Tina Turner

Tina Turner (born Anna Mae Bullock; November 26, 1939 – May 24, 2023) was a singer, songwriter, actress and author. Dubbed the "Queen of Rock 'n' Roll", she broke both racial and gender barriers in rock music with her vocal prowess and stage presence. She is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with estimated sales of over 100 million records worldwide.

Turner rose to prominence in the 1960s as the lead vocalist of the R&B husband-wife duo Ike & Tina Turner, known for their explosive live performances with the Ikettes and Kings of Rhythm. The duo achieved chart success with songs including "A Fool In Love", "River Deep – Mountain High", "Proud Mary", and "Nutbush City Limits". After separating from Ike Turner in 1976, she launched a solo career. Following the 1983 hit "Let's Stay Together", she made a comeback with her multi-platinum fifth solo album, Private Dancer (1984). The single "What's Love Got to Do with It" won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1985 and became her only number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100. She continued her success with the top-ten singles "Better Be Good to Me", "Private Dancer", "We Don't Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)", "Typical Male", and "I Don't Wanna Fight". Later in her career, she sang the theme song for the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye.

Turner's Break Every Rule World Tour became the highest-grossing tour by a female artist in the 1980s, and her 1988 concert in Rio de Janeiro set a Guinness World Record for the then-largest paying audience in a concert by a solo artist. She continued touring successfully in the 1990s and her Twenty Four Seven Tour was the highest-grossing tour of 2000. In 2009, she retired from performing after completing the Tina!: 50th Anniversary Tour. As an actress, Turner appeared in the films Tommy (1975), Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), and Last Action Hero (1993). Her life was portrayed in the biopic What's Love Got to Do with It (1993), based on her autobiography I, Tina (1986), and later in the musical Tina (2018) and documentary Tina (2021).

Turner received 12 Grammy Awards, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and three Grammy Hall of Fame inductions. In 1967, she became the first black artist and the first woman to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone, which later ranked her among the greatest artists and greatest singers of all time. She was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1986 and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice—first with Ike Turner in 1991 and again as a solo artist in 2021. Turner received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2005. In 2013, Turner relinquished her US citizenship and became a Swiss citizen, residing in Switzerland until her death in Küsnacht in 2023.

Tina Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26, 1939 in Brownsville, Tennessee. Her parents were Floyd Bullock and Zelma Currie. Bullock was African American. Bullock's family lived in the 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.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.