Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Tina Turner has died after a long illness.
She died at her home in Küsnacht near Zurich, Switzerland today.
She was 83.
“With her, the world loses a music legend and a role model,” her U.K. 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 “Simply The Best”, with more than 180 million albums sold, 12 Grammy Awards won and sold-out stadium tours around the world.
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.
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 always rising on the charts, would become standards in the singer’s repertoire: “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine”, “River Deep – Mountain High”, “Nutbush City Limits” and, most of all, “Proud Mary.”
The Revue broke up in 1976 when Tina left Ike for reasons that she’d detail in memoirs and interviews. She became an early example of a domestic abuse survivor, putting the topic in the public consciousness.
Her split with Ike left the singer struggling and nearly destitute until the remarkable success of her fifth solo album Private Dancer, released in the U.S. in May 1984 in the U.S., months after its lead single “Let’s Stay Together” made the UK Top 10 and hit No. 26 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The album’s second stateside single would give Turner the biggest hit of her career.
“What’s Love Got to Do With It,” featuring her impassioned vocal, spent three weeks at No. 1 in the U.S. (and hit No. 3 in the UK).
It scored a Grammys for Record and Song of the Year as well as a Female Pop Vocal award for Turner.
