Tina Turner, rock and roll icon, dead at 83
At the age of 83, Tina Turner has passed away.
She was a soul and rock powerhouse famed for her octave-defying voice and captivating stage antics.
The cause of death was not mentioned in a statement announcing her departure on her official Facebook page.
Turner outlined a long list of health problems she has suffered with since 2013, including a stroke, intestinal cancer, and renal failure, in her 2018 book Tina Turner: My Love Story. In 2017, Erwin Bach, her second husband, helped save her life by giving her a kidney.
Turner gained recognition as a solo performer and as a member of a duet with her first husband, Ike Turner, throughout the course of a recording career that lasted six decades. Tina’s diverse vocal backgrounds influenced the duo’s high-energy soul and rock. She grew up listening to country music, while having many other musical influences.
Her heroes were 1950s R&B singers LaVern Baker and Faye Adams, gospel superstar Mahalia Jackson, rock pioneer Sister Rosetta Tharpe, blues artist B.B. King, and soul greats Sam Cooke and Ray Charles. She thus had a flexible and adaptable voice that she could use to erupt in a scorching rock growl or to enter her lower register and sing smokey blues or silky R&B songs. Even a Phil Spector-produced orchestral-gospel victory, “River Deep, Mountain High,” one of Ike & Tina’s most well-known songs, was a success.
Turner was a skilled vocal translator who also gave life to other people’s classic songs, giving The Beatles’ already-pleading “Come Together” a wistful and desperate tone, and giving The Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women” more of a rural twang. She turned “Proud Mary,” a laid-back song by Creedence Clearwater Revival, into her hallmark song, which became a showcase for her seductive soul drawl and raspy rock ‘n’ roll shriek. Turner’s first Grammy Award for best R&B performance by a duet or group with vocals was given to the later tune. In all, she would take home eight Grammy Awards, including three straight years in the 1980s for best female rock vocal performance. For more information…..
Turner was a talented singer, but she also had a powerful stage presence that was often described as “electrifying.” Turner had a natural agility that transferred to graceful but forceful onstage dancing. At the microphone, she vibrated with intensity like a boiling pot ready to boil over. This description somehow always felt like an understatement. Ben Fong-Torres of Rolling Stone penned the following sentence in 1971: “Someone once labeled Tina ‘the female Mick Jagger. In reality, Mick should be referred to as “the male Tina Turner” to be more precise. (This isn’t just exaggeration from the critics; Turner implied in the same Rolling Stone story that Jagger had studied her motions pretty intently when she and Ike played with the Rolling Stones in 1969.) Naturally, the pairing was explosive when they performed a fiery rendition of the Jacksons’ “State of Shock” at Live Aid in 1985.
Turner, who was born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26, 1939, spent some time in Knoxville since her parents had relocated there for employment, but she grew up in rural Nutbush, Tennessee. When she was 13 years old, her father abandoned the family that is why She had a less relationship with her mother and father when she was growing up. However, she instinctively excelled on stage and found refuge in it. When she was 4 or 5 years old, salesgirls paid her to perform songs she had learned from the radio. She also talks of the thrill of directing her cousins, half-sister Evelyn, and sister Alline in makeshift theatrical productions in Tina Turner: My Love Story. She then improved her stage appearance by singing at picnics with Mr. Bootsy Whitelaw, a well-known trombonist in the area.
At the age of 16, Turner relocated to St. Louis to live with Alline and her mother. She started frequenting the renowned Club Manhattan in East St. Louis, where she first saw Ike Turner & The Kings of Rhythm. After impressing the leader of the band with an unexpected performance of B.B.
King’s “You Know I Love You” in 1957, she ultimately decided to join the group. Later, the group was renamed to the Ike and Tina Turner Revue to emphasize her prominent position.
