Tina Turner’s husky contralto and raunchy stage presence made her one of the best-known singers of her generation.
It was a long and often painful journey from a troubled childhood in rural Tennessee to global stardom.
She was almost 40 before she broke free from an abusive relationship to establish herself as a solo artist.
But she went on to record a string of best-selling albums, garner a host of awards, and become one of music’s most popular live acts.
Disrupted childhood
Tina Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock on 26 November 1939 in the small rural town of Nutbush, Tennessee. Her father Floyd worked on a local farm.
She had a disrupted childhood. She and her elder sister Aillene were separated when her parents moved to work in a munitions factory, and the young Anna Mae went to live with strict religious grandparents.
When the family were reunited after the war, Anna Mae started singing in a local Baptist church.
Her mother walked out when she was just 11 and, two years later, when her father remarried, Anna and her sister were sent to live with her grandmother in Brownsville, Tennessee.
She became a cheerleader at her local school, played basketball and enjoyed a hectic social life. On graduating in 1958, she got a job at a hospital in St Louis, Missouri, and set out to become a nurse.
It was in a nightclub, where she and her sister had gone for the evening, that she first saw Ike Turner perform with his band, The Kings of Rhythm.
Big chance
Ike was already established as a performer and session musician, and his band were one of the biggest attractions on the R&B club circuit.
During an interval one night, Anna Mae was offered the microphone – and her performance so impressed him that it led to her being asked to sing with the band.
At the time, she was in a relationship with the band’s saxophonist, Raymond Hill, by whom she had a child, Raymond.