Everything Nice And Rough

Tina Turner is passed away yesterday, in her home 83.

It was about this time forty years ago that radio programmers were asking “Tina who?“

I mean, she popped on on “oldies” radio.

She had some staples there, in fact:

But Turner was…

…well, in her forties. No woman in the Billboard Chart era had ever had a #1 hit at anywhere near her age.

And so everyone – me included – was kind of gobsmacked when perhaps the greatest comeback in the history of popular music happened about this time forty years ago; 43 year old Tina Turner climbed back from R&B obscurity to the top of the charts – the oldest woman to ever top the Billboard charts at the time, with a series of songs from “Private Dancer”, an album cut with a who’s who of the best sidemen in the business:

The story of the intervening years was a catalog of horrors…

…literally the stuff of movies. If you’re not aware of the, uh, turbulence in Turner’s life from 1960 to 1976…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EVwA_BrRnA

…the movie is one of the better music biopics ever.

Anyway – I loved a lot of things about Tina Turner – but perhaps most of all, the fact that Turner danced with the one that brung her, as it were – she never forgot the sheer power of a hot, fast, sweaty rave-up.

Rest in peace, Tina Turner.