12/09/2025
I don't know who needs this encouragement today but here we go. Read and be encouraged.
She had 36 cents.
He had everything else.
And one midnight dash across a freeway changed the history of rock and roll.
Dallas. July 1976.
A hotel room thick with terror.
For 16 years, Ike Turner controlled every inch of Tina:
Her voice.
Her money.
Her body.
Her soul.
Bruises hidden under sequins.
A jaw broken behind closed doors.
Performances done with blood in her mouth and terror in her eyes.
The audience saw sparkle.
She lived in a cage.
Then—finally—she thought one thought louder than fear:
The way out is through the door.
So she walked.
Then she ran.
Barefoot.
Across a Dallas freeway.
Semi-trucks screaming past her.
She didn’t look back.
In her pocket: 36 cents and a gas card.
On her body: the clothes she escaped in.
In her heart: one wild, burning hope.
She checked into a Ramada Inn.
Called her manager.
Filed for divorce.
In the courtroom, Ike demanded everything:
💰 All the money
🎙 All the music
🏠 All the property
📀 All the master recordings
Tina asked for one thing:
“I want my name.”
Not Anna Mae Bullock.
Not what he created.
Tina Turner.
That name was her only armor.
Her only currency.
Her second chance.
And she walked out with absolutely nothing… except herself.
Everyone wrote her off.
“Too old.”
“Too Black.”
“Too abused.”
“Too finished.”
She played bars, lounges, anywhere they’d have her.
She paid off Ike’s debts.
She chanted her Buddhist prayers.
She rebuilt from ashes.
And then…
Fire caught wind.
1983 — Let’s Stay Together.
A spark.
1984 — Private Dancer.
An explosion.
Grammy Awards.
World tours.
Number-one hits.
At 44, Tina Turner didn’t just come back—
she conquered.
The Queen of Rock & Roll
selling out the same stadiums as the Stones,
then doing it bigger.
A Black woman in her 40s
standing at the very top of a world
that once laughed in her face.
But the real miracle wasn’t fame.
It was love.
She met Erwin Bach —
a kind, quiet German music executive
16 years younger.
He didn’t want to own her.
He didn’t want to clip her wings.
He just loved her.
“He’s never been intimidated by me.
He’s my partner in everything.”
When her kidneys failed in 2017—
after the world had taken so much from her—
Erwin gave.
He gave his kidney
so she could live.
From a man who broke her bones
to a man who gave her one of his.
That kidney gave her seven more years:
Gardens.
Peace.
Sunlight over Lake Zurich.
A home that was finally safe.
May 2023.
She passed at 83.
Quietly.
Loved.
Free.
Born to sharecroppers in Nutbush, Tennessee.
Ran from hell with pocket change.
Became global royalty.
They counted her out in her 30s.
She became the biggest rock star in her 40s.
She walked away with nothing.
She built everything.
Tina Turner:
Simply the best.
Better than all.
Forever.
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