Tina Turner
Tina Turner was a singer, songwriter, actress, and author. Dubbed the "Queen of Rock 'n' Roll", she broke both racial and gender barriers in rock music and became a dominant figure in popular culture. Known for her vocal prowess and stage presence, Turner is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with estimated sales of over 100 million records worldwide.
Turner rose to prominence in the 1960s as the lead vocalist of the husband-wife duo Ike & Tina Turner, known for their explosive live performances with the Ikettes and Kings of Rhythm. After years of marital abuse, she ended her personal and professional relationship with Ike Turner in the 1970s and embarked on a solo career. She made a comeback with her multi-platinum fifth solo album Private Dancer, whose single "What's Love Got to Do with It" won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year and became her only number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100. Her worldwide chart success continued with the Top 10 singles "Better Be Good to Me", "Private Dancer", "We Don't Need Another Hero ", "Typical Male", and "I Don't Wanna Fight".
Turner's Break Every Rule World Tour became the highest-grossing tour by a female artist of the 1980s and set a Guinness World Record for the then-largest paying audience in a concert. Her success as a live performer continued with the Wildest Dreams Tour, the first tour by a woman to earn $100 million, and the Twenty Four Seven Tour, the highest-grossing tour of 2000. In 2009, she retired from performing after completing the Tina!: 50th Anniversary Tour. As an actress, Turner appeared in the feature films Tommy, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and Last Action Hero. Her life was dramatized in the biographical film What's Love Got to Do with It, based on her autobiography I, Tina: My Life Story. She was also the subject of the jukebox musical Tina and the documentary film Tina.
Turner received 12 Grammy Awards, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and three Grammy Hall of Fame inductions. Rolling Stone ranked her among the greatest artists and greatest singers of all time. She was the first black artist and first woman to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone and was the first female black artist to win an MTV Award. Turner has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with Ike Turner in 1991 and was later inducted as a solo artist in 2021. Turner was also a 2005 recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors. In 2013, Turner relinquished her U.S. citizenship and became a citizen of Switzerland, where she died in Küsnacht in 2023.
Early life
Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26, 1939, in Brownsville, Tennessee. She was the youngest daughter of Floyd Richard Bullock and his wife Zelma Priscilla. 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. Bullock was African American. She believed she had a significant amount of Native American ancestry until she participated in the PBS series African American Lives 2 with Henry Louis Gates Jr.; Gates shared her genealogical DNA test estimates and traced her family timeline.Bullock had two older sisters, Evelyn Juanita Currie and Ruby Alline Bullock, a songwriter. She was the first cousin once removed of bluesman Eugene Bridges. 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. 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.
After the war, the sisters reunited with their parents and moved with them to Knoxville. 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. As a young girl, Bullock enjoyed singing and acting, and she often performed in the streets for change so she could go to the movies. She sang in the church choir at Nutbush's Spring Hill Baptist Church.
In 1950, when Bullock was 11, her mother Zelma left the family without warning, seeking freedom from her abusive relationship with Floyd by relocating to St. Louis. 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. She stated in her autobiography I, Tina that she felt her parents did not love her and that she was not wanted. Zelma had planned to leave Floyd but stayed once she became pregnant. Bullock recalled: "She was a very young woman who didn't want another kid."
As a teenager, Bullock worked as a domestic worker for the Henderson family in Ripley, Tennessee. 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 Currie and Vela Evans, however Evans survived the car crash with injuries. 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".
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. After high school, Bullock worked as a nurse's aide at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.
