On Nov. 26, 1939, Anna Mae Bullock was born in Nutbush, Tennessee to a factory worker mom and a Baptist deacon dad. Nutbush, at the time, had a population of 239. From these humble beginnings, Anna Mae would go on in life to be known and celebrated around the world as Tina Turner.
Often dubbed “the Queen of Rock 'n' Roll,” Turner also sang rhythm and blues, soul, and pop in the course of a career spanning over five decades. The list of awards she won is long, and includes eight Grammys.
She also set world records: “In January 1988, Tina set a Guinness World Record for the 'largest paying concert attendance for a solo artist' by performing in front of approximately 188,000 people at Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil” and “in 2000, Guinness World Records announced that Tina sold more concert tickets than any solo performer in music history. Her career also extended into acting roles.
Though she passed from this life in May, she will always be remembered as “simply the best” by her fans (and I am one of them).
RELATED STORY: Tina Turner has joined the ancestors
”Black Music Sunday” is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music. With more than 180 stories covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new.
The Women of History YouTube channel shows Turner’s life in photographs, from her first year till her last.
From the YouTube video notes:
Anna Mae Bullock (November 26, 1939 - May 24, 2023) most known as Tina Turner, was an American-born Swiss singer. Known the "Queen of Rock 'n' Roll", she rose to prominence as the lead singer of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue before launching a successful career as a solo performer.
Born in Tennessee, she was the youngest daughter of Floyd Richard Bullock and his wife Zelma Priscilla. Tina began her career with Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm in 1957. Under the name Little Ann, she appeared on her first record, "Boxtop", in 1958. In 1960, she debuted as Tina Turner with the hit duet single "A Fool in Love". The duo Ike & Tina Turner became "one of the most formidable live acts in history". They released hits such as "It's Gonna Work Out Fine", "River Deep – Mountain High", "Proud Mary", and "Nutbush City Limits", before disbanding in 1976. She was married to Ike and it was through their musical collaboration that she rose to prominence. While together, the pair welcomed their only child together, a son named Ronnie. She also adopted his other two sons. In the 1980s, Tina launched "one of the greatest comebacks in music history". 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. Aged 44, she was the oldest female solo artist to top the 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". During her Break Every Rule World Tour in 1988, she set a then-Guinness World Record for the largest paying audience (180,000) for a solo performer.
Released in 2021, Tina Turner: Simply the Best covers her entire life and career, and is well worth watching.
Also in 2021, HBO aired TINA. Watch the trailer below:
While working on this story, I revisited the 1993 docudrama What’s Love Got to Do With It, based on Turner’s memoir I, Tina, and starring Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne
The trailer:
From Roger Ebert’s review:
"What's Love Got to Do With It" ranks as one of the most harrowing, uncompromising showbiz biographies I've ever seen. It is a tradition in the genre that performers must go through hard times in order to eventually arrive at fame, but few went through harder times than Tina Turner. The movie shows Ike, jealous of her talent and popularity, turning into a violent wife-beater, and it shows her putting up with a lot more than she should have, for a lot longer.
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"What's Love Got to Do With It" has a lot of terrific music in it (including a closing glimpse of the real Tina Turner), but this is not the typical showbiz musical. It's a story of pain and courage, uncommonly honest and unflinching, and the next time I hear Tina Turner singing I will listen to the song in a whole new way.
The website The World of Tina Turner is chock full of details from her life and career, and of people we associate with her life story, like her abusive ex-husband, Ike, and The Ikettes.
Ike was first a DJ at the local radio station WROX and a member of the rhythm ensemble called The Tophatters. In the 40’s, he formed together with his friends Raymond Hill, Eugene Fox and Clayton Love the Kings of Rhythm. In the 1950’s, he became a session musician, contributing his piano play to some B.B. King tracks. 1951: His first single Rocket 88 was released under the name “Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats“ in April. 1956: The Kings of Rhythm settled in East St. Louis as one of the most highly rated group on the club circuit. 1957: After Anna Mae relocated to her mother Zelma Bullock to St. Louis, she and her sister Aillene were regulars at R&B clubs.
One evening at Club Manhattan, she takes to the stage during an intermission. Impressed by her voice, Ike invited her to join the band, giving her the stage name Little Ann. 1958: Anna Mae contributed background vocals on the single Boxtop and gave birth to band member Raymond Hill's son Craig. 1960: Their first record as Ike and Tina Turner comes about by accident when the singer booked for the recording session does not show up and Tina steps in. A Fool In Love is the duo's first crossover hit in the R&B and Pop charts. Ike's band became the Ike & Tina Turner Revue and three female backing singers, the first incarnation of The Ikettes are incorporated to support Tina. 1961: After minor success with singles from their debut album The Soul of Ike & Tina, they reached for the first time the top 20 with It's Gonna Work Out Fine.
Here’s a live performance of “It’’s Gonna Work out Fine” from 1965’s The Big TNT Show.
The Big TNT Show is a concert film, shot before a live audience at the Moulin Rouge club in Los Angeles, California. It includes performances by popular rock and roll and R&B musicians from the United States and England, featuring the live performance of five songs from Ike & Tina Turner. Phil Spector invited Ike & Tina to participate in the show after he saw them perform at a club on the Sunset Strip. He produced the film's theme song and he performed on piano with Joan Baez. Ike & Tina's complete performance was released on the Rock & Pop Classics home video in 2009.