According to all accounts,
Ike treated Tina both personally and professionally with severe cruelty. Turner stated in My Love Story, “Looking back, I see that my relationship with Ike was doomed the day he realized that I was going to be his meal ticket, his moneymaker. She continued by describing how a label executive instructed Ike to make Tina the group’s focal point when she was brought in as a last-minute substitute to sing on “A Fool In Love,” the duo’s first single that peaked at No. 2 on the R&B charts in 1960. She went on, “What went through Ike’s head when he heard that advice?” He needed to find a means to safeguard his interests, and that’s when things became complicated.
Turner has been outspoken about certain elements of their relationship over the years, but she said to the New York Times in 2019 that she hasn’t shared everything because she feels embarrassed of it. I believe I’ve spoken enough. Ike was physically violent as well as emotionally cruel; for instance, he rechristened her “Tina Turner” and later registered the name without her permission. When she split with him in 1976 when they were on tour in Dallas, she was almost impoverished. In a 2017 interview on The Jonathan Ross Show she said, I walked out without anything and had to make it on my own for my family and everyone so I just went back to work for myself.
While still touring with Ike, Turner recorded two solo albums: 1975’s Acid Queen, a rock-oriented covers album, and 1974’s Tina Turns the Country On!, a stripped-down LP comprising her interpretations of songs by Bob Dylan, Dolly Parton, and Kris Kristofferson. The game program Hollywood Squares and Cher’s variety TV series were her first attempts into popular culture after the breakup, along with cabaret-style live performances and two albums that failed to chart. Additionally, she contributed a slick, electro-pop rendition of the Temptations’ “Ball of Confusion” to Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh’s album Music Of Quality & Distinction, Volume One, which was published under the moniker B.E.F.
Turner’s life will change significantly in 1984.
She collaborated with David Bowie on the Tonight LP’s title tune, which had a reggae flavor, before ultimately breaking out on her own with the hit of Private Dancer. The album, like “Ball of Confusion,” embraced the decade’s sleeker, cutting-edge production qualities; in fact, Ware co-produced two tracks, all the while showcasing Turner’s powerful voice and many inspirations.
The Mark Knopfler-penned title track appeared on the album along with renditions of songs by David Bowie (1984), the Beatles (“Help!”), and Ann Peebles (“I Can’t Stand the Rain”). She also had her first and only solo No. 1 single from Private Dancer, the ethereal and opulent “What’s Love Got to Do With It.” The song, which was also nominated for Grammys for record of the year and best female pop vocal performance, had a passionate, lived-in vocal performance that launched her sophisticated second act and solidified her status as a survivor, a label and look she embraced.
As the decade went on, Turner’s business rebirth continued.
She co-starred in the 1985 movie Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, which gave rise to the dramatic power ballad “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)” and the Grammy-winning “One of the Living,” and she continued to have success with the Bryan Adams duet “It’s Only Love,” breezy seduction “Typical Male,” and the empowerment anthem “The Best.” Turner also became an early MTV icon with her spiky hairstyle and power miniskirts that displayed her famed legs: The year after performing at the first MTV Video Music Awards in 1984 she won best female video for What’s Love Got to Do With It.
Turner remained a commercial power far into the 1990s, especially with the release of the biopic What’s Love Got to Do With It in 1993. Laurence Fishburne played Ike in the film adaptation of her 1986 autobiography, I, Tina, which featured Angela Bassett as Tina. While Bassett won the Golden Globe for outstanding performance by an actress in a comedy or musical, both performers were nominated for Oscars. The soundtrack song I Don’t Wanna Fight became a global smash and peaked in the U.S. top 10, giving Turner herself a career boost. She received yet another important award in 1995 when she sang the sultry, classy James Bond theme song “GoldenEye” for the movie of the same name.
Turner who relocated to Switzerland in 1995 began to scale down her workload in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s and she ultimately decided to retire in 2009 following a 50th anniversary tour. She continued to be a proactive steward of her own legacy, and she actively contributed to the creation of Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, which debuted on Broadway in the autumn of 2019. She also collaborated with Beyoncé to deliver a breathtaking rendition of Proud Mary during the 2008 Grammy Awards. In retrospect, it’s simple to see how Turner was transferring the baton to a newer artist. But the concert also served as another affirmation that she was fully in charge of her illustrious musical legacy.
