Tina Turner: A Legend Sings in Heaven

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Eight Grammys. Three books. Two hit movies. Lifetime Achievement Awards. Inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Kennedy Center Honors. A documentary. A Broadway musical. Sixty million records sold.And a life of pain and triumph, of abuse and true love. As the world’s all-time most successful female rock star, who sold more concert tickets than any other female performer in history, is now rocking out with the angels – including her old friend David Bowie – we celebrate her incredible life.

When little Anna Mae Bullock, born on November 26, 1939 in Brownsville, Tennessee as the youngest of three girls, heard a gospel singer at her church, she knew what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. But the daughter of a sharecropper who had to pick cotton as a kid had a long road ahead of her.An unwanted child, she was dumped on her grandparents’ door when her mother finally ran off and away from the abusive relationship with her (Tina’s) father. After graduating high school, she had to work as a domestic to make ends meet after having moved in with her mother in St. Louis.That is where she began to go to clubs and met Ike Turner. She said of that first moment that she “almost went into a trance” watching him play. She tried to sing with his band but he never responded until he saw her perform B.B. King’s blues ballad “You Know I Love You” during an intermission. He allowed her to join the band and had her record lead vocals on “A Fool in Love” in 1960.Unfortunately, that title mirrored her life. Repeating her mother’s pattern, she became the victim in her abusive marriage with Ike. While her star began to rise on stage, she hid bruises from the beatings under heavy makeup. For nearly 20 years, she endured his brutality and drug addiction. In 1976, on tour in Dallas and after another altercation, she escaped from Ike with only 36 cents and a Mobil card and hid at a cheap hotel across the freeway.

For the next seven years, she scrambled to make ends meet by appearing on TV shows, headlining cabaret shows in Vegas and touring through Australia. Her three solo albums tanked. But in 1979, she found a powerhouse manager in Australian Roger Davies. Two years later, Rod Stewart invited her to perform “Hot Legs” with him on Saturday Night Live.Meanwhile, she was working on another album. Davies got her a new contract with Capitol Records in 1983, and she released the cover version of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” as a single. Capitol gave her two weeks to record her album. “Private Dancer” was released in May 1984 with “What’s Love Got Do with It” charting at number one immediately. The song was the one she liked least, and she had, at first, fought the record company and her manager on releasing it as the first single. The album went platinum five times in the US alone and sold 10 million records worldwide.