Tina Turner
The woman who left home at thirty-six with only 36 cents in her pocket stood once more at the very top of the American singles chart at forty-four.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
The people beside her ⏳🌊
- FamilyIke Turner
The bandleader and husband who put her on stage and gave her a stage name, though her autobiography describes violence throughout the marriage.
- ColleaguePhil Spector
The producer who made "River Deep – Mountain High," drawing her voice out beyond Ike's revue.
- FriendshipMick Jagger
Put her on the Rolling Stones' tours from 1966, and shared the stage with her at Live Aid in 1985.
- ColleagueRoger Davies
Her manager from 1979, the architect who rebuilt her as a rock singer when she was being pushed toward the cabaret circuit.
- SupportDavid Bowie
Brought record-company executives to her New York show, brokering her deal with Capitol, and sang with her in 1984.
- FamilyErwin Bach
A German music-industry executive she met in the mid-1980s, her lifelong partner, whom she married in 2013.
I. The girl from Nutbush · 1939–1956
(Birth) She was born in November 1939 in Brownsville, Tennessee. Her given name was Anna Mae Bullock, and her birthday was the 26th. She grew up in Nutbush, a small farming community nearby. Her father, Floyd Richard Bullock, worked as an overseer of sharecroppers on a farm, and her mother, Zelma, often clashed with her husband. She had a sister, Alline, three years older. (Separation) Her parents' marriage did not last. When she was about ten, her mother left for St. Louis, and a few years later her father left home as well. The sisters grew up shuttling between their grandparents and relatives, and young Anna Mae picked cotton like the other children. In her later autobiography she confided, more than once and without self-pity, that she had felt unloved by her mother. The sense of having been an unwanted child was a wound that followed her all her life. (Singing) She learned to sing in church and at school. She built up her voice in the Baptist church choir and often sang at school events. The gospel and Black popular music pouring from the radio were a country girl's window onto the wider world. The big, church-bred delivery she absorbed in these years laid the groundwork for the later praise that her voice could reach the back of the house without a microphone. (Turning point) In 1956 the maternal grandmother she lived with died. Sixteen-year-old Anna Mae left for St. Louis, Missouri, where her mother lived. Her sister Alline was already there. Nutbush faded from her life after that, but more than a decade later she would write a song named after the town herself.
II. Night across the river · 1956–1962
(Club) In St. Louis she followed Alline across the river to Club Manhattan in East St. Louis, Illinois. The stage belonged to Ike Turner, a Mississippi-born guitarist and pianist, and his band, the Kings of Rhythm. Around 1957, during a break, she took a microphone the drummer handed her and sang a B.B. King song. Astonished by the voice, Ike made her a guest singer with the band. (Daily life) Even while performing, she attended high school by day and worked as a nurse's aide at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis. She is said to have seriously considered becoming a nurse. In 1958 she gave birth to her first son, Craig, with the band's saxophonist, Raymond Hill. (Debut) In 1960 the male singer for whom Ike had written "A Fool in Love" failed to show up for the recording. She sang a guide vocal in his place, and Juggy Murray, head of Sue Records in New York, wanted to release that voice just as it was. The song rose to No. 2 on the R&B chart. It was then that Ike, without consulting her, gave her the stage name 'Tina Turner.' (Marriage) That same year she and Ike had a son, Ronnie, and the two married in Tijuana, Mexico, in 1962. She raised four children, including Ike's two sons from a previous relationship. Yet according to her autobiography, Ike's violence had already begun around the time of the "A Fool in Love" session. Behind the raw, shouted voice of her debut lay the beginning of all that.
A practice recording she sang as a stand-in became her debut single. Heard with the knowledge that it was made just as the violence began, the desperation in her voice sounds different.
- An unpolished vocal that seems to scrape the throat as it shouts — originally recorded as a guide for another singer to follow, it keeps its rough grain intact.
- The back-and-forth (call and response), in which the lead vocal throws out a line and the female chorus answers, carries the atmosphere of a Black church service onto the stage.
