Tina Turner

Tina Turner (born Anna Mae Bullock; November 26, 1939 – May 24, 2023) was a singer, songwriter, and actress. As a rock icon, her vocal prowess, raspy vocal delivery and electrifying stage presence helped her to be dubbed the "Queen of Rock 'n' Roll". Turner rose to prominence as the lead singer of the husband-wife duo Ike & Tina Turner. Their tumultuous marriage led to a divorce and disbanding in 1976, and she embarked on a successful solo career, becoming one of the best-selling recording artists of all time, with estimated sales of 100 to 150 million records worldwide.

In 1984, Tina launched "one of the greatest comebacks in music history", with her multi-platinum album Private Dancer. Its single "What's Love Got to Do with It" won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year and became her only number-one song on the Billboard Hot 100. Turner's chart worldwide success continued with "Let's Stay Together", "Better Be Good to Me", "Private Dancer", "We Don't Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)", "It's Only Love", "Typical Male", "The Best", "I Don't Wanna Lose You", "I Don't Wanna Fight", and "GoldenEye". Her Break Every Rule World Tour (1987–1988) became the highest-grossing female tour of the 1980s and set a Guinness World Record for the then-largest paying audience in a concert (180,000).

Turner continued her success as a live performer with Wildest Dreams Tour (1996–1997), the second highest-grossing female tour of the 1990s, and Twenty Four Seven Tour (2000), the highest-grossing tour of the year in North America. In 2009, she retired after completing her Tina!: 50th Anniversary Tour Turner's seven career tours from 1985 to 2009 attracted a combined audience of 18 million people worldwide. Outside of music, Turner acted in the films Tommy (1975), Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) and Last Action Hero (1993). Her life and career were dramatized in the film What's Love Got to Do with It (1993), based on her autobiography I, Tina: My Life Story (1986). Turner was also the subject of a jukebox musical, Tina (2018), and a documentary film of the same name (2021).

Turner received 12 Grammy Awards, which include eight competitive awards, 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 be on the cover of Rolling Stone, the first female black artist to win an MTV Award, the first woman to accumulate US$100 million in concert revenue and first woman to have cumulative concert sales from 1985-2000 tours exceeding US$450 million, the first solo artist with UK top 40 singles across seven decades. 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.

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 (née Currie). 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, but 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 sang in the church choir at Nutbush's Spring Hill Baptist Church. 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. 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, while Vela survived the car crash. 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.

Bullock and her sister began to perform frequently at 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.

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 like 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.