Tina Turner got her big break because the booked singer never showed up
In 1960 Ike Turner booked studio time for a singer who failed to arrive. Rather than waste the money, a teenager from Nutbush, Tennessee, offered to sing the lead on a demo meant to be erased. A record boss heard that raw voice and insisted she become the star.
Anna Mae Bullock was born in Brownsville, Tennessee, on 26 November 1939 and grew up in rural Nutbush, where her father oversaw sharecroppers and she picked cotton as a small child. Her parents moved away for wartime work, then her mother left in 1950 and her father soon after, so she was raised largely by grandmothers. She sang in the church choir and busked for cinema money. In 1956 she joined her mother in St. Louis, finished high school in 1958 and worked as a nurse's aide.
Her sister took her to see Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm in East St. Louis, and she was captivated. Turner promised her a chance to sing but never followed through, so one night during a break she grabbed the microphone and sang a B.B. King ballad. He made her a featured singer. When she voiced A Fool in Love in place of the absent Art Lassiter, Sue Records head Juggy Murray described her sound as screaming dirt and paid a $25,000 advance. Ike renamed her Tina and trademarked the name so he could replace her if she quit, though friends kept calling her Ann.
The single reached number two on the R&B chart in July 1960. The Revue toured relentlessly, including 90 days straight, and was popular enough to play to desegregated audiences in Southern venues. Phil Spector paid $20,000 for control of her sessions and considered River Deep – Mountain High his best work; it stalled at 88 in America but reached number three in Britain. In November 1967 she became the first woman and first Black artist on the cover of Rolling Stone.
After leaving Ike in 1976 she rebuilt her career alone. In 1985 her single What's Love Got to Do with It took Record of the Year at the Grammys, and a 1988 Rio concert set a Guinness record for a paying solo audience. She became Swiss in 2013 and died in Küsnacht on 24 May 2023.
Source: Tina Turner
