Nina Turner,
music legend,
icon through decades has died.
She was 83 years old.
CNN Stephanie
Elam has more on her incredible life
and musical legacy
Right now,
I'm really proud.
Mary was one of Tina Turner signatures
showcasing her unique sound,
look and moves.
That's my style.
I take
great songs and turn them into rock
and roll songs on stage icon Survivor
a queen of rock and roll
Tina Turner
began life as Anna Mae Bullock
in rural Tennessee.
As a teenager,
she moved to Saint Louis,
where she met rocker Ike Turner.
Ike was very good to me
when I first started.
My career,
started to sing weekends with him,
and we were close friends.
The Ike and Tina Turner revues
first hit came in 1960
with a fall in love
a song they performed on Shindig.
They married in 1962 and in 1966
recorded river deep mountain high
ground.
It was a hit overseas
but flopped in the U.S.
off stage.
Ike's drug abuse fueled
violent outbursts.
I had had a lot of violence.
Houses burned, cars shot into the lowest
that you can
think of in terms of violence.
After years of physical
and emotional abuse,
Tina left Ike in the mid-seventies
with nothing but her name.
At one point, relying on food stamps
to survive
in the early eighties.
Turner's cover of Let's Stay Together
reignited her career
Private Dancer
followed in 1984,
a runaway critical
and commercial success.
The album featured her
only number one song.
What's Love
Got to do with it, though?
She wasn't a fan and I didn't like it.
I wasn't accustomed to singing
those kind of songs.
It was also the title of a 1993 film
starring Angela Bassett.
Based on Tina's autobiography.
Did the picture do it justice?
Yes.
I think in a way
I would have liked for them
to have had more truth.
But according to Disney,
this is impossible
that people would not have believed
the truth.
Turner herself
appeared in movies
such as The Who's
Tommy and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
She sang its theme song without
as well as the theme
to the James Bond film
Goldeneye, with a long
one major role
she turned down would go to Oprah
Winfrey in The Color Purple.
That was too close to my personal life.
I had just left such a life,
and it was too soon to be reminded of
the What's Love
Got to Do with its soundtrack
gave Turner another hit.
Her personal favorite
just
It is very special because at the time
when I that it no one believed in it
but me said Jim Turner
continued recording
and touring into her eighties
She was honored by the Kennedy Center
in 2005
and inducted into the Rock
and Roll
Hall of Fame as a solo act in 2021
30 years after her first induction
as part of a duo with Ike Turner,
all the while
her Buddhist faith kept her going.
Because you make this lifetime
can be the effect of a better life,
the next cut, next lifetime,
it will be better and
gets better and better.
We're joined
by Stephanie
Elam, who, of course,
just told her story there.
And I wonder
if you could describe that legacy,
because it's
certainly be ridden with musical success,
but also a difficult,
abusive, abusive relationship
with Ike Turner.
And she is the rare honor
of having been twice
inducted into the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame
as a solo act in 20, 21,
but also 30 years before with Ike Turner
as a pair
Yeah, it's true, Jim.
I mean,
she has a legacy
that is beyond where she grew up,
how she grew up, the relationship
she was in with Ike Turner.
She really expanded beyond that.
And the thing that I think
is really amazing about
Tina Turner
is the fact of her musical legacy.
And how many decades
as you were speaking to
she was putting out music.
And at a time
when people wanted to silo black music,
she was like, no,
this is the kind of music
I'm going to do.
I'm going to be the queen
of rock and roll
and I'm going to do songs
in this way, in this genre.
She was iconic in the way she performed
and for how long
she performed
her positive outlook
despite what she may
have gone through before.
And I'd be remiss
if I did not mention
her energy performing and those legs.
Tina Turner
was known for those fantastic legs
and those dance moves. Right.
Her iconic hair.
She was always,
always true and honest to herself
as she evolved as an artist.
And you saw that
even with the kinds of songs
that she did like doing
and the songs that spoke to her
simply the best,
which was a fantastic song.
I mean, the song from
Mad Max and also Goldeneye,
she did iconic songs for film, for TV,
but also just her songs are timeless.
You could still listen to them now
and they still get you in a groove
and a portrait of strength. Right?
A portrait of strength through it all.
Through those years. In those decades.
Yeah.
Strong Stephanie on her own terms
and doing so decade after decade.
