Tina Turner (born Anna Mae Bullock; November 26, 1939 – May 24, 2023) was an American-born and naturalized Swiss singer, dancer, actress and author. Widely referred to 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 Turner's 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". They released hits such as "It's 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". Her 1984 multi-platinum album Private Dancer contained the hit song "What's 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.[7] Her chart success continued with "Better Be Good to Me", "Private Dancer", "We Don't Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)", "Typical Male", "The Best", "I Don't 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.

Turner also acted in the films Tommy (1975) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985). In 1993, What's 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 the 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. Turner had a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and 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. She was also a 2005 recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors and Women of the Year award. Turner died aged 83, following a long illness, on May 24, 2023.

Early life

Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26, 1939, in Brownsville, Tennessee, the youngest daughter of Floyd Richard Bullock and his wife Zelma Priscilla (née Currie). 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. When she participated in the PBS series African American Lives 2 with Henry Louis Gates Jr., he shared her genealogical DNA test estimates, which were predominantly African, approximately 33% European and only 1% Native American. Previously, she believed she had a significant amount of Native American ancestry.

Bullock had two older sisters, Evelyn Juanita Currie and Ruby Alline Bullock, a songwriter. She is also the first cousin once removed of bluesman Eugene Bridges. 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. 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. After the war, the sisters reunited with their parents and moved with them to Knoxville. 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.

As a young girl, Bullock sang in the church choir at Nutbush's Spring Hill Baptist Church. 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. 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. She stated in her autobiography I, Tina that her parents had not loved her and she wasn't wanted. Zelma had planned to leave Floyd but stayed once she became pregnant. "She was a very young woman who didn't want another kid," Turner recalled.

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. 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". 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. After her graduation, Bullock worked as a nurse's aide at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

Personal life

Relationships and marriages

Early relationships

While still in Brownsville, Turner (then called Ann Bullock) fell in love for the first time with Harry Taylor. They met at a high school basketball game. Taylor initially attended a different school, but he relocated to be near her. In 1986, she told Rolling Stone: "Harry was real popular and had tons of girlfriends, but eventually I got him, and we went steady for a year." Their relationship ended after she discovered that Taylor had married another girl who was expecting his child.

After moving to St. Louis, Bullock and her sister Alline became acquainted with Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm. Alline was dating the band's drummer Eugene Washington and Bullock began dating the saxophonist Raymond Hill. After Turner became pregnant during her senior year of high school, she moved in with Hill, who lived with Ike Turner. She recalled, "I didn't love him as much as I'd loved Harry. But he was good-looking. I thought, 'My baby's going to be beautiful.'" Their relationship ended after Hill broke his ankle during a wrestling match with Kings of Rhythm singer Carlson Oliver. Hill returned to his hometown of Clarksdale before their son Craig was born in August 1958, leaving Bullock to become a single parent.

Ike Turner

Turner likened her early relationship with Ike Turner to that of a "brother and sister from another lifetime." They were platonic friends from the time they met in 1957 until 1960. Their affair began while Ike was with his live-in girlfriend Lorraine Taylor. They had sex when she went to sleep with him after another musician threatened to go into her room.

After recording "A Fool In Love", Turner told Ike that she did not want to continue their relationship; he responded by striking her in the head with a wooden shoe stretcher. Turner recalled that this incident was the first time he "instilled fear" in her, but she decided to stay with him because she "really did care about him". After the birth of their son Ronnie in October 1960, they moved to Los Angeles in 1962 and married in Tijuana. In 1963, Ike purchased a house in the View Park area. They brought their son Ronnie, Turner's son Craig, and Ike's two sons with Lorraine (Ike Jr. and Michael) from St. Louis to live with them. She later revealed in I, Tina that Ike was abusive and promiscuous throughout their marriage, which led to her suicide attempt in 1968 by overdosing on Valium pills. She said, "It was my relationship with Ike that made me most unhappy. At first, I had really been in love with him. Look what he'd done for me. But he was totally unpredictable." Ike was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder in his old age.

Turner abruptly left Ike after they got into a fight on their way to the Dallas Statler Hilton on July 1, 1976. She fled with only 36 cents and a Mobil credit card in her pocket to the Ramada Inn across the freeway. On July 27, Turner filed for divorce on the grounds of irreconcilable differences. Her divorce petition asked for $4,000 a month in alimony, $1,000 a month in child support, and custody of her sons Craig and Ronnie. The divorce was finalized on March 29, 1978. In the final divorce decree, Turner took responsibility for missed concert dates as well as an IRS lien. Turner retained songwriter royalties from songs she had written, but Ike got the publishing royalties for his compositions and hers. She also kept her two Jaguar Cars, furs and jewelry along with her stage name. Turner gave Ike her share of their Bolic Sound recording studio, publishing companies, real estate, and he kept his four cars. Several promoters lost money and sued to recoup their losses. For almost two years, she received food stamps and played small clubs to pay off debts.

