Summary
Settle in and drift off with the story of Tina Turner on Sleep with Rock Stars, the Gen X sleep podcast, because you deserve a good night's sleep...or whatever. In this calming episode, we gently trace Turner's incredible journey, from breaking barriers in rock with the Ike and Tina Turner Revue to her powerful, record-shattering solo comeback. With her unmistakable voice, electric stage presence, and a resilience that defined an era, Tina Turner became one of the best-selling artists of all time. As the pace slows, we reflect on her lasting legacy and the strength, talent, and heart that continue to inspire generations, perfect company for a peaceful night’s sleep.
Chapters
- 00:01 - Introduction to Sleep With Rockstars
- 06:45 - The Early Life of Tina Turner
- 11:19 - The Transformation to Tina Turner
- 19:36 - Mainstream Success: The Rise of Ike and Tina Turner
- 29:18 - The Turning Point: Tina's Solo Journey Begins
Links
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tina_Turner
Mentioned in This Episode
- Ike and Tina Turner
- Sue Records
- Warner Brothers Records
- Loma Records
- Modern Records
- Blue Thumb Records
- United Artists Records
- Cream Records
- Sammy Davis Jr
- Elvis Presley
- Cher
- Janis Joplin
- Rolling Stones
- Anna Mae Bullock
- Nutbush
- Knoxville
- St. Louis
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Transcript
Speaker A
00:00:00.240 - 00:30:03.600
Hey y'. All.
Welcome to Sleep With Rockstars, the Gen X Sleep podcast that helps you unwind with a calm, mellow reading from Wikipedia about the music we still love. I'm your host Sloan Spencer, here to help you let the day go and drift off.
Before we start, take a second to like rate and review the show and make sure you subscribe wherever you listen. It's quick, it helps a lot and it keeps the good vibes coming. Now get comfortable. Take a slow breath in and out. Let your thoughts settle.
No need to fix anything, check anything or scroll anything. Don't even say anything. Just listen. Let the sound, the story and the music of our generation ease you toward rest. This is Sleep With Rock Stars.
You deserve a good night's sleep. Or whatever. This is Sleep With Rockstars, the Gen X Sleep podcast because you deserve a good night's sleep or whatever.
Tonight we'll Sleep with Tina Turner Tina Turner, born Anna Mae Bullock November 26, 1939 through May 24, 2023, was a singer, songwriter, actress and author. Dubbed the Queen of Rock and Roll, she broke both racial and gender barriers in rock music and became a dominant figure in popular culture.
Known for her vocal prowess and stage presence, Turner is one of the best selling music artists of all time. With estimated sales of over 100 million records worldwide.
Turner rose to prominence in the 1960s as the lead vocalist of the husband wife duo Ike and Tina Turner, known for their explosive live performances with the I Cats and Kings of Rhythm. After years of marital abuse, she ended her personal and professional relationship with Ike Turner in the 1970s and embarked on a solo career.
She made a comeback with her multi platinum fifth solo album Private Dancer 1984, whose single what's Love Got to Do with it won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year and became her only number one hit on the Billboard Hot Hundred.
Her worldwide chart success continued with the top 10 singles better be Good To Me, Private Dancer, We Don't Need Another Hero, Thunderdome, Typical Male and I Don't Want to Fight.
Turner's Break Every Rule World Tour became the highest grossing tour by a female artist of the 1980s and set a Guinness World Record for the then largest paying audience in a concert, 180,000.
Her success as a live performer continued with the Wildest Dreams Tour, the first tour by a woman to earn a hundred million dollars and the 247 tour, the highest grossing tour of 2000. In 2009 she retired from performing after completing the Tina 50th anniversary tour.
As an actress, Turner appeared in the feature films Tommy Mad Beyond Thunderdome, 1985 and Last Action Hero, 1993. Her life was dramatized in the biographical film what's Love Got to do with it, 1993, based on her autobiography I Tina My Life Story, 1986.
She was also the subject of the jukebox musical Tina 2018 and the documentary film Tina Turner received 12 Grammy Awards, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and three Grammy hall of Fame inductions. Rolling Stone ranked her among the greatest artists and greatest singers of all time.
She was the first Black artist and first woman to appear on the COVID of Rolling Stone and was the first female Black artist to win an MTV Award. Turner has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
She was inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of Fame along with Ike Turner and in 1991 and was later inducted as a solo artist in 2021. Turner was also a 2005 recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors.