- Over the Ike Turner band's slow, rolling blues rhythm (shuffle), her voice alone leaps forward, sounding unusually raw even among the R&B records of the day.
III. The wall of sound · 1962–1970
(On the road) The Ike & Tina Turner Revue was a large touring company fronted by the female chorus the Ikettes. It played year-round on the circuit of Southern venues serving Black audiences, the so-called Chitlin' Circuit. In the early 1960s its base moved to Los Angeles. Ike controlled the songs and arrangements, the money and the schedule; she was the face of the ceaseless shows. (Spector) In 1966 the producer Phil Spector took notice of her voice. He paid Ike $20,000 to stay out of the recording process. The result, "River Deep – Mountain High," was a painstaking showpiece for Spector, but in America it stalled at No. 88. In Britain, by contrast, it reached No. 3. Its failure in America led Spector to step back from the studio for a time. (Britain) The British response opened another door. That same year she opened for the Rolling Stones on their British tour, and in 1969 she joined the Stones on their American tour as well. A revue that had worked Black venues now stood before white rock audiences. Mick Jagger is said to have taken a keen interest in the dancing of Tina and the Ikettes. (Despair) Offstage, her life was falling apart. In 1968, before a show, she swallowed a large quantity of sleeping pills in an attempt to end her life and woke up in the hospital. She later recalled this as her darkest period. Before an audience she was a tireless singer, but at home she could find no way out.
The grand production Phil Spector made after cutting Ike out of the recording. Its failure in America and its success in Britain set the direction of her next path.
- It is considered the peak of Spector's recording style (Wall of Sound), stacking guitar·piano·strings·horns·choir in many simultaneous layers so they surge forward like a wall.
- She recalled singing the song over and over. The tension of a voice holding on at the top of its range, so as not to be buried by the massive accompaniment, drives the whole track.
- Listen for the way the accompaniment swells step by step from the midpoint on, racing toward the climax — by the end of the song the density of sound is several times what it was at the start.
- It is famous for George Harrison's praise of it as a perfect record from start to finish, and it reached No. 3 on the British chart.
IV. Thirty-six cents · 1970–1976
(Breakthrough) In 1971 they covered Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Proud Mary." The arrangement, which starts slow and then suddenly speeds up into a rush, carried the Revue's stage show over intact. The song reached No. 4 in America, and the following year it won the Grammy for R&B vocal performance by a group. It was the biggest commercial success the couple ever shared. (Songwriting) In 1973 she released "Nutbush City Limits," a song she wrote herself about her hometown, which reached No. 4 in Britain. Portraying everyday life in a small country town, it showed that she was not just a singer of Ike's songs but someone who wrote her own stories. (Faith) Around the same time, at a friend's urging, she began chanting the Nichiren Buddhist invocation 'Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.' She said in many interviews that the practice helped her master her fear and believe she could change her own life. Buddhism remained at the center of her life from then on. (Tommy) In 1975 she appeared as the 'Acid Queen' in Ken Russell's rock-opera film "Tommy." It was a brief appearance, but her fierce performance proved for the first time that she had a presence beyond the Revue. (Escape) July 1976, Dallas, Texas. After being beaten again in the car on the way to the hotel, she slipped out while Ike slept and fled across the highway to another hotel. In her pocket were only 36 cents and a gas card. She later regarded that day as the day she was reborn.
Someone else's hit, rewoven in the Revue's stage grammar. It was the couple's biggest success, and a song that later crossed to the next generation when she sang it with Beyoncé.
- Near the top of the song there is a passage where, instead of singing, she speaks to the audience. It is a device that lays out the song's blueprint in advance: start slow, finish rough.
- The first half lies slow and low like gospel, and then at a certain moment the tempo nearly doubles and it charges ahead like a completely different song. This abrupt shift is the heart of the track.
- In the second half the Ikettes' chorus and the horn section lock in with her voice and race on without a breath, and onstage a frenzied ensemble dance was added on top.
