Tina Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock in Nutbush, an unincorporated area in Haywood County, Tennessee on November 26, 1939 to Zelma Priscilla and Floyd Richard Bullock at Poindexter Farm Hwy 180, where Floyd worked as an overseer of the sharecropping Poindexter farm. Tina Turner started out her music career in the mid-1950s as a featured singer with Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm, first recording in 1958 under the name Little Ann with the song, "Box Top". Her introduction to the public as Tina Turner began in the early 1960s with Ike as a member of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. Tina and Ike married in Tijuana in 1962. Success followed with a string of notable hits including "River Deep – Mountain High" (1966) and "Proud Mary" (1971).

Following her divorce from Ike Turner in 1976, she rebuilt her career by constantly performing, eventually launching another series of hits starting in 1983 with the single "Let's Stay Together" and the 1984 release of her fifth solo album Private Dancer. "What's Love Got to Do with It," the most popular single from the album, would later serve as the title of a biographical film about Turner that was adapted from her autobiography. In addition to her music career, Turner has also experienced success in movies, including a role in the 1975 rock musical, Tommy and a starring role in the 1985 Mel Gibson action flick, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, later appearing in a cameo role in the 1993 film, Last Action Hero.

In 1958, eighteen-year-old Tina became a mother for the first time, giving birth to her son Craig in August of that year. Craig was the offspring of Tina's and Kings of Rhythm saxophonist Raymond Hill. The news of her out-of-wedlock pregnancy and her performances with the Kings of Rhythm caused her mother Zelma to kick her out of her house. Following Hill's injury from a wrestling match with a member of the Kings of Rhythm in which he broke his ankle, Hill was forced to return to his hometown of Clarksdale and never returned back. Shortly after that, Tina moved into Ike Turner's house in East St. Louis. Within a couple of years, Tina was pregnant with Ike's child, and their son, Ronald, was born in October 1960. After marrying Turner in 1962, she became the stepmother of Ike's sons, Ike, Jr. (b. 1958) and Michael (b. 1959). Turner was pregnant again with Ike's child in 1968, but after discovering that her friend, Ikette member Ann Thomas, was also carrying Ike's baby, she quietly had her baby aborted.

Bryan Adams, who toured with her on the Private Dancer Tour, praised Turner's live performances, saying, "I never saw Tina walk through a performance, she always put on a great show, and was gracious and grateful to her audience." In 2002, Tennessee State Route 19 between Brownsville and Nutbush was named "Tina Turner Highway".