Ike and Tina Turner
Origins: 1956–1959
Bullock and her sister began to frequently attend nightclubs in St. Louis and East St. Louis. She first saw Ike Turner perform with his band the Kings of Rhythm at the Club Manhattan in East St. Louis. Bullock was impressed by his talent, recalling that she "almost went into a trance" watching him play. She asked Turner to let her sing in his band despite the fact that few women had ever sung with him. Turner said he would call her but never did. One night in 1956, Bullock got hold of the microphone from Kings of Rhythm drummer Eugene Washington during an intermission and she sang the B.B. King blues ballad, "You Know I Love You". Upon hearing Bullock sing, Ike Turner asked her if she knew more songs. She sang the rest of the night and became a featured vocalist with his band. During this period, he taught her the finer points of vocal control and performance. Bullock's first recording was in 1958 under the name Little Ann on the single "Boxtop". She is credited as a vocalist on the record alongside Ike and fellow Kings of Rhythm singer Carlson Oliver.Early success: 1960–1965
In 1960, Ike Turner wrote "A Fool in Love" for singer Art Lassiter. Bullock was to sing background with Lassiter's backing vocalists, the Artettes. Lassiter failed to show up for the recording session at Technisonic Studios. Since Turner had already paid for the studio time, Bullock suggested that she sing the lead. He decided to use Bullock to record a demo with the intention of erasing her vocals and adding Lassiter's at a later date. Local St. Louis disc jockey Dave Dixon convinced Turner to send the tape to Juggy Murray, president of R&B label Sue Records. Upon hearing the song, Murray was impressed with Bullock's vocals, later stating that "Tina sounded like screaming dirt. It was a funky sound". Murray bought the track and paid Turner a $25,000 advance for the recording and publishing rights. Murray also convinced Turner to make Bullock "the star of the show". Turner responded by renaming Bullock "Tina" because it rhymed with Sheena. He was inspired by Sheena, Queen of the Jungle and Nyoka the Jungle Girl to create her stage persona. Turner added his last name and trademarked the name "Tina Turner" as a form of protection; his idea was that if Bullock left him as his previous singers had, he could replace her with another "Tina Turner". However, family and friends still called her Ann.Bullock was introduced to the public as Tina Turner with the single "A Fool in Love" in July 1960. It reached No. 2 on the Hot R&B Sides chart and No. 27 on the Billboard Hot 100. Journalist Kurt Loder described the track as "the blackest record to ever creep into the white pop charts since Ray Charles's gospel-styled 'What'd I Say' that previous summer". Another single from the duo, "It's Gonna Work Out Fine", reached No. 14 on the Hot 100 and No. 2 on the R&B chart in 1961, earning them a Grammy nomination for Best Rock and Roll Performance. Other singles Ike and Tina Turner released between 1960 and 1962 included the R&B hits "I Idolize You", "Poor Fool", and "Tra La La La La".
After the release of "A Fool in Love", Ike Turner created the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, which included the Kings of Rhythm and a girl group, the Ikettes, as backing vocalists and dancers. He remained in the background as the bandleader. Ike Turner put the entire revue through a rigorous touring schedule across the United States, performing 90 days straight in venues around the country. During the days of the Chitlin' Circuit, the Ike & Tina Turner Revue built a reputation as "one of the hottest, most durable, and potentially most explosive of all R&B ensembles", rivaling the James Brown Revue in terms of musical spectacle. Due to their profitable performances, they were able to perform in front of desegregated audiences in Southern clubs and hotels.
Between 1963 and 1965, the band toured constantly and produced moderately successful R&B singles. Tina Turner's first credited single as a solo artist, "Too Many Ties That Bind"/"We Need an Understanding", was released from Ike Turner's label Sonja Records in 1964. Another single by the duo, "You Can't Miss Nothing That You Never Had", reached No. 29 on the Billboard R&B chart. After their tenure at Sue Records, the duo signed with more than ten labels during the remainder of the decade, including Kent, Cenco, Tangerine, Pompeii, A&M, and Minit. In 1964, they signed to Warner Bros. Records and Bob Krasnow became their manager. On the Warner Bros. label, they achieved their first charting album with Live! The Ike & Tina Turner Show, peaking at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot R&B LP chart in February 1965. Their singles "Tell Her I'm Not Home", released on Loma Records, and "Good Bye, So Long", released on Modern Records, were top 40 R&B hits in 1965.
Tina Turner's profile was raised after several solo appearances on shows such as American Bandstand and Shindig! while the entire revue appeared on Hollywood a Go-Go. In 1965, music producer Phil Spector attended an Ike & Tina Turner show at a club on the Sunset Strip, and he invited them to appear in the concert film The Big T.N.T. Show.