- Her performance of it with Beyoncé at the 2008 Grammy Awards is often recalled as the moment the song was handed across generations.
A song of her hometown, written by her own hand. It portrays the small town she left behind with composure, and at times with playfulness.
- The short, sturdy guitar riff repeated from the very opening is the backbone of the song. A handful of simple notes recur to the end and set the body moving.
- The sharp sound of the synthesizer, novel for its day, blends with guitar·drums to produce a distinctive texture where soul, rock and funk overlap.
- Rather than truly singing, she rides the rhythm half-speaking, pointing out the town's sights one by one. You can hear an easygoing drawl, as if she were mimicking the way country folk talk.
- In Australia, a dance in which a crowd lines up and moves in unison to this song (line dancing) became a fixture at schools and weddings.
V. Starting over empty-handed · 1976–1983
(Divorce) The divorce was finalized in 1978. She gave up the house, the property and most of her royalty income, insisting on keeping only one thing: the name 'Tina Turner.' She also took on the losses from the Revue shows that had been abruptly canceled. For a time, she recalled, she drifted from one friend's home to another and lived on government food stamps. (Cabaret) To pay off her debts she took any stage she could get, from Las Vegas cabaret rooms to TV variety shows. She released solo albums such as Rough, but the response was faint. The industry saw her as the singer of a Revue that had once been big, and no label was willing to give a rock stage to a Black woman singer approaching forty. (Davies) In 1979 she met Roger Davies, a young Australian manager. He proposed clearing out the cabaret repertoire and rebuilding her as a rock singer. In 1981 she opened for the Rolling Stones on their American tour and performed with Rod Stewart, standing once again before rock audiences. (Comeback) In 1983 the tide began to turn when her remake of Al Green's “Let's Stay Together,” produced by Martyn Ware of the British group B.E.F., climbed to No. 6 in the UK. Famously, during her show at the Ritz in New York, David Bowie brought record-company executives along to the venue, telling them he was going to see his favorite singer. Capitol Records soon signed her to a proper album deal.
VI. Private Dancer · 1984–1993
(Album) Private Dancer came out in 1984. Several British producers split the work and made it in a short span, yet it sold more than ten million copies worldwide. Just as Davies had judged, the sound embraced R&B, rock and synth-pop, and her voice, weathered by the years since the divorce, had grown rougher and deeper. (The summit) “What's Love Got to Do with It,” which she had at first been reluctant to record, reached No. 1 on the Billboard chart that September. She was forty-four. At the Grammys the following year she won three awards, including Record of the Year. A song that sneers at love took on special weight sung in the voice of a woman who had left Ike. (Stage) In 1985 she appeared in the film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and sang its theme, “We Don't Need Another Hero,” and that same year she shared the stage with Mick Jagger at Live Aid in Philadelphia. Her 1988 concert at Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, drew some 180,000 people. (Memoir) In I, Tina, the 1986 autobiography she wrote with music journalist Kurt Loder, she revealed in detail for the first time the violence of her marriage. In the mid-1980s in Germany she met Erwin Bach, an EMI executive. Sixteen years her junior, he became her lifelong partner. (Europe) In 1989 “The Best,” from Foreign Affair, was a major hit, and she gradually moved her home base to Europe. In 1993 a biopic in which Angela Bassett played her was released. She rerecorded the soundtrack but said she never watched the film all the way through, not wanting to live those years again.
A song she had at first not wanted to sing took her, at forty-four, to No. 1 in America. Its cynicism about love overlapped with the life she had lived, and gained weight from it.
- In the verse she sings low in her register, breathy and almost whispering, then throws her voice wide open and rough in the chorus. This contrast shapes the song's emotional arc.
- Composer and producer Terry Britten is said to have refined the arrangement with her input. Thanks to that, her signature husky texture came alive.
- Machine-made drums (a drum machine) and soft synthesizers leave ample space, so the voice seems to stand alone at the very center.
- It won Record of the Year at the 1985 Grammys.
