The Kampala Report
  • Latest
    • Community
    • News
    • Trends
    • Education
    • Health
    • Africa
    • World
  • Money
    • Business
    • Finance
    • Farming
    • Tech
    • Winning Brands
  • Talk Back
    • Editorial
    • Op-Ed
    • Columnists
  • Politics
    • Parliament
    • Elections
  • Society
    • Entertainment
    • Relationships
    • Travel
  • Sports
  • Impact
    • Investigations
    • Special Reports
  • FACT CHECK
SUBSCRIBE
No Result
View All Result
  • Latest
    • Community
    • News
    • Trends
    • Education
    • Health
    • Africa
    • World
  • Money
    • Business
    • Finance
    • Farming
    • Tech
    • Winning Brands
  • Talk Back
    • Editorial
    • Op-Ed
    • Columnists
  • Politics
    • Parliament
    • Elections
  • Society
    • Entertainment
    • Relationships
    • Travel
  • Sports
  • Impact
    • Investigations
    • Special Reports
  • FACT CHECK
No Result
View All Result
The Kampala Report
No Result
View All Result
Home Society Entertainment

Tina Turner: legendary rock’n’roll singer dies aged 83

Turner who initially found fame in a turbulent musical partnership, became one of the biggest acts in the world as a solo artist and one of the defining pop icons of the 1980s

bytheKR TEAM
May 25, 2023
in Entertainment, Latest, Society
Reading Time: 5 mins read
0
Era-defining music … Tina Turner performing in 1987. (IMAGE: theguardian.com)

Era-defining music … Tina Turner performing in 1987. (IMAGE: theguardian.com)

WhatsAppShare on FacebookShare on Twitter

Tina Turner, the pioneering rock’n’roll star who became a pop behemoth in the 1980s, has died aged 83 after a long illness.

She had suffered ill health in recent years, being diagnosed with intestinal cancer in 2016 and having a kidney transplant in 2017.

Turner affirmed and amplified Black women’s formative stake in rock’n’roll, defining that era of music to the extent that Mick Jagger admitted to taking inspiration from her high-kicking, energetic live performances for his stage persona.

After two decades of working with her abusive husband, Ike Turner, she struck out alone and – after a few false starts – became one of the defining pop icons of the 1980s with the album Private Dancer. Her life was chronicled in three memoirs, a biopic, a jukebox musical, and in 2021, the acclaimed documentary film, Tina.

RELATED STORIES

A female artist performs at a school. (IMAGE: URN | theKR Media)

Education Ministry bans music concerts in schools

August 2, 2022
161

GLOBALink | Xinjiang, My home: A family of music lovers

December 23, 2021
94
Fashion designer Sheeba Priscilla Kasami will be starring the fashion show as she launches her 'Haute Couture brand'. .(IMAGE: Courtesy | theKRMedia)

Fashion designer Sheeba Priscilla Kasami in fashion show as she launches her ‘Haute Couture brand’

November 28, 2021
489

In a statement on Wednesday night, her publicist Bernard Doherty said: “Tina Turner, the ‘Queen of Rock’n Roll’ has died peacefully today at the age of 83 after a long illness in her home in Kusnacht near Zurich, Switzerland. With her, the world loses a music legend and a role model.”

In 2018, scholar Daphne A Brooks wrote for the Guardian: “Turner’s musical character has always been a charged combination of mystery as well as light, melancholy mixed with a ferocious vitality that often flirted with danger.”

Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock on 26 November 1939 and raised in Nutbush, Tennessee, where she recalled picking cotton with her family as a child. She sang in the tiny town’s church choir, and as a teenager talked – or rather, sang – her way into Ike’s band in St Louis: he had declined her request to join until he heard her seize the microphone during a Kings of Rhythm performance for a rendition of BB King’s You Know I Love You.

After her vocal talents became apparent, Ike gave her the name Tina Turner – and trademarked it in case she left him and he wanted to replace her in his act. He quickly became abusive: when Turner tried to leave the group early on after having got a sense of his mercurial character, he hit her with a wooden shoe stretcher.