In 2013, Turner relinquished her U.S. citizenship and became a citizen of Switzerland, where she died in goosenacht in in 2023. Early life Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26, 1939 in Brownsville, Tennessee.
She was the youngest daughter of Floyd Richard Bullock and his wife, Zelma Priscilla Nay Curry.
The family lived in the rural unincorporated community of Nutbush, Tennessee, where Bullock's father worked as an overseer of the sharecroppers at Poindexter farm on Highway 180. She later recalled picking cotton with her family at an early age. Bullock was African American.
She believed she had a significant amount of Native American ancestry until she participated in the PBS series African American Lives 2 with Henry Louis Gates Jr. Gates shared her genealogical DNA test estimates and traced her family timeline. Bullock had two older sisters, Evelyn Juanita Curry and Ruby Elaine Bullock, a songwriter.
She was the first cousin once removed of bluesman Eugene Bridges.
As young children, the three sisters were separated when their parents relocated to Knoxville, Tennessee to work at a defense facility during World War II.
Bullock went to stay with her strict religious paternal grandparents and Alex and Roxanna Bullock, who were deacon and deaconess at the Woodlawn Missionary Baptist Church. After the war, the sisters reunited with their parents and moved with them to Knoxville.
Two years later, the family returned to Nutbush to live in the Flag Grove community where Bullock attended Flag Grove Elementary School from first through eighth grade. As a young girl, Bullock enjoyed singing and acting, and she often performed in the streets for change so she could go to the movies.
She sang in the church choir at Nutbush's Spring Hill Baptist Church.
In 1950, when Bullock was 11, her mother, Zelma, left the family without warning, seeking freedom from her abusive relationship with Floyd by relocating to St. Louis. Two years after her mother left the family, her father remarried another woman and moved to Detroit.
Bullock and her sisters were sent to live with their maternal grandmother, Georgiana Curry, in Brownsville, Tennessee. She stated in her autobiography, I Tina, that she felt her parents did not love her and that she was not wanted.
Zelma had planned to leave Floyd but stayed once she became pregnant, Bullock recalled. She was a very young woman who didn't want another kid.
As a teenager, Bullock worked as a domestic worker for the Henderson family in Ripley, Tennessee.
She was at the Henderson house when she was notified that her half sister Evelyn had died in a car crash alongside her cousins Margaret Curry and Vella Evans. However, Evans survived the car crash with injuries.
A self professed tomboy, Bullock joined both the cheerleading squad and the female basketball team at Carver High School in Brownsville and socialized every chance she got. When Bullock was 16, her grandmother died, so she went to live with her mother in St. Louis. She graduated from Sumner High School in 1958.
After high school, Bullock worked as a nurse's aide at Barnes Jewish Hospital. Ike and Tina Turner Origins 1956 through 1959 Bullock and her sister began to frequently attend nightclubs in St. Louis and East St. Louis.
She first saw Ike Turner perform with his band, the Kings of Rhythm at the Club Manhattan in East St. Louis. Bullock was impressed by his talent, recalling that she almost went into a trance watching him play.
She asked Turner to let her sing in his band despite the fact that few women had ever sung with him. Turner said he would call her, but never did.
One night in 1956, Bullock got hold of the microphone from Kings of Rhythm drummer Eugene Washington during an intermission and she sang the B.B. king Blues Ballad, you Know I love you. Upon hearing Bullock sing, Ike Turner asked her if she knew more songs.
She sang the rest of the night and became a featured vocalist with his band. During this period, he taught her the finer points of vocal control and and performance.
Bullock's first recording was in 1958 under the name Little Anne on the single Box Top. She is credited as a vocalist on the record alongside Ike and fellow Kings of Rhythm singer Carlson Oliver.
Early success 1960 through 1965 In 1960, Ike Turner wrote A Fool in Love for singer Art Lassiter. Bullock was to sing background with Lasseter's backing vocalists, the Artets.
Lasseter failed to show up for the recording session at Technosonic Studios. Since Turner had already paid for the studio time, Bullock suggested that she sing the lead.
He decided to use Bullock to record a demo with the intention of erasing her vocals and adding Lassiters at a later date. Local St. Louis disc jockey Dave Dixon convinced Turner to send the tape to Juggie Murray, president of R B label Sue Records.
Upon hearing the song, Murray was impressed with Bullock's vocals, later stating that Tina sounded like screaming dirt. It was a funky sound. Murray bought the track and paid Turner a $25,000 advance for the recording and publishing rights.
Murray also convinced Turner to make Bullock the star of the show. Turner responded by renaming Bullock Tina because it rhymed with Sheena. He was inspired by Sheena, Queen of the Jungle and Naoka, the Jungle Girl.