A song Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits wrote for his own band, then gave away because it suited a woman's voice. It is the detached monologue of a woman who dances for money.
- The members of Dire Straits, minus Knopfler, play the backing, laying down a slow, fog-bound atmosphere in the band's signature texture.
- She sings without letting emotion burst out, in a weary, distanced manner. A voice that holds back its strength lays bare the character's exhaustion all the more.
- The guitar solo in the latter part was played by Jeff Beck. Its long-sustained notes and twisted tone carry on the song's emptiness.
- At nearly 7 minutes, it took a slowly building shape, rare on pop albums of the day, which centered on short singles.
A song Bonnie Tyler had sung first, which she recorded anew and made her signature. It symbolizes the period when she was shifting the center of her career to Europe.
- As the song goes on, there are several passages where the key is raised one step at a time (modulation). Each time it climbs like a stair, the power of her voice grows with it.
- The saxophone solo in the middle was played by rock musician Edgar Winter. It is a passage emblematic of the glossy texture of late-1980s pop rock.
- It is the same song, but the rhythm is tighter and the vocal rougher than in Bonnie Tyler's original; heard side by side, the difference in interpretation is vivid.
- When Australian rugby league used the song in a promotional campaign, it became something like a sports anthem in that country.
VII. Late years by the lake · 1994–2023
(Settling down) Around 1994 she settled in Küsnacht, on the shore of Lake Zurich in Switzerland. In 1995 she sang “GoldenEye,” the James Bond theme written by Bono and the Edge, and the following year released the album Wildest Dreams. Her 2000 Twenty Four Seven tour was one of the highest-grossing tours of that year. (Legacy) At the 2005 Kennedy Center Honors in the United States, Beyoncé sang “Proud Mary” before her. At the 2008 Grammy Awards, the two sang the song together. In 2007 she also took part in River: The Joni Letters, Herbie Hancock's tribute album to Joni Mitchell. Her 50th-anniversary tour of 2008–2009 became her last. (Citizenship) In July 2013 she married Bach, and that same year she acquired Swiss citizenship and gave up her American citizenship. In her final years she devoted herself to Beyond, a meditative music project singing prayers from Buddhism·Christianity and other faiths. (Illness) She suffered a stroke in 2013 and was diagnosed with intestinal cancer in 2016. In 2017 she received a kidney transplant; Bach had given her one of his own kidneys, she revealed in her 2018 memoir My Love Story. (Loss) In 2018 her eldest son, Craig, took his own life, and in December 2022 her second son, Ronnie, also died. In the same period the musical Tina, about her life, opened in London, and in 2021 she bid the public farewell with the HBO documentary Tina. That year she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist and sold her music rights to BMG. (Death) She died at her home in Küsnacht on May 24, 2023, at the age of 83.
The James Bond theme she sang after settling in Switzerland. Bono and the Edge wrote it for her.
- Her vocal, sung slowly in a low register as if drawing the listener in, reveals the mellow tone of a woman around fifty, unlike the explosive style of her 20s.
- The arrangement, with strings and brass spread darkly beneath, sounds like a conscious continuation of the tradition of 1960s Bond themes.
- The weighty drums and bass, polished by producer Nellee Hooper, add a 1990s texture to the old Bond-style arrangement.
Lesser-known stories
The first career she dreamed of was not singing but nursing. In her St. Louis days she worked as a nurse's aide at Barnes Hospital, and for a while she kept up the hospital work even while performing on club stages. It is overshadowed by her glamorous stage image, but she said so herself in many interviews. Ike not only came up with the name 'Tina Turner' but registered it as a trademark. The point, she testified in her autobiography, was to let him put another singer forward as 'Tina' if she ever left. That is why, while handing over all her property in the divorce, she held on to the name alone. In the end she reclaimed as her own a name someone else had given her, and lived by it all her life. Her biggest hit, “What's Love Got to Do with It,” was first offered to Cliff Richard before it came to her, and the British group Bucks Fizz also recorded it. She herself was reluctant at first, calling it too lightweight a pop song. That it became the song that speaks for her life is closer to a myth told in hindsight. In her final years she released Beyond, a series of meditative music, with Swiss singer Regula Curti and Tibetan-born singer Dechen Shak-Dagsay. These recordings wove Buddhist chanting and Christian prayer into a single track. So far from her rock 'n' roll image, they remained almost unknown to the public, yet they are the last record, in music, of a faith she kept for nearly 50 years.
