Tina Turner

Turner was known as a consummate professional when it came to recording. Rupert Hine, who did songwriting and production work on three of her '80s albums, told Songfacts: "She's extremely special and I've never ever witnessed such a one-take wonder as Tina Turner. And that's because she approaches things in such a diligent way and she 'owns the song' - that's the phrase she used to use, which basically means she sings along with it at home. I give her a songwriter's demo and then she'll sing it in her key. And then the point where she sings along with the tape and she feels she's got it, it's now her song. Then she'll call me up and say, 'Okay, it's my song now. I'm ready.' Then I literally go and pick her up, take her to the studio, and with not even a cup of tea or any sort of small talk, she'll go straight up to the microphone and give it one take. She'd be professionally happy to give you as many takes as you'd like, but you don't need it. The one take is just extraordinary. And if you ask her how she does that, she says, 'I do it the same way I do all my live vocals. When I go up and stand in front of a quarter of a million people in Brazil and sing at one concert, each song I only sing once.'"

Her real name was Anna Mae Bullock. Ike Turner convinced her to change it; he liked the name Tina because it sounded like "Sheena," who was queen of the jungle. She took the name when they started performing together in 1960, but she and Ike didn't get married until 1962.

She was born and raised in rural Nutbush, Tennessee, subject of her song "Nutbush City Limits." She was raised mostly by relatives; her mother left for St. Louis when Tina was 11, and her dad took off when she was 13. When she was 16, Tina moved in with her mom in St. Louis, where she met the musicians Raymond Hill and Ike Turner at the Club Manhattan. She started performing with them at the club and had an affair with Hill that produced her first son, Craig, in 1958. She ten took up with Turner; they had a son, Ronnie, in 1960 and married in 1962, with Turner also raising Ike's two children from a previous marriage. She left Ike in 1976 after years of abuse.