Tina Turner, known as the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll for her blistering performances and powerfully gritty vocals, died today after a long illness at her home in Küsnacht near Zurich, Switzerland. She was 83.
“With her, the world loses a music legend and a role model,” her UK spokesperson, Bernard Doherty, said in a statement. Turner was diagnosed with intestinal cancer in 2016 and underwent a kidney transplant in 2017. Born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26, 1939, in Nutbush, TN, Turner became famous in the late 1960s as the singer of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. After leaving husband Ike Turner following years of physical and emotional abuse, she staged what remains one of the greatest comebacks in pop music history, scoring massive hits in the 1980s such as “What’s Love Got To Do With it”, “Private Dancer” and “The Best,, with an estimated 180 million albums sold worldwide, 12 Grammy Awards won and sold-out stadium tours around the world. Beloved and widely influential, Turner was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021. Her life story was told in the 1993 smash hit film What’s Love Got to Do with It and in the 2019 Broadway musical Tina – The Tina Turner Musical. The biopic What’s Love Got to Do With It, based on her 1986 autobiography I, Tina: My Life Story, starred Angela Bassett as Tina and Laurence Fishburne as Ike in Oscar-nominated performances. The film became a major box office success, earning more than $60 million globally. Launching her career as a member of Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm in 1957, Turner debuted under the name Tina Turner in 1960 with her duet with Ike titled “A Fool in Love.” Thus began a string of songs that, while not blitzing the charts, would become standards in the singer’s repertoire: “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine”, “River Deep – Mountain High” and “Nutbush City Limits.”
Via: Deadline
