Tina Turner (born
Anna Mae
Bullock; November 26, 1939) is an American singer and
actress whose career has spanned more than 50 years. She has won
numerous awards and her achievements in the
rock music genre have earned her the title "The
Queen of Rock 'n' Roll".
Turner started out her music career with husband
Ike Turner as a member of the
Ike & Tina Turner Revue. Success
followed with a string of hits including "
River Deep, Mountain High" and the
1971 hit "
Proud Mary". Allegations of
spousal abuse following her split with
Turner in 1977 arose with the publication of her autobiography
I, Tina. Turner rebuilt her career, launching a string of
hits beginning in 1983 with "
Let's
Stay Together" and the 1984 release of her album
Private Dancer.
Her musical career led to film roles, beginning with a prominent
role as The Acid Queen in the 1975 film
Tommy, and an appearance in
Sgt.
Pepper's Lonely
Hearts Club Band. She starred opposite
Mel Gibson as Aunty Entity in
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
for which she received the
NAACP
Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture, and
her version of the film's theme, "
We Don't Need Another Hero", was
a hit single. She appeared in the 1993 film
Last Action Hero.
One of the world's most
popular entertainers,
Turner has been called the most successful female rock artist and
was named "one of the greatest singers of all time" by
Rolling Stone. Her records have sold
nearly 200 million copies worldwide. She has sold more concert
tickets than any other solo music performer in history. She is
known for her energetic stage presence, powerful vocals, career
longevity, and widespread appeal. In 2008, Turner left
semi-retirement to embark on her
Tina!: 50th Anniversary
Tour. Turner's tour has become one of the highest selling
ticketed shows of 2008-2009.
Early life
Anna Mae
Bullock was born as the younger of two girls in Nutbush,
Tennessee
, an unincorporated
area in Haywood County, Tennessee
, on November 26, 1939, the daughter of Zelma
Bullock (née Currie), a
factory worker, and Floyd Richard Bullock, a Baptist deacon, farm overseer
and factory worker. She is of mostly
African-American and
European descent. Bullock long
believed her mother had significant
Native American
ancestry, however results of a
DNA test
featured on
African
American Lives 2 left questions about that.
Bullock attended
Flag Grove School in Haywood County,
Tennessee. The land for the school was sold below
market value to the school trustees by Bullock's great,
great-uncle in 1889. The younger of two sisters,
Bullock and her sister, Alline, grew up with their grandmother
after their parents split when Bullock was ten.
Bullock's sister later
moved to St.
Louis
. Bullock remained in Nutbush until her
grandmother's death and agreed to move in with her mother and
sister at 16.
Ike & Tina Turner Revue
In St.
Louis, Bullock attended Sumner High School
. Around this time, Bullock's sister was
taking her to several nightclubs in the city.
At Club Imperial one
night, Bullock met Mississippi
-born rhythm and blues musician Ike Turner and later asked him if she could sing
for him. Ike was initially skeptical, but after much
persistence on Bullock's part, he decided to let her perform for
him. Thus, Bullock became an occasional vocalist in Ike's shows at
the age of 18. Going by the name "Little Ann," Bullock was also the
spotlight of a soul revue led by Ike Turner and his Kings of Rhythm
band.
Mainstream success
In 1960, when a singer scheduled to record the song, "
A Fool in Love", didn't appear, Bullock
stepped in and recorded the vocals instead. "A Fool in Love" was a
huge R&B hit reaching #2, crossing over to the top 30 of the US
pop chart. Ike changed Bullock's name to Tina Turner and that of
his band to
The Ike & Tina
Turner Revue.
In 1962, the two married in Tijuana
,
Mexico. (According to her Bio on Tina's Web site, the couple
married in 1958. )
Turner raised four sons — Ike, Jr. and Michael (from Ike's previous
relationship), Craig (born 1958, from her earlier relationship with
Raymond Hill, a saxophone player in Ike's band), and Ronald (son of
Ike and Tina; born 1961).
Throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, Ike and Tina rose to
stardom. As times and musical styles changed, Tina developed a
unique stage persona as a singer-dancer-performer which thrilled
audiences of the group's live concerts. Tina and the Revue's backup
singers, the Ikettes, wove intricate and electrifying dance
routines into their performances and influenced many other artists,
including
Mick Jagger (for whose 1966 UK
tour they opened).
Ike and Tina Turner recorded a string of hits in the 1960s,
including "A Fool in Love", "It's Gonna Work Out Fine", "I Idolize
You", and the groundbreaking "
River Deep, Mountain High" with
producer
Phil Spector in his
Wall of Sound style. By the end of the decade,
the couple incorporated modern
rock
styles into their act and began including their interpretations of
"
Come Together", "
Honky Tonk Woman", and "
I Want to Take You Higher" to
their stage show.
In fact, their high-energy cover version of
Creedence Clearwater Revival's
1968 "
Proud Mary" remains Turner's
signature hit and one of her longest enduring standards. "Proud
Mary" was the duo's greatest commercial success, peaking at number
four on the
Billboard Hot 100 in
March 1971. The single eventually won a Grammy for
Best R&B Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group.
Decline in popularity
While many of its original recordings failed to chart, the Ike and
Tina Turner Revue was lauded by
the
Rolling Stones,
David Bowie,
Sly Stone,
Janis
Joplin,
Cher,
James
Brown,
Ray Charles,
Elton John and
Elvis
Presley.
A one night gig at a small, predominantly
black supper club could be followed in the same week by a show at a
major venue in Las
Vegas
or a national TV appearance. Ike acted as
the group's manager and musical director, calling all the shots and
ruling the act with an iron fist. While he was a fine musician and
an early
rock 'n' roll influence,
Ike's control of the Revue's management, recording contracts and
performances eventually led to their decline as his drug abuse
worsened. This controlling (and often violent) atmosphere caused
the musicians and backup singers to come and go frequently. Tina
later reported being isolated and physically abused by Ike on a
regular basis for most of their marriage.
Marital problems
By the mid-1970s, Tina's personal life and marriage began to fail.
Ike's drug use led to increasingly erratic and physically abusive
behavior. Their act was losing speed largely due to Ike's refusal
to accept outside management of their recording or touring, as well
as the cost of maintaining his allegedly voracious cocaine habit.
Touring dates began to decline and record sales were low; their
last success was "
Nutbush City
Limits", a song penned by Turner about her home town, that
reached number twenty-two on the Hot 100 and number-four in the
United Kingdom in 1973.
Having opened his own recording studio, Bolic (pronounced Bullock,
after Tina's original surname) Sound, following the lucrative
success of "Proud Mary", Ike produced Tina's first solo album,
Tina Turns the Country
On in 1974. It failed to make an impact on the charts, as
did the follow-up,
Acid
Queen (1975), which was released to tie in with Tina's
critically acclaimed big-screen debut in the role of the same name
in
The Who's rock opera,
Tommy.
After a
violent argument before an appearance at the Dallas Statler
Hilton
in July 1976, Tina abruptly left Ike, fleeing with
nothing more than thirty-six cents and a gas-station credit
card. She spent the next few months hiding from him while
staying with various friends.
Tina would later credit her newfound
Nichiren Buddhist faith and chanting
Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, which she
adopted while visiting a friend in 1974, with giving her the
courage to strike out on her own. By walking out on Ike in the
middle of a tour, she learned she was legally responsible to tour
promoters for the canceled tour. Needing to earn a living, she
became a solo performer, supplementing her income with TV
appearances on shows such as
The Hollywood Squares,
Donny and Marie,
The Sonny &
Cher Show and
The
Brady Bunch Hour.
Her
divorce was finalized in 1978 after
sixteen years of marriage. She later accused Ike of years of severe
spousal abuse and rampant drug
addiction in her autobiography
I, Tina. It was later
adapted for the film
What's Love Got to Do with
It?. She parted ways with him, retaining only her stage
name, and assuming responsibility for the debts incurred by the
canceled tour as well as a significant
IRS lien.
Life after the Revue
In 1978, Tina released her first album since her separation from
Ike. That album,
Rough, was a
departure from the funky rhythm and blues sound of the Revue, and
featured strong readings of rock songs, demonstrating the direction
in which she wished her musical career to progress. The record did
not sell well, and 1979's
disco-infused
Love Explosion also
failed.
