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1-9 of 9
- Music Artist
- Actress
- Composer
With almost fifty years in the music business, Tina Turner became one of the most commercially successful international female rock stars. Her sultry, powerful voice, her incredible legs, her time-tested beauty and her unforgettable story all contributed to her legendary status.
Born to a share-cropping family in the segregated South, Anna Mae Bullock and her elder sister were abandoned by their sparring parents early on. After her grandmother's death, she eventually moved to St. Louis, Missouri to reunite with her mother. This opened up a whole new world of R&B nightclubs to the precocious 16-year-old. Called up to sing onstage with Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm in 1956, she displayed a natural talent for performing which the bandleader was keen to develop. Soon, Anna Mae's aspirations of a nursing career were forgotten and she began to hang around with the group. When the singer booked to record "A Fool in Love" failed to turn up for the session, Ike drafted Anna Mae to provide the vocal with the intention of removing it later. However, once he heard her spine-tingling performance of the song, he soon changed his plans. He changed her name to Tina Turner, and when the record became a hit, Tina became a permanent fixture in Ike's band and his quest for international stardom. One thing led to another: they were married in Mexico after the births of Tina's two sons - the first a result of an earlier relationship with a musician, the second with Ike.
Before too long, the Ike and Tina Turner Revue was tearing up large and small R&B and soul venues throughout the early and mid-1960s. The hits were relatively few, but the unsurpassed energy and excitement generated by the live stage show, primarily Tina, made the Revue a solid touring act, along with the likes of James Brown and Ray Charles. Their greatest attempt to "cross over" came in 1966 with the historic recording of the Phil Spector production, "River Deep, Mountain High". While it was a commercial flop in the United States, it was a monster hit in Europe - and the start of Tina's European superstar status, which never faded during her long stint of relative obscurity in America in the late 1970s. The Revue entered that decade as a top touring and recording act, with Tina becoming more and more recognized as the star power behind the group's international success. Ike, while having been justly described as an excellent musician, a shrewd businessman and the initial "brains" behind the Revue, was also described (by Tina and others) as a violent, drug-addicted wife-beater who was not above frequently knocking Tina (and other women) around both publicly and privately. Despite hits such as "Proud Mary" and Tina's self-penned "Nutbush City Limits", further mainstream success eluded the group and Ike blamed Tina. After years of misery and a failed suicide attempt, Tina finally had enough in July 1976, when she fled the marriage (and the Revue) with the now-famous 36 cents and a Mobil gasoline credit card.
Tina, nearing 40, endured a long and, at times, humiliating trek back to superstardom through working many substandard gigs and performing a repertoire of current Top 40 hits and old Ike & Tina tunes in hotel ballrooms and supper clubs. She later admitted she was having the time of her life at this point, simply putting together her own show and performing. She refused to wrangle for a settlement from the divorce, despite being in huge debt to all the tour promoters she had let down by fleeing the Revue. After an appearance on Olivia Newton-John: Hollywood Nights (1980), Tina - in a wise business move - persuaded Newton-John's management team to take her on. With Roger Davies at her side, Tina's profile began to rise, and performances alongside the likes of Rod Stewart and The Rolling Stones introduced her to the rock market she so wanted to pursue.
The European release of her cover of Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" in 1983 was a major turning point in Tina's career. The record hit #6 on the British chart, and Capitol Records were soon demanding a full album. "Private Dancer" was hurriedly produced in England in two weeks flat. The rest is rock and roll history. The next single - "What's Love Got to Do with It?" - became Tina's first #1 single the following year, and the album hung around the Top 10 for months, spawning two further hits. At the 1985 Grammy Awards, her astonishing comeback was recognized with nominations in the rock, R&B and pop categories and rewarded with four trophies. After that time, the successes just kept coming: a starring role in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985); duets with Bryan Adams, David Bowie, Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger amongst others; several sell-out world tours; a string of hit albums and awards; a bestselling autobiography, "I, Tina"; and the blockbuster biopic What's Love Got to Do with It (1993) chronicling her life.
