You’ve probably heard all about Ike and Tina Turner, and how things got messy fast
in their marriage. But what you might not have heard about is what she did after she
got out of the abusive relationship. The woman who was once leading the entertainment industry
has slowed down and stayed under the radar for years. It seems her name, though still
famous, is outweighing her as a person, so we’ve got all the answers to your questions
about the original soul sista!
Tina entered the World as plain Anna Mae Bullock
in November 1939. Her parents, Floyd Bullock and Zelma Priscilla were hard-working but
poor. Floyd was an overseer of share-croppers at a farm in Tennessee, where Tina and Ruby
Ailene, her older sister, had been born. During World War II, the young Anna Mae and her sister
were separated from their parents and sent to live with their maternal grandparents in
Knoxville. When the war was over, the Bullock family
were reunited in Knoxville, where Anna Mae went to Flagg Grove school. She wasn’t very
old before her family and schoolteachers noticed that she had an interest in singing and she
was soon enrolled to perform in the local church choir.
Unfortunately, domestic turbulence occurred in the family home as Anna Mae entered her
teenage years. Zelma ran away due to Floyd’s abusive behavior and not long after that Floyd
remarried and abandoned both his daughters. With nowhere else to turn, Anna Mae returned
to her grandmother. She attended Carver High, playing basketball
and cheerleading at the school but unfortunately, when she was 16, further tragedy affected
her. Anna’s grandmother died and she moved to St Louis with her sister and mother. She
graduated from Summer High School there and had early ambitions to follow a career in
Nursing. Anna Mae would visit nightclubs in St Louis
with her sister and it was at the Club Manhattan that she met Ike Turner alongside ‘Kings
of Rhythm’, his band that had a regular slot at the club. It wasn’t long before
Ike recognized her natural talent and gave her an opportunity in the music business,
employing her as a backing singer in 1958. It was then that she began to use the stage
name, Tina Turner. Tina had her first child, Raymond Craig, in
1958 at the age of just 18. His father was the saxophonist of Kings of Rhythm, Raymond
Hill. After the child was born the relationship between Tina and Raymond became strained,
with the tension between the two finally resulting in a fight between them. Ike and other band
members intervened on Tina’s behalf and the ensuing scuffle resulted in a broken leg
for the unfortunate Raymond. who left the band and returned home to Clarksdale, Mississippi.
Tina moved in with Ike in 1958 and he began training her musically. Initially, their relationship
was purely platonic and Ike was still involved with his common-law wife Lorraine Taylor at
the time. By the next year, however, things had changed and their relationship slowly
developed, even though both of them were hesitant initially about moving things forward. In
early 1960 Tina and Ike conceived a child and Tina gave birth to her second son, Ronald,
in October of that year. Early success followed for the duo and in
1960, Ike and Tina’s single ‘A Fool in Love’ reached number two in the niche hot
R&B chart. The year after ‘It’s Gonna Work Out Fine’ managed the top twenty and
gave the duo their first nomination for a Grammy award, in the best performance category.
The sixties were a turbulent time for Ike and Turner professionally, as well as personally.
In a five year period from 1964 to 1969, they signed with many record labels, almost a dozen,
but their popularity grew throughout the decade. In 1965 Phil Spector saw them perform in Los
Angeles and produced ‘River Deep – Mountain High’ with Tina. The record was credited
to both Ike and Tina but Spector, who was well aware of Ike’s controlling attitude,
paid him $20,000 to stay away from the studio while the song was being recorded. It was
not hugely successful at home but did better in Europe, reaching number three in the singles
chart in the UK. This resulted in Tina being given the opportunity to open for Mick Jagger
and the Stones during their UK tour. Tina signed for Liberty records in 1970 and
together with Ike, produced two albums, the rock-influenced ‘Come Together’ in that
year, followed by ‘Workin’ Together’ released in 1971. The duo’s popularity,
helped by their popular Revue being performed in Vegas, increased over time. Appearances
on TV, including a performance on the Ed Sullivan show, followed.
