Tina Turner

Often dubbed the Queen of Rock & Roll, Tina Turner was arguably among the most iconic female divas in music history with her prolific career and memorable personality as a performer and a public figure.

Born Anna Mae Bullock in Brownsville, Tennessee on November 26, 1939, she started singing in church and began frequenting nightclubs near St. Louis in her later teen years. In 1957, she met Ike Turner as he played at the Manhattan Club in St. Louis. She sang with him and his band, the Kings of Rhythm, and became the lead singer from that point.

Ike would later give Anna Mae the name “Tina” and her first official single as Tina Turner was “A Fool in Love,” released in 1960. With Ike, she would form the famous Ike And Tina Turner Revue. A dynamic, explosive R&B ensemble, the two became the definition of the genre in the late ‘60s and early '70s, where R&B/Soul had only tiptoed into the realms of the mainstream. A particularly influential act in popularizing the genre, the Revue went on to release some of music’s most memorable and iconic tracks – a cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary,” the Phil Spector-penned “River Deep – Mountain High,” and the electric “Nutbush City Limits.” Ike & Tina married in 1962, but after a host of drug and abuse problems on Ike’s part, Tina filed for divorce in 1976, which was finalized in 1978.

As a solo artist, with the help of fellow artists like glam rocker David Bowie, Turner tumbled into mainstream success in the ‘80s with the only #1 hit of her career – the unconquerable love ballad “What’s Love Got To Do With It” as part of her debut solo album, Private Dancer. Dancer sold over five million copies and took home four Grammy awards for Tina. She followed up her debut with Break Every Rule in 1986, which was able to ship over four million units worldwide.

She made appearances in several movies such as 1975’s Tommy and 1985’s Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, while 1993 saw her life story turned into a movie with Angela Bassett playing her in What’s Love Got To Do With It. Turner’s career continued to be marked by intermittent successes – though never meeting the same degree of success as Private Dancer – until her semi-retirement in the late ‘90s. The rock & roll icon’s tours also became legendary – in 2008, Guinness World Records deemed that she had sold more tickets than any other solo concert entertainer in music history.

Tina Turner has sold over 100 million records worldwide over her decades-long career. She was awarded with 12 Grammy Awards across R&B, rock and pop categories as well as a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and three Grammy Hall of Fame Awards for “What’s Love Got To Do With It,” “Proud Mary,” and “River Deep – Mountain High.” She was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame twice—first as part of the duo with Ike Turner in 1991 and 30 years later as a solo artist in 2021. She was also awarded with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1986 and a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 2005. On May 24, 2023, Tina Turner passed away after a long illness while at her home in Switzerland.

Equipped with a set of blazing, energy-filled pipes and charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent to the nth degree, Tina Turner was a queen of music – and deservingly so.