Tina Turner

Tina Turner was an American-Swiss singer, songwriter, and actress whose six-decade music career — first as one half of the Ike & Tina Turner R&B duo across 1960–1976, then as a solo artist across 1976–2009 — produced one of the foundational bodies of work in 20th-century American R&B and rock music. She was born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26, 1939, in Brownsville, Tennessee. Her father Floyd Richard Bullock was a Tennessee sharecropping overseer, and her mother Zelma Priscilla Currie was a homemaker. The 1950s Bullock family abandonment — when her mother left for St. Louis when she was 11, followed by her father's relocation — produced her childhood adoption by her grandmother Roxanna Currie.

Her 1956 St. Louis arrival to live with her mother — and her subsequent late-1950s East St. Louis Manhattan Club performances with the Kings of Rhythm band led by Ike Turner — launched her career. Her 1960 first single "A Fool in Love" with Ike Turner launched the Ike & Tina Turner R&B duo career.

Her 1960–1976 Ike & Tina Turner career produced multiple American R&B chart hits — particularly "It's Gonna Work Out Fine" (1961), "River Deep – Mountain High" (1966), and "Proud Mary" (1971, the Creedence Clearwater Revival cover that won the 1972 Grammy Award for Best R&B Vocal Performance by a Group). Her July 1, 1976 abrupt departure from her abusive marriage to Ike Turner — at the Dallas Statler Hilton hotel, with 36 cents and a Mobil credit card — and her subsequent 1978 divorce launched her solo career.

Her 1984 fifth solo commercial album Private Dancer — released by Capitol Records — sold over 20 million copies worldwide and produced her single "What's Love Got to Do with It" (which won the 1984 Grammy Award for Record of the Year and the 1984 Grammy Award for Song of the Year, and which became her first Billboard Hot 100 number-one single at age 44 — making her the oldest female solo artist to achieve a Billboard Hot 100 number-one single at the time). Her subsequent 1980s and 1990s commercial career produced multiple international concert-tour records — including her 1988 Maracanã Stadium concert in Rio de Janeiro (which set the world record for the largest paying concert audience for a solo performer at the time). She married German-Swiss music executive Erwin Bach in 2013. She died on May 24, 2023, at age 83, in Küsnacht, Switzerland.

Her name Tina began as a stage name adopted in 1960 (the diminutive of Christina). Tina was the third-most-popular American girls' name through the 1970s.