“My relationship with Ike was doomed the day he figured out I was going to be his moneymaker,” Turner wrote in her 2018 biography My Love Story. “He needed to control me, economically and psychologically, so I could never leave him.”

She made her recorded debut under the name with the Ike and Tina Turner single A Fool in Love in July 1960, which broke the US Top 30 and started a run of respectable chart success. But it was their live performances that made them a sensation. Ike toured the Ike and Tina Turner Revue aggressively on the Chitlin’ Circuit – including in front of desegregated audiences, such was their commercial power. In 1964, they signed to Warner Bros imprint Loma Records, which released their first album to chart: Live! The Ike & Tina Turner Show.

In the second half of the 60s, the duo were courted by many of rock’s biggest names. Phil Spector produced the 1966 single River Deep – Mountain High; they supported the Rolling Stones in the UK and later the US, and stars including David Bowie, Sly Stone, Cher, Elvis Presley and Elton John came to their Las Vegas residency.

They were a chart-making, Grammy-winning force in the 1970s – a run that came to an end when Turner left Ike, who had been consistently violent and unfaithful, in 1976. Her last single with the group was Baby, Get It On, from the 1975 film adaptation of the Who’s rock opera Tommy, in which she starred as Acid Queen, a character of the same name of her second solo album.

In the divorce, finalised in 1978, Turner came away with just two cars and the rights to her stage name. “Ike fought a little bit because he knew what I would do with it,” she said in the documentary Tina.

Turner, who had already released two solo records, continued pursuing a solo career, though it would take until she released her fifth album, 1984’s Private Dancer, for her to supplant the old image of the shimmying rock’n’roller – and escape premature relegation to the oldies circuit – with one of a powerful, mullet-sporting, leather-clad pop icon.

In the documentary Tina, she described Private Dancer as her debut. “I don’t consider it a comeback,” she said. “Tina had never arrived.”

Turner credited Buddhism and particularly the practice of chanting with positively affecting her life in the 1980s. Outside music, she starred in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome opposite Mel Gibson in 1985. She published her first memoir, the global bestseller I, Tina, in 1986, which was later adapted in to the 1993 film What’s Love Got to Do With It? starring Angela Bassett as Turner. In 1995, she sang the theme tune to the James Bond film GoldenEye.

Turner announced her retirement in 2000, a year after releasing her final solo album, Twenty Four Seven, though she would return to the stage in 2008, performing at the Grammy awards with Beyoncé, and for a final tour to mark 50 years of her career.

That was conclusively the end. “I was just tired of singing and making everybody happy,” she told the New York Times in 2019. “That’s all I’d ever done in my life.”

Turner collaborated on the musical Tina with Phyllida Lloyd, which premiered in 2018 and won Laurence Olivier and Tony awards for its respective West End and Broadway runs. “This musical is not about my stardom,” Turner said of the production. “It is about the journey I took to get there. Each night I want audiences to take away from the theatre that you can turn poison into medicine.”

Tina Turner’s 20 greatest songs – ranked!

Turner often said she did not relate to the “invincible” persona that others put on her. “I don’t necessarily want to be a ‘strong’ person,” she told the New York Times. “I had a terrible life. I just kept going. You just keep going, and you hope that something will come.”

In 2020, a remix of her 1984 hit What’s Love Got to Do With It? by the Norwegian producer Kygo made Turner the first artist to have a UK Top 40 hit in seven consecutive decades. In 2021, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist, 30 years after Ike and Tina Turner’s induction.

Turner is survived by her second husband, German music executive Erwin Bach. They married in July 2013 after 27 years together and lived in Switzerland. In 2013, Turner renounced her US citizenship to become a Swiss citizen.

Her first child, Craig Raymond Turner, died in July 2018. Last year, Turner said that following her other son Ronnie’s death at the age of 62 that he “left the world far too early”. She is survived by two of Ike Turner’s sons, Ike Turner Jr and Michael Turner, whom she adopted.

In 2020, Turner told the Guardian that despite having some serious health problems, the last 10 years of her life had embodied her ideal vision of happiness.