I think it taught so many people
and women
about sort of
what they could
find in themselves as well,
just how self-possessed that she was
through all the years
Completely.
I mean, think
about the fact
that this woman was still touring.
She was still forming into her eighties.
That says a lot about just her fitness
her ability, her ability
to still sing those songs,
to still connect with an audience.
There's not many people
who are built like Tina Turner
and just able to look at the energy
you're looking at right here.
I mean, well,
this is actually Angela Bassett
being Tina Turner, but she
that's the kind of energy
that she performed.
I looked up too quickly.
I got him confused.
But, you know, it's that energy
that she brought to the stage
and to her music
and that that sort of
gravelly, rough voice
that she had
that could always hit those notes,
but also make you feel it in your chest,
make you want to move,
but also just understand
what she is singing about
and giving it
a feeling that maybe nobody else could
with their voice.
It's such an iconic voice
and an iconic story
as well, overcoming so much
in her personal life.
Stephanie, please stand by.
Let's bring in Chloe Moss, because,
Chloe, you have a statement online
that was put out by Tina Turner's
family, I understand,
detailing her passing
right.
And if you
go on the Instagram or her
official Facebook page,
you'll see this beautiful portrait of her
with the following caption,
which reads, It is with great sadness
that we announce
the passing
of Tina Turner with her music
and her boundless passion for life.
She enchanted millions of fans
around the world
and inspired the stars of Tomorrow.
Today we say goodbye to a dear friend
who leaves us all
her greatest work, her music,
all her heartfelt compassion
goes out to her family.
Tina, we will miss you dearly.
We don't know exactly
what has caused her death,
but we know that she was 83 years young.
She had some health issues
in recent years,
being diagnosed
with intestinal cancer in 2016,
having a kidney transplant in 20, 17.
But like Stephanie was saying,
this was one of,
if not the hardest
working woman in show business.
And she was a pioneer
and was the first for so many things.
I mean, Stephanie
put it so perfectly
in the piece that she did
and what she just said now.
But her music touched so many lives.
And some of the things
that I just want to point out
is that look in 1988
she set a Guinness world record
for the largest paying audience
for a solo performer.
She's had 12 Grammy Awards.
She was the first black artist
and first woman
to be on the cover of Rolling Stone
I mean, just like the statement says
she inspired the artists of today
and tomorrow.
She broke the ceiling for so many
the range of styles through time to
if you think back
to a song
like a fall in Love,
a river deep mountain high
and then through the eighties
private dancer
what love's got to do with it
up to you simply the best.
We have Nischelle Turner
Entertainment Tonight,
host and contributor joining us by phone
as well. Michelle, good to have you.
I wonder if you can help folks
just to give the span of her career
through time and what she symbolized
through all those decades.
you were just kind of touching on it
and talking about it,
her range
in just about everything she did.
I mean, so many people,
of course,
she was born
as animate black
and so many people
knew her as Tina Turner
because that's the name
that I gave her
during the Ike and Tina years
and the Ike and Tina Turner Revue.
But it wasn't
until she really stepped up that shadow
and shed the weight of that
where she really just started to blossom.
And I remember
hearing it
with her once
when they were talking
about her new style,
when she kind of stepped into her own
and she was saying,
I'm tired of singing the blues.
I want to sing rock and roll.
I want to I want to dance.
I want you know,
she was free in a lot of ways.
And and you heard that in her voice.
You heard that in her music.
I mean, so many people have so eloquently
been talking about how she was was,
you know,
the epitome of resilience,
the epitome of a strong woman.
Not only was she
a mother
and raised her children,
she raised the children
that I had before.
She was just kind of a mother to so many.
You know, Oprah Winfrey
she revered her as well,
one of her favorite
kind of a mother
figure to her in so many ways.
But she set the table
for so many of these pop stars
that we see today.
And her story is just one
of strength and resilience.
I mean, there's no other way to put it.
I, I heard Chloe
saying that she was one of the hardest
working women in show business.
I would argue
that she was the hardest working woman
in show business.
And what we saw her story,
we saw it, of course,
play out on the big screen
with Angela Bassett
so brilliantly portrayed her.
And what's love got to do with it?
We saw her fight for everything
she ever had,
and she fought down to the very end.
I mean, it's a very sad day
in the music world.
It's a sad day
in American history
because she was a trailblazer in
just about every avenue
that she ever decided to take on.