Looking back at the long career of Tina Turner, who passed away a few days ago at the age of 84, we immediately see two major crossroads she faced: one at the age of 17 and the other at the age of 37. At both of these intersections stands one man: the great musician and producer Ike Turner. And the story of this great diva, virtuoso striding with her imposing physique on the border of white and black music, sharp avant-garde and the rest of the train, darkness and renaissance, got its unexpected start in the American South. and in the Tennessee Delta, where she was born shortly before the war, in 1939, as Ann Bullock.

The war was raging, and America was already drawn into it when her parents moved to Knoxville to work in a defense factory. Thus, little Ann and her two sisters found themselves under the care of their grandparents, who raised them in a conservative, religious environment. Ann sang in church choirs from an early age. When her grandmother died, she went to live with her mother in the big city of St. Louis, where she finished school and worked as a nurse.

At the age of 17, the voice that she practiced in the church choir from a young age was fortunate enough to be heard by one of the most influential musicians and producers in the history of soul and rhythm and blues, Ike Turner. . It was 1956, the time when Ann and her sister went out in the evenings and “hung out” in the concert halls of St. Louis, teeming with music and nightlife.

At one of the city’s famous nightclubs, the Manhattan Club, Ike met “Little Ann”, as she was called, by chance. And in the most auspicious way, his musical career of epic proportions began. While the group was taking a break, “Little Ann” went to the microphone to sing something in the background, and her performance caught the attention of Turner, who took her to his place and, teaching her, involved the recordings in the game.

With his help, in 1958, at the age of 19, she recorded the song “Boxtop” with his band, but her career really took off the following year when the singer for the new song, hired by Turner, never showed up in the studio. Little Ann agreed to fill in the gap. When the record company owner heard the recording, he remarked that what he heard was like “screaming dirt”, and indeed, her voice was reminiscent of James Brown’s violent woman.

The producer, when he heard her, said that she sounded like “screaming dirt”, and indeed, her voice was reminiscent of the furious female voice of James Brown.

The record was a major commercial success, and music critic Kurt Lauder (who would co-write her biography years later) wrote that it was “the blackest record ever to hit the white charts”. To tie in with the recording, Ann Bullock, following Turner’s idea, became Tina, and their duet was named “Ike and Tina Turner”.

A star began to rise in the sky, but, as is usually the case, everything was not so bright. Along with the great Ike Turner, he made great music and established himself as an artist, and although they weren’t a couple at first, they eventually married, creating an explosive chemistry between them.

Their cannibalistic relationship, however, often cast a shadow over their own art, and Ike’s outbursts of anger, which she experienced and endured for a number of years, wrote her own dark history that almost “blackened” her bright star. In the mid-70s, she ran away from Ike, then still addicted to cocaine, and divorced. The second time, at the second major crossroads of her life, stood Hayk. The first time he entered her life, and now he was leaving.

In the early 80s, when her career seemed to be over, she again managed to reach the sky alone, without the musical giant Ike by her side. In 1983, he covered Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” to great commercial success, which led to a recording deal with Capitol Records, Private Dancer selling ten million copies. Of her performance on this record, the Los Angeles Times wrote that her voice “melts vinyl”. Hits followed one after another: in 1985, he performed the main theme of the third film in the epic “Mad Max” “We don’t need another hero”, again conquering the world charts.

In 1986 and 1989 he released two more albums, which also became world hits, and in 1991 he released the famous “Simply the Best”. This was the time when “Little Ann” from the Tennessee Delta filled stadiums and stood on top of the world. And there she remained until the last years of her life, during which she had already managed to become a permanent resident and citizen of Switzerland. The awards and accolades he has received make a long list – among them we highlight 12 Grammy Awards and the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors.

However, her supreme power and magnificence seems to lie in the one and only recording she made with the great producer Phil Spector in 1966 on the song “River Deep, Mountain High”, which he wrote especially for her. Listening to him, we are amazed at her ferocious performance, dominating and sliding over heavy instruments, as if it were the voice of a nature deity, heard through thundering lightning and crashing waves. In this musical celebration, we understand why she was called the “Queen of Rock and Roll”.