Tina Turner, The Great Survivor | Culture

Tina Turner died on Wednesday in her adopted country of Switzerland. The 83-year-old singer had suffered from a series of serious illnesses which even led her to consider resorting to assisted suicide. We want to imagine that in the end he chose to resist and fight.

Tina was essentially a survivor. Born in 1939, Anna Mae Bullock left behind her life in rural South Tennessee when she settled with her mother in St. Louis, Missouri. She went from singing in church to frequenting the night clubs of the city. There she met Ike Turner, leader of the Kings of Rhythm in 1957, with whom she began singing. Ike was a veteran who made a living in a difficult business that always bordered on illegality; He understood that there was some vein in Tina’s acting and he made her his wife in 1962.

Like Ike and Tina Turner, He Racked Up Chart-Topping Hits rhythm and bluesThat is, in the African-American market. The move by Ike, who preferred to jump between record companies, did not help establish them as leading figures. However, in 1966 she accepted an offer to record with producer Phil Spector, who really only wanted to work with Tina. The result was an erotic theme, deep river, high mountain, which failed in the United States but had an impact in Europe. In the UK, Tina became a cult artist. The allure of Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart or David Bowie will lead to his arrival Mainstream,

The Rolling Stones hired Ike and Tina Turner for their 1969 US tour: white audiences gasped at the turbocharged sensuality of Tina and her dancers, the Iketes. Ike, who rarely thought beyond the short term, understood it was time to establish himself in the rock market. They did it with banging versions of hits like proud Mary (Credence Clearwater Revival) and come together (The Beatles), in addition to original songs such as nutbush city limitsA Tina creation that celebrated her origins.

What Tina kept quiet about: Life with Ike, a cocaine addict, was hell. And he himself caught the evil of the environment, acting in episodes of jealous violence. By 1976 she left Ike in Dallas (Texas) and filed for divorce. This would be central to the autobiography he composed, which would later be reflected in biopic -where she was played by Angela Bassett- and in the musical tub,

He had to start all over again and accept all kinds of food lyrics, flirt disco music and are surrounded by night clubs or, to his eternal shame, in South Africa Apartheid. It was not easy: exactly on this day, in 1979, he made his debut in Spain with a concert at the Palacio de los Deportes in Barcelona… which he did not fill (he would return more often, already with public success ).

That same year, he married Roger Davis, a Manager The Australian who developed a clever plan to boost his career. She signed with multinational Capitol Records and dedicated herself to producing albums with songs selected to highlight her image as a sensual and empowered woman; To guarantee the power of his offer, he had different manufacturers covered by techno pop to rock. your album private Dancer (1984) would sell millions and be the prototype for a new way of understanding broad-spectrum pop, later imitated in the releases of Whitney Houston and other Divas.

It dominated the airwaves and stages during the eighties and nineties. The truth is that she didn’t stop: she signed duets with her British fans and she appeared powerfully in a film of the saga mad Max, and he rebuilt his life with a record executive, the German Erwin Bach, with whom he shared Buddhist beliefs. She retired from it in 2000, although she would still perform in a farewell tour for him in 2008. By then, she was already living in Switzerland, a country that was good to her. In gratitude for that, in 2013 she became a naturalized Swiss and renounced her US citizenship.