Tina Turner: Singer, diva, fashion icon, trailblazer, dancer

When Tina Turner, who died aged 83, walked out on her abusive husband Ike in Dallas, Texas, she feared it would spell the end of her showbusiness career. It was 1976, and she had been performing with Ike for two decades. Yet, although she was desperate and had only 36 cents in her pocket, she was on her way to a renaissance as one of the most successful performers in popular music during the 1980s and 90s.

She had to endure several lean years, but a turning point came in 1983, when David Bowie told Capitol Records that she was his favourite singer. Turner cemented the upturn in her fortunes with the album Private Dancer. Driven by the hit What’s Love Got to Do With It? (her first American No 1), the album became a phenomenon, lodging itself in the American Top 10 for nine months and going on to sell more than 10m copies. Suddenly Turner was one of the biggest acts in an era of superstars such as

Michael Jackson, Dire Straits and Phil Collins.

Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock in Nutbush, Tennessee, to Zelma Currie, a factory worker, and her husband, Floyd Bullock, a Baptist deacon. Abandoned by their father and temporarily by their mother, in 1956 Annie and her elder sister, Alline, moved to St Louis, Missouri, where they encountered Ike Turner and his band the Rhythm Kings. Ike recruited her as one of his backing singers. It was in 1960 that Tina – who had by then changed her name – first sang a lead vocal with Ike’s band. A session singer failed to turn up, and Tina’s stand-in performance of A Fool in Love was a hit. Ike rebuilt his act around Tina, and christened it the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. They married in 1962.

Tina rapidly developed into a mesmerising performer, radiating raw sexuality and bludgeoning audiences with the unvarnished force of her voice. They began to pepper the charts with hits. However, Ike was a habitual womaniser, and developed a cocaine habit. This provoked violent outbursts against Tina, who, as she revealed in her autobiography, was beaten, burned with cigarettes and scalded with hot coffee.

After her split from Ike, Tina stayed with friends and was forced to survive on food stamps. When their divorce was finalised in 1978, she preferred to take no money or property from the settlement, to establish a complete break from her husband.

In 2013 she married Erwin Bach and gave up her American citizenship to become a Swiss citizen. In 2016 she was diagnosed with intestinal cancer, then suffered kidney failure. Her husband volunteered to give her one of his kidneys and a transplant operation was carried out successfully in 2017.

In 2021 she joined the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo performer and sold the rights to her music catalogue. Ready to retire fully, she bade farewell to her fans with the two-part HBO documentary Tina.