“True and lasting happiness comes from having an unshakeable, hopeful spirit that can shine, no matter what,” she said. “That’s what I’ve achieved, and it is my greatest wish to help others become truly happy as well.”

SOURCE: https://www.theguardian.com

Share this:

  • WhatsApp
  • Tweet

Like this:

Like Loading...
Tags: legendary rock’n’rollMusicTina Turner

Do you have a story in your community or an opinion to share with us: Email the editor on  editorial@thekampalareport.com

LATEST UPDATES

  • Police not scared of Vipers, coach Lonyesi says ahead of Uganda Cup final
  • Pomp, fanfare as 5,000 pilgrims from Jinja Diocese arrive at Namugongo
  • Mabirizi petitions court to halt Minister Nandutu’s iron sheets trial
  • Bushenyi District Council approves UGX 3.8b supplementary budget
  • Uganda scoops second prize at the Huawei ICT Global Finals in China

MOST POPULAR

  • Diana Kamuntu, Janet's youngest daughter and last born. PHOTO/COURTESY

    REVEALED! Why Museveni daughter Diana applied for name change at NIRA

    589 shares
    Share 236 Tweet 147
  • REVEALED: Slain blogger Isma Olaxes had expressed death fears

    66 shares
    Share 26 Tweet 17
  • More details emerge on bodyguard who killed Minister Engola

    35 shares
    Share 14 Tweet 9
  • LAND MARK: Court declares law against sale of Mairungi, cannabis null and void

    31 shares
    Share 12 Tweet 8
  • DETAILS! Killer of blogger Olaxes waited patiently for two hours

    27 shares
    Share 11 Tweet 7

INVESTIGATION

Judge hits out at state over ‘unsystematic investigations’ in Kirumira murder case

Late ASP Muhammad Kirumira
byMIKE OPIO | theKR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
April 25, 2023
0
109

On Monday, High Court Judge Margaret Mutonyi acquitted Abubaker Kalungi of the double murders of former Buyende district police boss...

Read more

State adduces 150 pieces of evidence against Kaweesi murder suspects

Felix Kaweesi. PHOTO/COURTESY
byMIKE OPIO | theKR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
March 29, 2023
0
117

On Tuesday, the matter came up for further pretrial hearing and the prosecution led by Lillian Omara tabled 150 pieces...

Read more

The Indigenous Benet; could they still help conserve Mt Elgon habitat

What the environment looks like today among the modern Benet in Kween district
byDAVID MAFABI | theKR Community Editor
March 27, 2023
0
134

Growing up in Mt Elgon forests in Kween district, Moses Muwanga, a Benet, deeply respects wild animals, Birds and the...

Read more

Kirumira murder trial: Parties make final submissions

Late ASP Muhammad Kirumira
byURN | theKR Partner News Agency
March 14, 2023
0
126

Having concluded the defense hearing last month, the court on Monday heard final submissions from the prosecution led by Thomas...

Read more

About Us

The Kampala Report is a news media start up, and aims to become the leading news and information source in Uganda. We are known for our accurate, authoritative news content, diversity of opinion and analysis, covering the latest news and events from Uganda’s capital Kampala, the Ugandan countryside and East Africa regional contexts.

Learn more

Recent Stories

  • Police not scared of Vipers, coach Lonyesi says ahead of Uganda Cup final
  • Pomp, fanfare as 5,000 pilgrims from Jinja Diocese arrive at Namugongo
  • Mabirizi petitions court to halt Minister Nandutu’s iron sheets trial
  • Bushenyi District Council approves UGX 3.8b supplementary budget

Follow Us

Facebook Twitter Instagram

No Result
View All Result
  • Latest
    • Community
    • News
    • Trends
    • Education
    • Health
    • Africa
    • World
  • Money
    • Business
    • Finance
    • Farming
    • Tech
    • Winning Brands
  • Talk Back
    • Editorial
    • Op-Ed
    • Columnists
  • Politics
    • Parliament
    • Elections
  • Society
    • Entertainment
    • Relationships
    • Travel
  • Sports
  • Impact
    • Investigations
    • Special Reports
  • FACT CHECK
%d bloggers like this: