2023’s Music Losses “Top” Ten: Tina Turner (#8)

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Ugh. I hate early appointments. I came home after the appointment and went back to bed. Yes, I’m just rolling out again after noon. I also don’t like the fact that we had to say goodbye to these greats in music last year. Here’s another from the list of my ten favorites who passed away in 2023. #8: Tina Turner Here’s just how good Tina Turner was: after she went to town on “Proud Mary” most people thought that Creedence Clearwater Revival’s original version was the cover! Dang, that woman could sing. Tina was a survivor. As much as her music career, she was famous for being a brutally abused wife, at the hands of then-husband Ike. If we had a “people of honor” hall of fame, she’d be in it for taking the courageous step to run away from her abuser. (I’m sure you’ve heard the story that, after he beat her for the last time, she fled with a gas credit card, 36 cents, and the clothes and bruises she was wearing.) But she was also a tornado of talent. If you watch her performances in the 60s and 70s, or her scene-stealing role as the Acid Queen in the film version of Tommy, you can see the energy she conveyed. Man, you can lose three pounds just watching her! In the early 80s she returned gloriously with the album Private Dancer and solidified her place in music and women’s history. She continued to act as well, appearing in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Tina had a variety of illnesses as she grew older, including renal failure, a stroke, high blood pressure, and cancer. The effects of battling those various illnesses took her life on May 24, 2023. In Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome she sang, “We Don’t Need Another Hero.” No woman wants to be a “hero” for the abused but she filled the bill adequately. And dang, that woman could sing. Tina Turner Born Anna Mae Bullock November 26, 1939 - May 24, 2023 (age 83) HALL OF FAME: Rock and Roll, 1991 (Ike & Tina Turner) and 2021 (solo) Tina’s blazing song “Better Be Good to Me”: