By: Lauren Parrish
Before she was two time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and the “Queen of Rock and Roll,” Tina Turner was Anna Mae Bullock, a young girl from Nutbush, Tennessee. After her parents separation, Anna Mae went to live with her grandmother in Brownsville. In the early 1950s, she moved to St. Louis, Missouri, to be with her mother again. It was there that she met 25-year-old Ike Turner and the Kings of Rhythm at Club Manhattan in 1956. Soon after their meeting, Anna Mae began performing with them under the name Little Ann.
Early Career
In 1960, she had the opportunity to record “Fool in Love” for the band after another singer failed to arrive for the session. The record went to a radio station in New York, and suddenly, Little Ann became Tina Turner. As their popularity grew, Kings of Rhythm became the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, and they became known internationally. Between the years of 1962 and 1976, the duo was nominated for seven Grammy Awards, and won “Best R&B Vocal Performance By A Group” with their cover of “Proud Mary,” in 1972.
Ike and Tina married in 1962. The pair shared four sons, but their relationship was far from perfect. After fourteen years of marriage, Tina left Ike with “only 36 cents and a gas station credit card.” Nonetheless, she picked herself up and began working to make a living for her four children. Her sudden solo career had a slow start. Tina booked television appearances and opening numbers, but most of her performances were in hotels or clubs. In 1983, however, things turned around as Tina released a cover of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together,” with Capitol Records. The song reached several European charts and reached number 26 on Billboard’s Hot 100.
Becoming “Simply the Best”
Following the success of her first solo release, Tina began to produce other minor hits before releasing her first and only song to ever reach #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” in 1984. It was this hit that gave us Tina’s iconic Grammy performance in 1985, and Tina her “Record of the Year” award. Tina Turner was finally in the mainstream, and her fame didn’t stop there. Tina’s dazzling career lasted forty-nine years, until she retired from performing in 2009. She spent the remaining years of her life peacefully living in Switzerland with her longtime sweetheart, German music producer Erwin Bach.
Despite the many overwhelming obstacles in her life, Tina Turner persevered, breaking both racial and gender barriers in rock and roll music. In 1967, she was the first black artist and first woman to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. She became the first black woman to win an MTV Music Video Award in 1985. In 1988, she became the first woman to set the Guinness World Record for the largest paying audience for a concert. Decades after her rise to fame, Tina Turner is still a shining example of true strength, beauty, and musical genius whose legacy will live on for generations to come.