Tina began touring extensively around the world but her career
stalled until teaming up in 1982 with
B.E.F. for a remake of
the Temptations' "
Ball of Confusion". The producers were so
impressed by the recording, they persuaded her to record a cover of
Al Green's
Let's Stay Together.
While she was largely considered to be unmarketable by the American
recording industry, her popularity as a top stage act never faded
in Europe and other parts of the world. Capitol signed her to a
limited deal with their UK label. She divided her time between
appearing at small venues in the US in order to keep herself in the
public eye but continued to sell out major venues in Europe.
In December 1983, her cover of "
Let's Stay Together" hit #6 in the U.K.
and became a huge hit across all of Europe. Capitol Records still
weren't interested in signing Turner until thousands of import
copies flooded into the U.S. convincing Capitol to release it in
America. In March 1984,
Let's Stay Together hit the top
thirty on the American pop charts. It hit the top five on both the
R&B and dance charts. After the song's success, Capitol was
quickly forced to review their previous assessment of Turner's
chart ability and put forth the resources to let her record an
album.
Return to prominence
In 1984, Turner staged what has been widely considered the most
"amazing comeback in rock music history". In May, Capitol released
the single "
What's
Love Got to Do with It" in the U.S. to promote the upcoming
album. Only eleven radio stations had taken it to their playlists.
Turner's manager,
Roger
Davies, forced Capitol to promote it more. Two weeks after its
release, the song was on the play lists of over 100 radio stations.
Eventually the single became a worldwide smash and in September,
the song reached number-one on the
Billboard Hot 100 becoming the first of
Turner's songs to do so. It still remains her only number-one
American hit.
At forty-four, she was the oldest female artist to have a
number-one single. The song hit the top ten in several European
countries.
Private Dancer
was released that June and went on to sell more than 11 million
copies worldwide, though some sources stated the album has sold
over twenty million making it her most successful album to date.
Other than "Let's Stay Together" and "What's Love Got to Do With
It", the album also yielded the hits "
Better Be Good To Me", which hit the
top five in the U.S. and the title track, "
Private Dancer", written for her by
rock musician
Mark Knopfler. Turner
would later win an
MTV Video
Music Award, two
American
Music Awards and four
Grammy
Awards, confirming her year as "the comeback queen". In
February 1985, Turner embarked on her first solo world tour,
the Private Dancer Tour, which
met 170 dates in the U.S., Asia, Europe and Australia.
After the success of
Private Dancer, Turner accepted the
role of Aunty Entity, the ruler of Bartertown, in
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
Upon its release, the film grossed $36 million and Turner received
the
NAACP Image Award for
Outstanding
Actress. In July, Turner performed at
Live
Aid alongside
Mick Jagger. In
August, the first single "
We
Don't Need Another Hero" was released to promote the soundtrack
for
Mad Max Beyond
Thunderdome. The single became yet another international
smash hit for Turner, reaching number two in America and number
three in England. The song received a Grammy nomination for Best
Female Pop Vocal and received a nomination for a
Golden Globe Award for
Best Original Song. Shortly after the soundtrack was released
and reached the top forty in the U.S. and #47 in Canada, it sold
over one million copies worldwide. In October the second single,
"
One of the Living", was released.
It later won a
Grammy Award
for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. In November, a new
single was released entitled "
It's Only Love", a duet with
Bryan Adams. It received a Grammy
nomination for
Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.
Subsequent solo success
Following her biggest years of her career, Turner continued her
widely successful solo career releasing the album,
Break Every Rule, in 1986. That same
year, Turner published her autobiography,
I,
Tina, which she talked about her early life and volatile
marriage to Ike Turner.
Later that summer, the singer received a star
on the Hollywood Walk
of Fame
. Turner's
Break Every Rule yielded
the hits, "
Typical Male", "
Two People", "
Back Where You Started" and "
What You Get Is What You See"
and reportedly sold over nine million copies worldwide .
In March
of the following year, Turner embarked on her Break Every Rule Tour in Munich
. On
January 16, 1988, Turner made history when she entered the
Guinness World Records performing in
front of the largest paying audience (over 184,000) to see a solo
artist. In April, Turner's double live album,
Tina Live in Europe, was released.
