Tina Turner is a living legend who’s brought joy to millions and millions of people for decades.

The singer will soon turn 83, and through the years she’s battled several life-threatening health issues.

Last year, a new film about Turner’s life was released. According to her husband, this will be the last we’ll see of her.

If there’s one person who deserves the moniker of the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll, it’s Tina Turner. The singer has had a very successful career, spanning over five decades, and has included her accumulating awards and accolades over and over again.

The Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll

Giving us songs like Private Dancer, What’s Love Got To Do, Proud Mary and so many more wonderful tunes, Turner can look back on her work with pride after turning 81 years of age.

Even though she’s had an amazing career, however, Tina Turner has been through many tragedies, the earliest of which occurred when she was a young child. She grew up without her parents, and throughout the years, she’s been forced to watch one of her son’s passing away, as well as having herself suffered numerous life-threatening health issues between 2013 and 2018.

In 2021, HBO released a new documentary about the legendary singer, and according to Tina’s husband Erwin Bach – who also appears in the documentary – Tina is using the movie as an opportunity to say goodbye to all of her fans worldwide. It will be the precursor to her disappearing completely from the public eye. 

This is the story of Tina Turner, a rock ‘n’ roll legend who will always have a special place in our hearts.

Tina Turner – early life

Tina Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock, on November 26, 1939 in Nutbush, Tennessee. Her parents – Floyd and Zelma Bullock – were sharecroppers, and so didn’t have a lot of money. Turner, though, recalls that hers was a very good early childhood.

“We were well-to-do farmers – that’s as close as I can get to explaining it. To me, it seemed as if we lived well,” Tina Turner recalled in an interview with Rolling Stone.

“My sister and I had our own room. Each season we’d get new clothes, and I was always fresh and neat, especially compared to a lot of other people around me.

“We were never hungry. Of course, we knew the difference between our family and, say, the daughters of schoolteachers – those people were educated. My parents weren’t, per se, but they had a lot of common sense and spoke well. We weren’t low-class people. In fact, my parents were church people; my father was a deacon in the church.”

Even though Tina Turner felt that her childhood in the rural town of Nutbush was nice, she went through a very tough period as a young kid.

Abandoned by her parents

Her mother abandoned her when she was 10-years of age, and three years later, Turner’s father also left. She explained that her parents fought all the time, and that they “didn’t love each other”.

Looking back on the events – that could’ve changed Turner’s life for the worst – she says that she never was close with her father, and didn’t really care that he left.

“My parents weren’t mine, and I wasn’t theirs, really, so when they left, it was as if they had always been gone as far as I was concerned,” she explained.

“If you ask my sister, Alline, you might get different answers because she might have been affected by it differently. Actually, I’ve never asked her what she thought about them leaving – isn’t that incredible?

“However, I chose them as parents, because, obviously, those experiences made me what I am today,” Turner said. (Since she’s a Buddhist, Tina Turner believes that we choose the parents through whom we enter our physical life).

As a teenager, Turner moved to St. Louis and reunited with her mother. It was in Missouri that her music career began.

Tina was very talented, and as a teenager, she immersed herself in the R&B scene in St Louis. She and her mother argued a lot, and as she described it herself, Turner became somewhat of a “rebel”.

Tina Turner – moving to St. Louis

During her teenage years, Tina also worked as a nurse’s assistant, looking after small children.

“My mother thought I would become either a nurse or a teacher, but in my heart of hearts, I knew those paths wouldn’t be mine,” she told HBR.

“I did love singing and dancing as a child, and everyone told me how much they enjoyed hearing me sing. But I never thought much of becoming a professional singer until I was older.”

Once in St. Louis, she spent a lot of her time at Club Manhattan, and in 1956, she’d meet a person that would change her life many times over.

Rock n’ Roll icon Ike Turner often played at the club, with the band Kings of Rhythm. Tina started to hang out with the group.

One day, the drummer set the microphone down in front of her, and when she started to sing, Ike came running up to her. The band came back and everyone heard the wonderful voice that Tina had.

She was the real star, and started to perform with the group. Soon, she was the main attraction that everyone wanted to see sing.

Ike made her change her name

Above all others, Ike Turner recognized the star potential in Tina.

“Ike recorded a demo, and I sang on it,” she said. “He wasn’t trying to sell my voice; he was trying to sell stuff as a producer. The record company said, “Why don’t you record it with the girl’s voice?” As a result, I became, officially, a professional performer. I was twenty, and my kid was about two.”

But Ike also wanted to change a pretty big part of Tina. At the time, she was still Anna Mae. But not for long.

“Ike’s problem was that he was a musician that always wanted to be a star, and he was a star locally but never internationally,” Tina Turner told Oprah Winfrey.

“So he then changed the name to Ike and changed my name to Tina, because if I ran away, Tina was his name. It was patented. So he could own me.”