In 1974 Tina recorded her first solo album ‘Tina Turns the Country on’. The album
was an enormous success and Tina received a Grammy nomination in the ‘Best Female
R&B Vocal Performance’ category for her efforts on it. In the same year, and in a
departure from their normal sound, Ike and Turner produced a gospel music album called
‘The Gospel According to Ike & Tina’ which was another huge success, the pair were nominated
for Best Soul Gospel Performance. Also in 1974, Tina was in the London Based
Musical ‘Tommy’, where she played the role of ‘The Acid Queen’. Her popularity
in the UK grew far greater and she released a second solo album ‘The Acid Queen’ in
August 1975. As the seventies rolled on, Ike’s cocaine
addiction spiraled out of control and the long-suffering Tina had finally endured enough
of her violent husband. In 1976, during a taxi ride to the Dallas Hilton Hotel, where
the pair were due to perform, Tina finally snapped and fought back. A bloody fist-fight
ensued and soon after arriving at the hotel, she escaped to a friends house and filed for
divorce later the same month.
Finally free from Ike, Tina embarked on a
solo career. She performed at Las Vegas and appeared on TV in popular shows of the time,
the popular Hollywood Squares as well as performing on The Sonny and Cher Show. In 1977 she headlined
a solo tour in Australia and in 1978 she released the album ‘Rough’, although it was not
a great success, and neither was ‘Love Explosion’ released the year after.
In 1983, thanks in part to David Bowie’s help, Tina signed for Capitol Records and
released ‘Lets Stay Together’ in the same year. It was a huge hit, reaching position
26 at the Billboard Hot 100. It was also a top ten chart hit in several European countries.
In June 1984, after a career spanning 25 years, she finally struck superstardom with the release
of her best-known work, ‘Private Dancer’. It was a massive success Worldwide, reaching
Number one and spawning huge hits like the Worldwide success ‘Private Dancer’ along
with the equally celebrated ‘Better Be Good To Me’. The Album amassed sales of over
five million in America alone and over twenty-five million Worldwide.
The best selling album of her career had one more smash hit for the music world, the phenomenally
successful ‘What’s Love Got to Do With It’. It was Tina’s most successful single
and surprisingly, was her only US number one. The song ranked 38th in Rolling Stone magazines
‘500 greatest songs of all time’. In 1985, Tina starred alongside Mel Gibson
for the film, ‘Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome’, in which she played the role of Aunty Entity.
She recorded a pair of songs for the soundtrack, ‘We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)’
and ‘One Of The Living’. They both achieved some chart success, in large part due to the
critical success of the film. In 1986 she published her autobiography, ‘I,
Tina’, in which she revealed to the public for the first time the years of abuse she
had bravely, and silently, suffered throughout her marriage to Ike. The book became a best
seller. Ike was unrepentant, he admitted beating Tina but was quoted as saying ‘Yeah, I hit
her, but I didn’t hit her more than the average guy beats his wife’. Ike perhaps
showed his true self-best of all when, in a TV interview in 1990, he said ‘I did no
more to Tina than I would want somebody to do to my mother’.
In 1986 Tina recorded the album ‘Break Every Rule’, it was her final big success, eventually
selling more than four million copies.
After leaving Ike Turner for good, Tina Turner
went on to make more amazing music, and she even won a total of 11 Grammy Awards for her
hit songs! Some of the most famous ones include, “What’s Love Got To Do With It,” “Let’s
Stay Together,” “We Don’t Need Another Hero” and “Foreign Affair.”
In 1985, Tina Turner met Edwin Bach, who was a German music executive. Turner dated Bach
for 27 years before tying the knot in a private ceremony in Zurich. She gave up her American
citizenship and applied for a Swiss citizenship in 2013, after her marriage to Bach.
She had been living in a lake house in Zurich since 1994, and now, after 50 years in the
music industry, there is a lot Tina Turner has achieved. In October this year, she held
an event in London called the Tina Turner Musical, where she told the whole story of
her life. The Aldwych Theater in London was packed with people wanting to know the legend
better, and she delivered. Tina Turner really was one in a million and
remains a music icon, even today. With the world once at her fingertips and music in
her soul (and clearly, the soles of her feet), she will continue to be honored for her lifetime
of hard work, determination, and success.