RIP Tina Turner

[ilan]

Aged 83.

[Basvarken]

Sad news indeed.
Thank you for all the amazing music Tina Turner.
What a legend.

[morrow]

I saw her here in the mid 80's after her second career took off.
She was great.

[uwe]

That hits home. A true Diva.

[Rob]

Thank you Tina RIP

[gearHed289]

She was awesome. Part of my life since childhood, then the amazing 80s comeback. RIP

[uwe]

Like a lot of black women (unnecessarily so), Anna Mae never felt good about her hair and always wore wigs on stage (an ill-fitting one at the Midnight Special in 1973 if I may say so). There was nothing wrong with her hair.








I find that "Black anchor woman" look dated, no matter whether chemically straigtened (cancer!) or with a wig.





Notice how politically balanced I was in my choice of pictures?  That's why I can now innocently post a pic of  a black woman whose hairdo I find refreshing:



Blame my elder brother. He had a poster of Angela Davis in his room, I always thought her hot.





Not that an Afro like that doesn't require as much or even more maintenance than straightened black hair!  But at least it's not carcinogen.

[Ken]

Great post, Uwe.

[Basvarken]

Like a lot of black women (unnecessarily so), Anna Mae never felt good about her hair and always wore wigs on stage (an ill-fitting one at the Midnight Special in 1973 if I may say so). There was nothing wrong with her hair.

I read that Ike made her straighten and bleach her hear (because he had an obsession with a white Hollywood actress)
The hair became severy damaged and Tina was forced to wear a wig.

[slinkp]

RIP Tina. I am truly saddened by her loss. One of a kind, she earned her legendary status.
So much drama in her voice. She was like an actor-singer.

I always liked this song from the 80s (here the tempo is rather amped up but it seems to work in a stadium)

[uwe]

It's a stadium rock show alright (reminds me of the Stones ever since they became a stadium band with a plethora of extra musicians and singers), no two ways about it. A predominantly white audience, rock alumnis in the backing band (the right guitarist is John Miles, he of "Music" fame, on other tours ex-Wishbone Ash guitarist Laurie Wisefield was her musical director), the music is inoffensive mainstream AOR, not entirely different from what you would hear at a Bryan Adams or Bob Seger show, there is not really much funk, blues or soul in it (the frantic energy is a bit reminiscent of James Brown or Sam & Dave soul revues though). And Tina had a distinctive voice, but she was no Bessy, Billie, Ella, Aretha or Whitney.

But no matter, she delivered. And the way she rebuilt her career after ditching her abusive husband (who had his qualities as a musician) is commendable. While she had retired from live work for a while, it feels a bit like the end of an era to me.

[uwe]

I read that Ike made her straighten and bleach her hear (because he had an obsession with a white Hollywood actress)
The hair became severely damaged and Tina was forced to wear a wig.

I don't doubt that for a minute. The processes to uncurl (I think the euphemistic term for battering black hair into submission is "relaxing") must have surely been refined and become less hazardous from when Anna Mae was a young woman, but it still requires a lot of chemical and physical strain to be applied on the hair follicles. And there is of course the sad issue that it was only developed to comply with a perceived beauty standard set by the white world, i.e. to look "less African" and "savage".

There is a reason why only The Supremes of the 70ies could sport hair like this:



but to woo white radio and TV started out like this:

[westen44]

Tina Turner was in a league of her own. 

[uwe]

The cutest obituary I've read started with "The Swiss singer passed away on ..." and if you think about it, yeah, Switzerland had become her (not only) spiritual home. It's almost 5.000 miles from Nutbush to Küsnacht (near Zürich)



and Highway #19




doesn't even go there, but in the end Anna Mae had arrived. Together with her German husband Erwin.



I guess she was a Josephine Baker of sorts.

[patman]

It's good that she had a good life, apparently in the end.