After her "Twenty Four Seven Millenium Tour" in 2000, Tina announced she would retire from the concert stage, but continue to record and play live on a smaller scale. Four years later, at age 65, she released a career retrospective entitled "All the Best" featuring new recordings, and reached #2 in the American album chart, her highest ever placing for an album there. She ended 2005 as one of five recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors, the highest form of recognition of excellence in the arts in America. Despite changing the direction of her working life, she will always be remembered as a dynamic live performer and recording artist, able to thrill audiences like no other woman in music history. Tina Turner is the undisputed Queen of Rock and Roll.- Music Department
- Casting Department
- Soundtrack
Patsy Bruce was born on 8 March 1940 in Brownsville, Tennessee, USA. She is known for American Honey (2016), Catch and Release (2006) and W. (2008). She was married to Ed Bruce. She died on 16 May 2021 in the USA.- Director
- Actor
- Writer
Harold M. Shaw was born on 3 November 1877 in Brownsville, Tennessee, USA. He was a director and actor, known for The Rose of Rhodesia (1918), Thoroughbreds All (1919) and The Incomparable Mistress Bellairs (1914). He was married to Edna Flugrath. He died on 30 January 1926 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- American novelist and travel writer Richard Halliburton was born in Brownsville, TN, in 1900. His family moved to Memphis, TN, when he was an infant, and he grew up there. His parents sent him to the exclusive Lawrence Preparatory School in Lawrenceville, NJ, when he was 15. Graduating in 1917 he enrolled in Princeton University in Princeton, NJ. Leaving Princeton in 1918, he traveled to New Orleans, LA, signed up to be a crew member on a freighter and went to sea. He traveled around Europe and the US before returning to Princeton, from which he graduated in 1921. He wrote a book about his travels, called "The Royal Road to Romance", which was published in 1925. Both this book and his next one, "The Glorious Adventure"--about his adventures in Greece, where he climbed Mt. Olympus, followed the travels of Ulysses and swam the Hellespont--became best sellers, cementing his status as a prominent travel writer. He later journeyed to South America, Africa--he flew his own plane from Hollywood to Timbuktu, Mali--the Indian subcontinent (he climbed Mt. Everest) and southeast Asia.
On March 4, 1939, he set out from Hong Kong, China, on a mission to sail a Chinese junk from there to San Francisco, CA. Three weeks later a passing ocean liner saw the ship about 1200 miles from Midway Island, in typhoon-racked seas with 40-foot-high waves. Neither Halliburton nor the ship were ever seen again. It is believed that it sank in the typhoon shortly after it was spotted by the liner. Halliburton was declared legally dead by a US court in October of that year. - Soundtrack
One doesn't usually associate a mandolin with a blues musician, but that's what Yank Rachell played, and he played it with such legendary blues artists as John Estes (aka Sleepy John Estes) and Hambone Willie Newbern.
James "Yank" Rachell was born in 1910 in Brownsville, TX, and learned to play the mandolin as a child. As a youngster he played at events such as fish fries and house parties in the Brownsville area, where he began to accompany Newbern, and in the 1920s he met Estes and began a friendship that lasted until Estes' death in 1977. He left the music business full-time to tend to his farm in Brownsville shortly after the Depression hit in 1929, but didn't completely give up music, playing occasionally in the Brownsville area, and in 1930 he made some records with several blues legends, such as Sonny Boy Williamson and Elijah Jones.
In 1958 he and his wife moved to Indianapolis, IN, and he put his music career on hold. After his wife died in 1961 be re-entered the business, hooking up with Estes again to play not only in blues clubs but also in coffee houses, at colleges and in both blues and folk festivals. He played on several of Estes' records and even made a few of his own. When Estes died in 1977 he all but retired from the music industry, although he did play at the 1993 Chicago Blues Festival.- Clay Evans was born on 23 June 1925 in Brownsville, Tennessee, USA. He was married to Lutha Mae Hollingshed. He died on 27 November 2019 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Jank Rachell was born on 16 March 1910 in Brownsville, Tennessee, USA. He died on 9 April 1997 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA.
- Art Department
Dwayne Duncan was born on 25 September 1964 in Brownsville Tennessee. He is known for Black Snake Moan (2006). He has been married to Stacey Ann Duncan since 3 May 2008.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Paul Burlison was born on 4 February 1929 in Brownsville, Tennessee, USA. He was an actor, known for Sweet Dreams (1985), Urgh! A Music War (1981) and Iltatähti (1973). He died on 27 September 2003 in Horn Lake, Mississippi, USA.