Singer and actress Tina Turner, known as the queen of rock ‘n’ roll, has died at the age of 83.
Turner dies after long illness, her rep Announce Wednesday, May 24. “A private funeral attended by close friends and family will be held,” the statement added. “Please respect the privacy of her family during this difficult time.”
Turner was born Anna May Bullock on November 26, 1939, in Brownsville, Tennessee. Growing up during World War II, she had a strained relationship with her parents and spent much of her childhood and teenage years with her grandparents. A self-described tomboy, she sang in church choir as a youngster and joined the cheerleading and girls’ basketball teams in high school. After graduating in 1958, she worked as a nursing assistant.
In the mid-1950s, Turner and her sister began attending regular St. Louis-area jazz clubs, where they occasionally saw Ike Turner with his band, the Kings of Rhythm Performance. One night in 1957, at a King of Rhythm show, she picked up the microphone during intermission and sang the blues ballad “You Know I Love You” by BB King. Almost immediately, she became a regular performer for the band.
After brand president Juggy Murray convinced Ike to make Tina “the star of the show,” he named her Tina Turner and built her character around comic book heroines such as Jungle Queen Sheena. stage image. Tina Turner’s first album under her stage name was Ike and Tina Turner’s 1960 song “A Fool In Love” , which peaked at No. 2 on the R&B Hot 100 and No. 27 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Over the next decade, Ike and Tina Turner produced many hit singles, making legends such as David Bowie, Janis Joplin, James Brown and Elvis Presley fans .They opened for the Rolling Stones on their 1969 U.S. tour, and performed on shows such as ed sullivan showIn the late ’60s, they began incorporating more rock songs into their repertoire, including covers of Beatles hits such as “Come Together” and “Get Back.” Ike and Tina Turner shot to fame in 1971 with their cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary.”
Ike’s heavy use of cocaine begins to strain his relationship with Tina. They married in 1963, and Tina later revealed that their relationship was much more tumultuous than it appeared. She said Ike was abusive throughout their marriage, leading to her suicide attempt in 1968. Tina abruptly left Ike in 1976, and they divorced two years later.
In 1977, Tina Turner re-emerged in a sexier image and began starring in cabaret shows at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Around this time, she embarked on her first solo tour, elevating her career from nostalgia show to generation-defining artist.
On September 1, 1984, Turner had her first and only No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 single “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” which she later won a Grammy for Record of the Year.Her tenth and final studio album was 1999’s Twenty-four hours, seven days.
Turner’s accolades are numerous: She’s won a total of 12 Grammy Awards, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. She received a Kennedy Center Honor and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was twice inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Outside of music, she played The Acid Queen on The Who’s Tommy, Auntie is in mad max beyond thunderdome (for which she won the NAACP Award for Outstanding Performance by a Motion Picture Actress) and The Mayor The last action hero. In all, Turner has published four memoirs and appeared in several documentaries, including the 2021 film Tina.
Turner raised four sons in total: two were biological and two were adopted by Ike. She married German music executive Erwin Bach in 2013 after 27 years of dating. Check out some of her most iconic musical moments below.