Tina
Turner

von Dirk Bruckner am 26.05.2023 - 00:38 Uhr | melden

Tina Turner (born Anna Mae Bullock; November 26, 1939 – May 24, 2023) was an American-born Swiss singer.[a] Known as the "Queen of Rock n Roll", she rose to prominence as the lead singer of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue before launching a successful career as a solo performer.

Turner began her career with Ike Turners Kings of Rhythm in 1957. Under the name Little Ann, she appeared on her first record, "Boxtop", in 1958. In 1960, she debuted as Tina Turner with the hit duet single "A Fool in Love". The duo Ike & Tina Turner became "one of the most formidable live acts in history".[7] They released hits such as "Its Gonna Work Out Fine", "River Deep – Mountain High", "Proud Mary", and "Nutbush City Limits", before disbanding in 1976.

In the 1980s, Turner launched "one of the greatest comebacks in music history".[8] Her 1984 multi-platinum album Private Dancer contained the hit song "Whats Love Got to Do with It", which won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year and became her first and only number-one song on the Billboard Hot 100. Aged 44, she was the oldest female solo artist to top the Hot 100.[9] Her chart success continued with "Better Be Good to Me", "Private Dancer", "We Dont Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)", "Typical Male", "The Best", "I Dont Wanna Fight", and "GoldenEye". During her Break Every Rule World Tour in 1988, she set a then-Guinness World Record for the largest paying audience (180,000) for a solo performer.[10]

Turner also acted in the films Tommy (1975) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985). In 1993, Whats Love Got to Do with It, a biographical film adapted from her autobiography I, Tina: My Life Story, was released. In 2009, Turner retired after completing her Tina!: 50th Anniversary Tour, which is the 15th-highest-grossing tour of the 2000s. In 2018, she became the subject of a jukebox musical, Tina.

Having sold over 100 million records worldwide, Turner is one of the best-selling recording artists of all time. She received 12 Grammy Awards, which include eight competitive awards, three Grammy Hall of Fame awards and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. She was the first black artist and first woman to be on the cover of Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone ranked her among the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.[11] Turner has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and on the St. Louis Walk of Fame. She was twice inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with Ike Turner in 1991 and as a solo artist in 2021.[12] She was also a 2005 recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors and Women of the Year award.[13]
Early life

Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock[b] on November 26, 1939,[14][15] in Brownsville, Tennessee,[16][17][18] the youngest daughter of Floyd Richard Bullock and his wife Zelma Priscilla (née Currie).[16][19] The family lived in the nearby rural unincorporated community of Nutbush, Tennessee, where her father worked as an overseer of the sharecroppers at Poindexter Farm on Highway 180; she later recalled picking cotton with her family at an early age.[20][21] When she participated in the PBS series African American Lives 2 with Henry Louis Gates Jr., he shared her genealogical DNA test estimates and traced her family timeline.[22] Previously, she believed she had a significant amount of Native American ancestry.[23]

Bullock had two older sisters, Evelyn Juanita Currie and Ruby Alline Bullock, a songwriter.[24] She was also the first cousin once removed of bluesman Eugene Bridges.[25] As young children, the three sisters were separated when their parents relocated to Knoxville, Tennessee, to work at a defense facility during World War II.[21] Bullock went to stay with her strict, religious paternal grandparents, Alex and Roxanna Bullock, who were deacon and deaconess at the Woodlawn Missionary Baptist Church.[26][21] After the war, the sisters reunited with their parents and moved with them to Knoxville.[21] Two years later, the family returned to Nutbush to live in the Flagg Grove community, where Bullock attended Flagg Grove Elementary School from first through eighth grade.[27][28]

As a young girl, Bullock sang in the church choir at Nutbushs Spring Hill Baptist Church.[29][30] When she was 11, her mother Zelma ran off without warning, seeking freedom from her abusive relationship with Floyd by relocating to St. Louis in 1950.[31] Two years after her mother left the family, her father married another woman and moved to Detroit in 1952. Bullock and her sisters were sent to live with their maternal grandmother, Georgeanna Currie, in Brownsville, Tennessee.[31] She stated in her autobiography I, Tina that her parents had not loved her and she was not wanted.[32] Zelma had planned to leave Floyd but stayed once she became pregnant.[33] Turner recalled: "She was a very young woman who didnt want another kid."[33]

As a teenager, Bullock worked as a domestic worker for the Henderson family. She was at the Henderson house when she was notified that her half-sister Evelyn had died in a car crash alongside her cousins Margaret and Vela Evans.[34] A self-professed tomboy, Bullock joined both the cheerleading squad and the female basketball team at Carver High School in Brownsville, and "socialized every chance she got".[20][31] When Bullock was 16, her grandmother died, so she went to live with her mother in St. Louis. She graduated from Sumner High School in 1958.[35] After her graduation, Bullock worked as a nurses aide at Barnes-Jewish Hospital