In late 1989, Turner released her seventh studio album,
Foreign Affair, which
included the international smash, "
The
Best". The single became one of Turner's signature singles. In
1990, she embarked on a hugely successful European tour to promote
the album playing to nearly four million fans and touring over 121
shows in Europe, beating records set by
The Rolling Stones' last tours.
In 1991, Ike and Tina Turner were inducted into the Rock & Roll
Hall of Fame. Phil Spector accepted the award on their behalf. That
same year, Turner released a compilation album,
Simply the Best. Her modern
dance-pop cover of "Nutbush City Limits" hit the
top thirty in the UK. In 1993, Turner's life story was turned into
a
box-office film,
What's Love Got to Do with
It?. Based on
I, Tina, the film painted a dark
picture of Turner's marriage to singer Ike Turner and her
overcoming the marriage through
Nichiren Buddhism and chanting
Nam Myoho Renge Kyo. While the film was
given mixed reviews, its leading actors
Angela Bassett, who played Tina, and
Laurence Fishburne, who played Ike, ended
up with
Academy Award nominations for
Best Actress and Best Actor, respectively, for their roles. Turner
supervised the film's soundtrack, re-recording several songs from
her Ike Turner days including "
A Fool in
Love", "
It's Gonna Work Out
Fine", "
Nutbush City Limits"
and "
Proud Mary". She recorded a cover of
The Trammps' "
Disco Inferno" and two newer songs, the
Lulu cover, "
I Don't Wanna Fight" and the R&B
ballad, "
Why Must We Wait
Until Tonight" (written by Bryan Adams). The soundtrack went
platinum in America and yielded Turner's final top ten U.S. single,
"I Don't Wanna Fight", which peaked at number nine. Later that
year, Turner went out on a sold-out U.S. tour, her first in seven
years, to promote the soundtrack. Afterwards, Turner moved to
Switzerland and took a year off from the road at the end of the
tour.
Turner's handprints at the Rotterdam
Walk of Fame.
In 1995, Turner returned to recording with the title track for the
James Bond flick,
Goldeneye, written by
U2's
Bono and
The Edge.
"Goldeneye" hit the top ten in several European countries. In 1996,
Turner's
Wildest Dreams
album was released. Due to its later successful world tour and a
commercial where she promoted
Hanes hosiery,
the album hit gold in the U.S. while it went platinum in Europe
based on the success of singles such as "
Whatever You Want", the cover of
John Waite's "
Missing You", "
Something Beautiful Remains" and
the
Barry White duet, "
In Your Wildest Dreams". In
May 1996, Turner embarked on a year-long world tour which again
broke concert tickets. The tour lasted into April 1997 and grossed
a combined total of $130 million in sales. At the end of the year,
Turner and one of her musicians co-wrote an English version of the
Italian ballad "
Cose della vita"
with Italian singer
Eros Ramazzotti.
Their duet became a European hit. In April 1999, Turner opened at
the
VH-1 special,
Divas Live '99, performing several of
her 1980s hits and performing with both
Elton
John and
Cher to "Proud Mary". Turner later
remarked that she was recording a new album. In November 1999,
Turner released the dance single "
When the Heartache Is Over," its
parent album, "
Twenty Four
Seven," was released in Europe the following month. In February
2000, the album was released in America and was certified Gold by
the RIAA. Later that year, Turner went out on one of her most
successful tours of her career. By tour's end, the
Twenty Four Seven Tour had become the
highest-grossing tour of 2000 according to Pollstar grossing over
$100 million. Later, Guinness World Records announced that Turner
had sold more concert tickets than any other solo concert performer
in music history.
Recent years
In 2001,
Tennessee State Route 19
between Brownsville
and Nutbush was named "Tina Turner Highway".
In 2003, she teamed up with
Phil
Collins to record the song "Great Spirits" for the Disney film
Brother Bear.
In 2004, Turner released a new compilation,
All the Best, and
released the single "
Open
Arms". The song became a modestly successful European hit and a
modest R&B hit in America. In 2005, Turner briefly performed on
shows such as
The Oprah
Winfrey Show and
The
View.
All the Best became Turner's first album to
go platinum in the U.S. in over eleven years.
