"All of those blues singers sounded like dirt. Tina sounded like screaming dirt."
/ Juggy Murray (co-founder of R&B label Sue Records) on Tina Turner /
"Screaming dirt" - is there any higher praise? Born on this day: the incomparably fierce raspy-voiced “bold soul sister” described over the decades as "the woman God put on earth to show other women how to dance in high heels” and by both Playboy and Look magazines as “like a lioness in heat”, Nutbush, Tennessee’s finest export, personification of grit, sensuality and glamour, the Mojo Queen herself – the glorious Miss Tina Turner (née Anna Mae Bullock, 26 November 1939 – 24 May 2023)! In his 2019 collection of essays Mr Know-It-All, undisputed Pope of Trash John Waters declares “Ike and Tina Turner were the best soul group ever” and I am in complete agreement. Pictured: portrait of embryonic young starlet Tina by Chuck Stewart during the photo-shoot for Ike and Tina’s 1963 Don’t Play Me Cheap album. “There she was, my new goddess, posing like a honky-tonk showgirl in a ratty mink coat” is how Waters describes Tina looking on the front cover of the Turner’s 1962 album Dyanmite!, but it also applies here, too. That smouldering expression! Those incredible lacquered, almost devilish eyebrows! “It was a huge influence on Divine and I, Tina Turner,” Waters would tell Sight & Sound magazine in 2015. In this pic, you can see why. Tina Turner was a woman and a half! Pic via the essential resource ikeandtinaturner.
