Anna Mae Bullock from Nutbush, Tennessee. She met Ike Turner at a St. Louis club in 1957, and he gave her the stage name Tina, the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, and a decade of beatings. The hits were real -- A Fool in Love, River Deep - Mountain High, Proud Mary -- and so were the bruises. Ike controlled the money, the bookings, and her body. She stayed for 16 years.

In 1976, in a Dallas hotel room, Ike beat her before a show. She waited until he fell asleep, then walked out with 36 cents and a Mobil gas station credit card. No money. No career. No plan except survival. She spent the next eight years grinding -- cabaret shows in Vegas and Reno, TV variety specials, anything to pay the bills. The industry said she was washed up. A 45-year-old Black woman whose ex-husband owned her name couldn't possibly mount a comeback. The industry was comprehensively wrong.

Private Dancer in 1984 sold 20 million copies. What's Love Got to Do with It hit number one. She was 45. She headlined stadiums. She starred in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. She married a German record executive 16 years her junior and moved to Switzerland. She renounced her American citizenship. She became the biggest solo female artist on the planet in her 40s, because the universe occasionally rewards the righteous. The woman who was told she was nothing became the standard by which all comebacks are measured.

Ike died in 2007. Tina outlived him by 16 years. She died peacefully at her home on Lake Zurich at 83 after a long illness. Her last public appearance was at the opening of Tina: The Musical in London. She took a bow, smiled, and walked off. On her own terms. Always on her own terms, by the end.