Tina Turner, the unstoppable singer and stage performer who teamed with husband Ike Turner for a dynamic run of hit records and live shows in the 1960s and ’70s and survived her horrifying marriage to triumph in middle age with the chart-topping “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” has died at 83.
Physically battered, emotionally devastated and financially ruined by her 20-year relationship with Ike Turner, she became a superstar on her own in her 40s, at a time when most of her peers were on their way down, and remained a top concert draw for years after.
With admirers ranging from Beyoncé to Mick Jagger, Turner was one of the world’s most successful entertainers, known for a core of pop, rock and rhythm and blues favorites:
“Proud Mary,” “Nutbush City Limits,” “River Deep, Mountain High,” and the hits she had in the ’80s, among them “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” “We Don’t Need Another Hero” and a cover of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.
Until she left her husband and revealed their back story, she was known as the voracious on-stage foil of the steady-going Ike, the leading lady of the “Ike and Tina Turner Revue.
As she recounted in her memoir, “I, Tina,” Ike began hitting her not long after they met, in the mid-1950s, and only grew more vicious. The Ike and Tina Turner revue film was supposed to begin its tour in honor of the nation’s 200th anniversary, but Tina finds herself in a Dallas hotel room with only a mobile credit card and 36 cents while Ike sleeps. I sneaked out.
A popular act for much of the 1960s and ’70s, the Turners ranged from bluesy ballads like “A Fool in Love” and “It’s Going to Work Out Fine” to “Proud Mary” and “Come Together” was expanded to a flashy cover. ”, and other rock songs that brought about the success of the crossover.
Laurence Fishburne and Angela Bassett, who gave their Oscar-nominated performances as Ike and Tina in the 1993 film Me, Tina, What Will You Do to Love, will see Ike again. (she didn’t feel like watching the movie). Ike and Tina’s rework of “Proud Mary” was originally a tight mid-tempo hit for Creedence Clearwater Revival that helped define its confidently sexual image.