Ike Turner stated on several occasions that he was never officially married to Turner because he was legally married to another woman at the time of their ceremony. However they had a common-law marriage and still had to go through a formal divorce. He also stated that her birth name was Martha Nell Bullock (not Anna Mae Bullock). She signed her legal name as Martha Nell Turner on multiple contracts.

In his autobiography Takin' Back My Name, Ike Turner stated: "Sure, I've slapped Tina. We had fights and there have been times when I punched her to the ground without thinking. But I never beat her." In a 1999 interview on The Roseanne Show, Roseanne Barr urged Ike to publicly apologize to Turner. In 2007, Ike told Jet that he still loved her and he had written a letter apologizing for "putting her and the kids through that kind of stuff", but he never sent it.

After his death on December 12, 2007, Turner issued a brief statement through her spokesperson: "Tina hasn't had any contact with Ike in more than 30 years. No further comment will be made." Turner's sister Alline still considered Ike her brother-in-law and attended his funeral. Phil Spector criticized Tina Turner at the funeral. Turner told The Sunday Times in 2018 that "as an old person, I have forgiven him, but I would not work with him. He asked for one more tour with me, and I said, 'No, absolutely not.' Ike wasn't someone you could forgive and allow him back in."

Erwin Bach

In 1986, Turner met German music executive Erwin Bach, who was sent by her European record label (EMI) to greet Turner at Düsseldorf Airport. Bach was over sixteen years her junior; he was born on January 24, 1956, in Cologne, Germany. Initially friends, they began dating later that year. In July 2013, after a 27-year romantic relationship, they married in a civil ceremony on the banks of Lake Zurich in Küsnacht, Switzerland.

Children

Turner had two biological sons: one with Raymond Hill, named Raymond Craig, born on August 20, 1958, and the other with Ike Turner, Ronald "Ronnie" Renelle Turner, born on October 27, 1960. She also adopted two of Ike Turner's children, raising them as her own. 

Turner was 18 years of age when she gave birth to her eldest son. His biological father was Kings of Rhythm saxophonist Raymond Hill. Ike Turner adopted Raymond Craig Hill, and changed his name to Craig Raymond Turner. Craig was found dead in an apparent suicide in July 2018.

Turner's younger son, Ronnie, played bass guitar in a band called Manufactured Funk with songwriter and musician Patrick Moten. Ronnie also played for both of his parents' bands. Through him, Turner had two grandchildren. He was married to French singer Afida Turner. Ronnie died from complications of colon cancer in December 2022.

During Turner's divorce trial, Ike sent their four sons to live with Turner and gave her money for one month's rent. Ike Turner Jr. worked as a sound engineer at Bolic Sound and briefly for Turner after her divorce, later winning a Grammy Award for producing his father's album Risin' with the Blues. He toured with former Ikette Randi Love as Sweet Randi Love and the Love Thang Band. Ike Turner Jr. stated that he and his brothers have a distant relationship with their mother (Tina). Turner wrote in her autobiography I, Tina that after her divorce she became "a little bit estranged" from all her sons except Craig. Turner told TV Week that "she's still there for the boys" in 1989, but there had been reports of Turner's estrangement from her sons in the years before her death.

Residences and citizenship

Turner began living at Château Algonquin in Küsnacht on the shore of Lake Zurich in 1994. Turner previously owned property in Cologne, London, and Los Angeles, and a villa on the French Riviera named Anna Fleur.

In 2013, Turner applied for Swiss citizenship, stating she would relinquish her U.S. citizenship. In April, she undertook a mandatory citizenship test which included advanced knowledge of German (the official language of the canton of Zürich) and of Swiss history. On April 22, 2013, she became a citizen of Switzerland and was issued a Swiss passport. Turner signed the paperwork to relinquish her American citizenship at the U.S. embassy in Bern on October 24, 2013.

Illness and death

Turner revealed in her 2018 memoir My Love Story that she had suffered multiple life-threatening illnesses. In 2013, three weeks after her wedding to Erwin Bach, she suffered a stroke and had to learn to walk again. In 2016, she was diagnosed with intestinal cancer. Turner opted for homeopathic remedies to treat her high blood pressure. Her hypertension resulted in damage to her kidneys and eventual kidney failure. Her chances of receiving a kidney were low, and she was urged to start dialysis. She considered assisted suicide and signed up to be a member of Exit, but Bach offered to donate a kidney for her transplant. Turner had kidney transplant surgery on April 7, 2017.

On May 24, 2023, Turner died at her home in Küsnacht, Switzerland, aged 83, following a long illness.