Notes on terms 📚🔎
Wall of Sound
(Meaning) The English “Wall of Sound,” that is, a wall made of sound. The name carries the idea of stacking sounds layer upon layer like bricks so that they surge forward as one enormous mass. (In pop) A recording method devised by producer Phil Spector in the 1960s. He had several of the same instrument, such as guitars and pianos, play at once and sent the sound through a resonant room (an echo chamber), so that the instruments fused into a single mass rather than being heard one by one. It is like a whole class singing as one at a choir contest: you can't tell whose voice is whose, and you hear only one big sound. “River Deep – Mountain High” is the signature example of the method.
Revue
(Meaning) From the French revue, meaning to see (voir) again (re). It originally referred to a stage show that looked back over the year's events and satirized them. (In pop) A show in which a single troupe strings together a series of acts such as songs·dances·instrumental numbers. The Ike & Tina Turner Revue was famous for shows in which the band, the backing chorus the Ikettes and the dancers carried on nonstop on a single stage. Picture a school-festival talent show where choir·dance·band acts follow one after another, staged in its entirety by one team and taken on tour around the country every night. (Elsewhere) The similarly spelled English word review is commonly used to mean a critique or going over material again.
Call and response
(Meaning) In English, a call and a response. (In pop) A lead singer sings a line, and a chorus or the audience takes it up and sings it back. Rooted in African work songs and the worship of Black churches in America, it carried on into blues·gospel·R&B. It has the same structure as a field-day cheer, where the cheer captain calls out first and the whole class shouts it back. In Tina Turner's early songs, she and the Ikettes trade lines this way.
Guide vocal
(In pop) A provisional vocal recorded before the official singer records, so that the players or the real singer can follow along. It serves only as a guide and is usually erased later. Picture a rough homework draft, scrawled in pencil to show a friend, that turned out so good the teacher told you to hand it in as is. "A Fool in Love" was exactly such a case. (Elsewhere) In travel, a guide is a person who shows you the way.
Rhythm and blues
(Meaning) The word blues is said to come from blue devils, an English expression for melancholy. To it was added rhythm, meaning a strong beat. (In pop) Popular music created in the late 1940s by Black American musicians who added a strong beat and gospel singing to the blues. Shortened to R&B, the term spread widely after the music magazine Billboard adopted it as the name of its Black music chart. Like an old home-cooking recipe (blues) given a spicy seasoning (rhythm) to make a new dish, it shares the same roots but moves the body far more.
Modulation
(Meaning) In Hanja, 轉調: jeon (轉, 'to move') and jo (調, 'key, melody'). It means moving a song's melody to a different pitch. (In pop) A technique of raising or lowering the whole song by a step partway through and singing on. In pop it is often used in the final chorus, lifting the key to heighten the emotion. It is like climbing one stair and singing the same song again. "The Best" rises higher and higher through repeated modulations. (Elsewhere) Its homophone jeonjo (前兆) means an omen of things to come.
Crossover
(Meaning) In English, to cross over. (In pop) When the music or singer of one genre wins popularity with the audience of another. In America the term was used especially for singers who, having succeeded on the Black music charts, also succeeded on the white-dominated pop·rock charts. It is like the soccer team's ace entering a track meet and taking first place there too. Tina Turner is the classic example of a singer who began on the R&B stage and crossed over to the Rolling Stones' rock audience and the global pop market. (Elsewhere) In basketball, a crossover is the move of dribbling the ball quickly from side to side to shake off a defender.