hill Baptist Church.[31][32] In 1950, when she was 11, her mother Zelma left without warning, seeking freedom from her abusive relationship with Floyd by relocating to St. Louis.[33] Two years after her mother left the family, her father married another woman and moved to Detroit. Bullock and her sisters were sent to live with their maternal grandmother, Georgeanna Currie, in Brownsville, Tennessee.[33] She stated in her autobiography I, Tina that she felt her parents did not love her and that she was not wanted.[34] Zelma had planned to leave Floyd but stayed once she became pregnant.[35] Bullock recalled: "She was a very young woman who didn't want another kid."[35]
As a teenager, Bullock worked as a domestic worker for the Henderson family in Ripley, Tennessee.[36] She was at the Henderson house when she was notified that her half-sister Evelyn had died in a car crash alongside her cousins Margaret and Vela Evans.[37] A self-professed tomboy, Bullock joined both the cheerleading squad and the female basketball team at Carver High School in Brownsville, and "socialized every chance she got".[21][33] When Bullock was 16, her grandmother died, so she went to live with her mother in St. Louis. She graduated from Sumner High School in 1958.[38] After high school, Bullock worked as a nurse's aide at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.[39]
Solo career[edit]
Early solo career: 1976–1982[edit]
In 1976 and 1977, Tina Turner earned income by appearing on TV shows such as The Hollywood Squares, Donny & Marie, The Sonny & Cher Show, and The Brady Bunch Hour.[118] After her separation from Ike, lawsuits were mounting for canceled Ike & Tina Turner gigs.[119][120] She resumed touring to pay off her debts, with finances given to her by United Artists executive Mike Stewart.[121] In 1977, she re-emerged with new costumes created by Bob Mackie.[122] She headlined a series of cabaret shows at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and took her act to smaller venues in the United States.[123] Later that year, she embarked on her first solo concert tour in Australia.[124]
In 1978, Turner released her third solo album, Rough, on United Artists with distribution in North America and Europe on EMI. That album, along with its 1979 follow-up, Love Explosion, which included a brief diversion to disco music, failed to chart, so United Artists Records and Turner parted ways.[125] Without the premise of a hit record, she continued performing and headlined her second tour.[126]
In 1979, Australian manager Roger Davies agreed to manage Turner after seeing her perform at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco.[127] In early 1979, Turner worked in Italy as a regular performer on the Rete 1 TV series Luna Park, hosted by Pippo Baudo and Heather Parisi.[128] Later that year, she embarked on a controversial five-week tour of South Africa during the apartheid regime.[129] She later regretted the decision, stating that she was "naive about the politics in South Africa" at the time.[130]
In October 1981, Rod Stewart attended Turner's show at the Ritz in New York City and invited her to perform "Hot Legs" with him on Saturday Night Live.[131] In November, Turner opened for the Rolling Stones during their 1981 American Tour.[132] Turner performed in March 1982 in the Willem Ruis show (Netherlands), which resulted in the hit "Shame, Shame, Shame" (reaching No. 47 in the Netherlands). In 1982 Turner's recording of the Temptations' "Ball of Confusion" for the UK production team B.E.F. became a hit in European dance clubs.[133] In 1982, Turner also appeared on the album Music of Quality and Distinction Volume 1 by B.E.F., a side project of Heaven 17, singing "Ball of Confusion". She filmed a music video for "Ball of Confusion" that aired on the fledgling music video channel MTV, becoming one of the first black American artists to gain airtime on the channel.[134] Also in 1982, Turner appeared as a special guest on Chuck Berry's television special performed at The Roxy in West Hollywood.[135]
Career resurgence and superstardom: 1983–2000[edit]
Until 1983, Turner was considered a nostalgia act, performing mostly at hotel ballrooms and clubs in the United States.[136] During her second stint at the Ritz, she signed with Capitol Records in 1983.[137] In November 1983, she released her cover of Al Green's "Let's Stay Together", which was produced by B.E.F. It reached several European charts, including No. 6 in the UK.[138][139] In the US, the song peaked at No. 26 on the Billboard Hot 100, No. 1 on Hot Dance Club Songs, and No. 3 on Hot Black Singles.[140]