At the
end of the year, Turner was recognized by the Kennedy Center Honors at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing
Arts
in Washington, D.C.
and was elected to join an elite group of
entertainers. President Bush commented on Turner's "natural
skill, the energy and sensuality", and referred to her legs as "the
most famous in show business".. Several artists paid tribute to her
that night including
Oprah Winfrey,
Melissa Etheridge (who performed
"
River Deep - Mountain
High" ,
Queen Latifah (who
performed "
What's Love Got
to Do with It?"),
Beyoncé (who
performed "
Proud Mary"), and
the Reverend Al Green (who performed "
Let's Stay Together"). Winfrey stated,
"We don't need another hero. We need more heroines like you, Tina.
You make me proud to spell my name w-o-m-a-n," and "Tina Turner
didn't just survive, she triumphed." In November, Turner released
All the Best - Live Collection and it was certified
platinum by the RIAA.
In early 2006, the
All the Invisible Children soundtrack
was released. Turner sang "Teach Me Again" from the
All the
Invisible Children soundtrack with
Elisa charted at #1 in Italy.
In May 2007, Turner
returned to the stage to headline a benefit concert for the
Cauldwell Children's Charity at London's Natural
History Museum
. This was her first full show in seven
years. Jazz pianist
Herbie Hancock
released an album paying tribute to singer-songwriter
Joni Mitchell, entitled
River: The Joni Letters on
September 25, 2007, on which Turner contributed her vocals to a
version of "Edith and The Kingpin". On October 16, 2007,
Carlos Santana released an album entitled
Ultimate Santana which
featured Turner singing "
The Game of Love", a song
originally intended for her to sing, but which was instead released
by Santana with Michelle Branch due to demands from the recording
label.
Ike's death
On December 12, 2007, Turner issued a brief statement through a
spokesperson regarding the death of her former husband Ike Turner:
"Tina hasn’t had any contact with Ike in more than 30 years. No
further comment will be made."
Return to the stage
Turner performed with
Beyoncé at the
50th Annual Grammy Awards in
February 2008. It was Turner's first major public performance since
her record-breaking "Twenty-Four Seven Tour". In addition, she
picked up a Grammy as a featured artist on
River: The Joni Letters. On May
5, 2008, she performed in a concert at Caesar's Place in Las Vegas
with long time friend
Cher.
Turner
embarked on her "Tina!:
50th Anniversary Tour" on October 1, 2008, which began on in
Kansas City,
Missouri
at the Sprint Center
. The album,
Tina!: Her Greatest Hits, was
released in support of the tour.
Turner participated in the Beyond Singing project with fellow
musicians
Regula Curti and
Dechen Shak Dagsay. This CD combined
Buddhist chants and Christian choral music along with a spiritual
message read by Turner.
Personal life
Turner is the mother of two sons and adopted mother of Ike Turner's
two children from other relationships.
After leaving Ike
Turner in 1976 and divorcing him in 1978, Turner did not get into a
serious relationship again until she met a German record executive
named Erwin Bach while at Heathrow
Airport
in London in 1985. After a year, they
started dating and have been living together ever since. Turner has
lived in Europe since the mid-1980s, after she moved to London in
1986 and then
Cologne, Germany, later that
decade; she moved to Switzerland in 1994.
In 1996, she began
building a villa outside Nice, France
, which was completed in 2000. Turner now
divides her time between Switzerland, England, and France.
Awards and accolades
Turner was listed on
Rolling
Stone's list "The Immortals — The Greatest Artists of All
Time".
Turner is a Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame
inductee, and two of her recordings, "River Deep - Mountain High"
(1999) and "Proud Mary" (2003), are in
the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Turner has won eight
Grammy
Awards.
Bryan Adams, who toured with her on the
Private Dancer Tour, praised
Turner's live performances, saying, "I never saw Tina walk through
a performance, she always put on a great show, and was gracious and
grateful to her audience."
Her legs were noted specifically as she was honored by President
George W. Bush.
Discography
Studio albums
Other albums
Soundtracks
Compilations and other releases
Tours
Filmography
References
- .
-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/buddhism/subdivisions/nichiren_1.shtml
- December 5, 2005, Long Beach Press-Telegram (CA)
- December 6, 2005 Kansas City Star
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