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What an achievement: Tina Turner, who died yesterday, had a musical career of around 60 years. A look at five early songs that were pivotal to her musical career.
«A Fool in Love» – prophetic words
“Mother, I know you don’t think he’s perfect, but in my eyes he is, I’ll make him happy.” When Tina Turner sings these words, she sounds wounded, while the three backing singers announce like a Greek choir that she is “a fool in love”.
Ike Turner wrote the lyrics. The words seem prophetic in retrospect: Decades later, it was revealed that Ike abused his wife.
When she recorded the song, Tina Turner was still called Anna Mae Bullock. Ike Turner published it under the new name «Ike & Tina Turner». When newly christened Tina Anna Mae expressed doubts about her new name, Ike slipped a shoe tree over her head. She stayed with him, a fool in love indeed.
Ike & Tina Turner – A Fool In Love (Youtube)
«I Idolize You» – a perfect soul piece about devotion
A perfect soul piece about devotion, even about adoration in love. Tina Turner sings the piece written by her husband with her usual intensity.
In view of the later revelations, this piece seems strange. On the outside, the image of a devoted relationship was played, but on the inside, Ike was overbearing.
«Proud Mary» – the most exciting cover song by Tina & Ike
Towards the end of the sixties, Ike & Tina Turner specialized in selected covers of rock celebrities from the Beatles to the Rolling Stones. None of these strangers is more exciting than Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary.”
The Turners take the California band’s rolling country rock and turn it into a two-part soul tune. The first part is lasciviously slow, the second part the outburst of a funky big band worthy of James Brown.
Ike & Tina Turner: Proud Mary live on Italian TV (Youtube)
«Nutbush City Limits» – a look inside Tina Turner’s southern village
Anna Mae Bullock was born in 1939 in Nutbush, Tennessee – a town of 300 people. In 1973, Tina Turner wrote a play about her hometown, and it became one of her biggest hits. A cutting guitar riff lays over a funky beat, plus brass and a synthesizer solo typical of the time.
Then that all-pervasive voice describing what this archetypal Southern village off Highway 19 looks like: “One church, one bar, one school, and one outhouse—that’s Nutbush. On Saturday we go shopping, on Sunday we go to church.”
A rarity: a text that triggers thoughts of escape – a piece to dance to.
Ike & Tina Turner: Nutbush City Limits (Youtube)
«What’s Love Got To Do With It» – the pop breakthrough
In the mid-1970s, Tina Turner had left her husband and had to perform at nostalgia concerts to survive. Then came the unexpected comeback. 1984 was Turner’s big year. The now 45-year-old managed to assert herself in the pop world against singers half her age.
A year after the comeback album “Private Dancer” she received three Grammies – two of them for “What’s Love Got To Do With It”. For anyone who knew the story of Ike & Tina Turner’s story, the song must have seemed autobiographical. For the others, it was a rock record that was produced in a modern way for the time and featured an outstanding singer.
Radio SRF 2 Kultur, culture news, May 25, 2023, 7 a.m.