Tina Turner, legendary singer who evolved from R&B with husband Ike to rock superstardom – obituary

msn.com:

Ike Turner, however, was as bad a husband as he was good a songwriter. Violent, addictive and adulterous, he terrorised his wife until she walked out with only a young family and huge debts to show for 15 years at the top of the music industry.

Through sheer willpower, however, Tina Turner reinvented herself as a rock singer and slowly rebuilt her career by giving her all, in everything from McDonald’s sales conferences to grimy cabaret venues.

And then in 1984, aged 45, she released the album Private Dancer. It sold 11 million copies and established her as a global superstar and one of rock’s great survivors – and a symbol of female empowerment, for Tina Turner was a proud, strong, independent woman who overcame numerous setbacks to carve out a decades-long career in the music business, no mean achievement in that most brittle of industries.

Tina Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26 1939 in Nutbush, Tennessee. Her father was a cotton plantation manager and young Anna worked in the fields from an early age.