To create her stage Persona, Turner added his last name and trademarked the name Tina Turner as a form of protection. His idea was that if Bullock left him as his previous singers had, he could replace her with another Tina Turner.
However, family and friends still called her Ann. Bullock was introduced to the public as Tina Turner with the single A Fool in Love in July 1960.
It reached number two on the Hot R B sides chart and number 27 on the Billboard Hot hundred.
Journalist Kurt Loder described the track as the blackest record to ever creep into the white pop charts since Ray Charles gospel style what Did I say that previous summer.
Another single from the duo, it's Gonna Work out fine, reached number 14 on the Hot 102 on the R&B chart in 1961, earning them a Grammy nomination for Best Rock and Roll Performance. Other singles Ike and Tina Turner, released between 1960 and 1962 included the RB hits I Idolize you, Poor fool and TRA La La La.
After the release of A Fool in Love, Ike Turner created the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, which included the Kings of Rhythm and a girl group, the Ikettes, as backing vocalists and dancers. He remained in the background as the bandleader.
Ike put the entire review through a rigorous touring schedule across the United States, performing 90 days straight in venues around the country.
During the days of the chitlin circuit, the Ike and Tina Turner Revue built a reputation as one of the hottest, most durable, and potentially most explosive of all RB ensembles, rivaling the James Brown Review in terms of musical spectacle. Due to their profitable performances, they were able to perform in front of desegregated audiences in Southern clubs and hotels.
Between 1963 and 1965, the band toured constantly and produced moderately successful R B singles.
Tina Turner's first credited single as a Solo artist Too Many Ties that Bind Slush We Need An Understanding was released from Ike Turner's label, Sonia Records in 1964. Another single by the duo, you Can't Miss Nothing that you Never had reached number 29 on the billboard R and B chart.
After their tenure at Sue Records, the duo signed with more than 10 labels during the remainder of the decade, including Kent Senko, Tangerine, Pompeii, A and M and a minute. In 1964 they signed to Warner Brothers Records and Bob Grass now became their manager on the Warner Bros. Label.
They achieved their first charting album with Live the Ike and Tina Turner show, peaking at number eight on the Billboard Hot R&B LP chart in February 1965. Their singles tell Her I'm Not Home, released on Loma Records, and Goodbye so Long, released on Modern Records, were top rb hits in 1965.
Tina Turner's profile was raised after several solo appearances on shows such as American Bands, Tint and Shindig, while the entire review appeared on Hollywood A go go.
In 1965, music producer Phil Spector attended an Ike and Dina Turner show at a club on the Sunset Strip, and he invited them to appear in the concert film the Big TNT Show. Mainstream success 1966 through 1975 Impressed by the duo's performance on the Big TNT Show, Phil Spector was eager to produce Tina Turner.
Working out a deal with Ike and Tina Turner's manager, Bob Krasnow, who was also the head of Loma, Spector offered $20,000 for creative control over the sessions to produce Turner and have Ike and Tina Turner released from their contract with Loma. They signed to Specter's Phil's label in April 1966 after Tina Turner had already recorded with him.
Their first single on his label, River Deep Mountain High, was released in May 1966. Spector considered that record, with Turner's maximum energy over the wall of sound to be his best work.
It was successful overseas, reaching number three on the UK Singles chart and number one on Los Cuatro Cerro Principales in Spain, but it failed to go any higher than number 88 on the Billboard Hot Hundred. The impact of the record gave Ike and Tina Turner an opening spot on the Rolling Stones UK tour in the fall of 1966.
In November 1967, Turner became the first female artist and the first black artist to appear on the COVID of Rolling Stone magazine. The duo signed with Blue thumb Records in 1968, releasing the album out of season in 1969.
The album produced their charted cover of Otis Redding's I've Been Loving you too long. Later that year, they released the Hunter album.
The title track, Albert King's the Hunter, earned Turner a Grammy nomination for best Female R and B Vocal performance.
The success of the albums led to the review headlining in Las Vegas, where their shows were attended by a variety of celebrities including Sly Stone, Janis Joplin, Cher, James Brown, Ray Charles, Elton John and Elvis Presley.
Sammy Davis Jr. Was particularly fond of Turner, and after she filmed an episode of the Name of the Game with him in Las Vegas, he surprised her with a Jaguar XJ6. As the decade came to an end, Ike and Tina Turner began performing at music festivals.
Tina Turner's fashion evolved...