Following the single's surprise success, Capitol Records approved a studio album. Turner had two weeks to record her Private Dancer album, which was released in May 1984.[136] It reached No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and No. 2 in the United Kingdom.[141][142] Private Dancer was certified 5× Platinum in the United States,[143] and sold 10 million copies worldwide, becoming her most successful album.[144][145] Also in May 1984, Capitol issued the album's second single, "What's Love Got to Do with It";[146] the song had previously been recorded by the pop group Bucks Fizz.[147] Following the album's release, Turner joined Lionel Richie as the opening act on his tour.[136]
On September 1, 1984, Turner achieved her first and only No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with "What's Love Got to Do with It".[140] The follow-up singles "Better Be Good to Me" and "Private Dancer" were both US top 10 hits.[148] The same year, she duetted with David Bowie on a cover of Iggy Pop's "Tonight". Released as a single in November, it peaked at No. 53 in both the UK and the US.[149]
Turner culminated her comeback when she won three Grammys at the 27th Annual Grammy Awards, including the Grammy Award for Record of the Year for "What's Love Got to Do with It".[62] In February 1985, she embarked on her second world tour to support the Private Dancer album. Two nights were filmed at Birmingham, England's NEC Arena and later released as a concert on home video. During this time, she also contributed vocals to the USA for Africa benefit song "We Are the World".[150]
Turner's success continued when she traveled to Australia to star opposite Mel Gibson in the 1985 post-apocalyptic film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. The movie provided her with her first acting role in ten years; she portrayed the glamorous Aunty Entity, the ruler of Bartertown.[151] Upon release, critical response to her performance was generally positive.[152] The film was a global success, grossing more than $36 million in the United States.[153] Turner later received the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress for her role in the film.[154] She recorded two songs for the film, "We Don't Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)" and "One of the Living"; both became hits, with the latter winning her a Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance.[62] In July 1985, Turner performed at Live Aid alongside Mick Jagger.[155] Their performance shocked observers when Jagger ripped her skirt off.[156][157] Turner released a duet, "It's Only Love", with Bryan Adams.[158] It was nominated for a Grammy Award, and the music video won an MTV Video Music Award for Best Stage Performance.[159]
In 1986, Turner released her sixth solo album, Break Every Rule, which reached No. 1 in four countries and sold over five million copies worldwide within its first year of release.[160] The album sold more than a million copies in the United States and Germany alone.[143][161] The album featured the singles "Typical Male", "Two People", "What You Get Is What You See", and the Grammy-winning "Back Where You Started". Prior to the album's release, Turner published her autobiography I, Tina, which became a bestseller. That year, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.[162] Her Break Every Rule World Tour, which began in March 1987 in Munich, Germany, was the third highest-grossing tour by a female artist in North America that year.[163] In January 1988, Turner performed in front of approximately 180,000 at Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, setting a Guinness World Record at the time for the largest paying concert attendance for a solo artist.[164][165] In April 1988, Turner released the Tina Live in Europe album, which won a Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance.[166] After taking time off following the end of the tour, she emerged with the Foreign Affair album in 1989. It reached No. 1 in eight countries, including in the UK (5× Platinum), her first number-one album there. The album sold over six million copies worldwide and included the international hit single "The Best".[167][168]
In 1990, Turner embarked on her Foreign Affair European Tour, which drew in nearly four million spectators—breaking the record for a European tour that was previously set by the Rolling Stones.[169] In October 1991 Turner released her first greatest hits compilation Simply the Best, which sold seven million copies worldwide.[170] The album is her biggest seller in the UK, where it is certified 8× Platinum with more than two million copies sold.[171]