Have a listen.
Back to Turner’s biography at The World of Tina Turner:
At the same time, the Ike Turner written song I’m Blue (The Gong-Gong Song) was the first and very successful solo single from The Ikettes. The Ike and Tina Turner Revue was one of the most popular acts on the R&B tour circuit, which resulted in some live albums and many singles on a vast number of labels like Warner, Kent and Modern as well as on Ike’s own record label Sonja. 1966: Producer Phil Spector offered Ike $20,000 to put Tina under a production contract. The payment was also part of a condition that Ike took no part in the sessions. Tina recorded her vocal on River Deep, Mountain High after Spector has already spent over $22,000 creating the "wall of sound" backing track. Released on Spector’s Philles label, the single was only a minor success in America, but a major hit in England. European fans started their long love affair with Tina.
I remember watching this performance of “I’m Blue” by The Ikettes on American Bandstand.
The unbelievable energy Turner generated can be seen and felt in the 1966 video for “River Deep Mountain High.” As Michael Walker wrote for Los Angeles Magazine in the wake of her death:
The song, written by Brill Building legends Barry Mann and Ellie Greenwich, and producer Phil Spector, renowned for his epic productions on behalf of the Shirelles and other pop acts, was meant to broaden Turner's appeal beyond her work with then-husband Ike Turner, who led their Ike and Tina Turner Revue.
The sessions for "River Deep" were held at Gold Star in March, 1966. As was his custom, Spector laid in no less than 21 musicians for the date, among them key members of L.A.'s famed Wrecking Crew including bassist Carol Kay, drummer Earl Palmer and future stars Leon Russell and Glen Campbell. Jack Nitzsche gave the song its rousing arrangement.
The evening that Turner cut her lead vocal, Spector demanded she record take after take of the uptempo, demanding song into the early hours of the morning. In the darkened vocal booth, Turner—exhausted and disoriented by Spector's unceasing demands—finally stripped off her shirt and sang in her bra before the producer finally relented.
Enjoy. (I just played it three times in a row.)
Fast forward to 1975 when Turner’’s cameo in “Tommy” became a classic.
One year later, in 1976, Tina left Ike. A whole ‘nother life and career opened up for her, though she struggled at first to start a solo career. In 1984, Capitol Records released “What’s Love Got to Do With It” as a single from the studio album, Private Dancer. It would go on to be her first—and only—#1 hit.
As Solcyre Burga wrote for TIME magazine, amid the flurry of Turner coverage after her death in May:
'What's Love Got to Do With It' Was Tina Turner’s Defining Hit. It Almost Didn’t Happen
The end of their marriage, after years of domestic abuse that Turner went public about in the 1980s, followed closely on the heels of her having been dropped by her record label, Capitol Records. Turner credited David Bowie, who was also signed to Capitol, for helping her get re-signed in 1983. Turner then released her fifth solo album “Private Dancer,” which featured “What’s Love Got To Do With It” and launched a new, triumphant phase of her career.
But Turner originally had reservations about the song. “Did you know that when I first read the lyrics for ‘What’s love got to do with it,’ I rejected the song?,” Turner wrote in a 2021 Instagram post. The artist was wary about the fact that the single fit more into the pop genre instead of her typical R&B and rock and roll, even going so far as to call the song “terrible,” according to the 2021 HBO Documentary Tina.
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Britten collaborated with engineer John Hudson to rework the song to better fit Turner’s style, convincing her to sing it with a softer tone than the usual belt she was known for, the Washington Post reports. It worked: “What’s Love Got to Do With It” went on to win three Grammys—including Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.
The following year, Tina would once again appear on the silver screen, as Andrew McGowan wrote in May for Collider:
Tina Turner Was the Best Part of 'Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome'
Music legend Tina Turner's astute casting, stellar performance, and powerful songs are some of the Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome's highest points
Tina Turner lent more than just her acting talent to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Although composer Maurice Jarre made most of the soundtrack for the film, Beyond Thunderdome opens and closes with Turner's music. She created two original songs for the movie: "One of the Living," which plays over the opening credits, and "We Don't Need Another Hero," which plays in the closing credits. Both songs are catchy hits, the former earning Turner a Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance in 1986, and the latter becoming a commercial success as well as receiving a Golden Globe Nomination for Best Original Song. These were among very few accolades that the film earned, the only other significant ones being a Best Sound Editors nomination from the Golden Reel Awards, a few Saturn Award nominations, and an Image Award win from the NAACP for Turner as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Motion Picture. Overall, the film has two trophies to its name, and Turner is responsible for both of them.
Turner published two autobiographies: 1986’s I, Tina and My Love Story in 2019. Her openness about her years of abuse inspired many readers to seek help and break free of toxic relationships. The Smithsonian noted another side effect of Turner’s first book, posted just a month before her death.
Turner’s live concerts were, in a word, the bomb. I’ll share just two particularly iconic ones today: The record-breaking 1988 show in Rio de Janeiro, and her amazing performance at Wembley Stadium in 2000.
I’ll close with a post from from her X account on Wednesday.
Her discography is a long one, so I hope you’ll join me in the comments for even more from Turner—and be sure to post your favorites.
Happy Birthday, Queen. We miss you—you were simply the best.