TINA: Her ESTL Beginnings & My Reflections
Her East Saint Louis Beginnings
As a follower of Louis Hilton and @LouisHiltonStories on Instagram you no doubt know Louis Hilton’s origin story: the “Louis” represents East Saint Louis, Illinois my mother’s hometown. So, you can imagine how excited I was to learn that Tina Turner was discovered there.
Tina moved to Saint Louis, Missouri to join her mother who had recently relocated there. One night in 1957, she went across the Eads Bridge, a road and railway bridge over the Mississippi River that connects Saint Louis to East Saint Louis, to the Manhattan Club. Tina’s career would skyrocket from there after she was invited to sing with her former husband and his band.
Don’t believe me!? Tina even wrote a song called “Club Manhattan” on the 1973 album Nutbush City Limits. The song begins:
Go across the Eads bridge,
There’s East Saint Louis!
Six blocks down Broadway,
There’s a swinging little club.
The discovery of this song was just the coolest thing to me. I also enjoyed the album’s cover artwork, which displays Tina standing beside a pickup truck with her foot hoisted onto the car’s front bumper. No doubt an ode to her rural roots and the Great Migration, as Tina was one of six million Black Americans who fled the south to places like the midwest from 1910-1970.
My Reflections
I discovered Anne Mae Bullock, known to the world as Tina Turner, just this past December. That’s not to say I didn’t know who she was, I did. But my deep appreciation for her story and roots, only occurred after how I developed so many of my obsessions: by reading a book. In December of 2022 I read Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life For Good by Tina Turner. That book led me down a journey of Tina discovery. (I loved it by the way and highly recommend it!)
In the book I learned that Tina Turner was a devout practitioner of Soka Gakkai Nichiren Buddhism. Tina credited Buddhism and her daily chanting of “Nam-myoho-renge-kyo” with her ability to not only survive but to thrive; and thrive she did. And as a result, I began a daily meditation and affirmation practice.
During my December 2022 discovery of Tina I watched her HBO documentary, TINA. What struck me the most about Tina’s life was her ability to pivot and change course, while persevering through it all. To put it simply, she knew her worth. For instance, she received nothing of monetary value in her divorce. No house. No car. No money. But she had enough wherewithal to request one thing: the name Tina Turner. She went on to launch one of music’s greatest comebacks. She found a management team that believed in her and went on to release her fifth solo project, the multi-platinum album Private Dancer. Her age when she released it? 45 years old.
In our society, we are constantly assigning false, arbitrary and elusive deadlines to our careers, relationships and lives overall. Tina created her dream career at the age of 45 and found love with Edwin Bach at 47, marrying him at the age of 73. Tina taught us that your life is yours to envision, create and reinvent, and that you can do so over and over again. You can be who you have imagined yourself to be in your wildest dreams. From the cotton fields of Nutbush Tennessee, Tina reached the highest of heights and felt the lowest of lows, only to rise again. She built and re-built the life she deemed herself worthy of living.
And above all else, Tina forgave herself. We are often our toughest critics, analyzing, replaying and chastising ourselves for the past. But another favorite of mine, Alicia Keys, said in a song: “It’s called the past, cause I’m getting past.” I believe this is how Tina lived her life: looking ahead and never back. If she did acknowledge the past, she recognized she was past it and saw what was in her rearview mirror as critical steps in her journey.
There is no manual, no step by step guide to life; Tina knew that, embraced it, recognized her worth and reinvented her life accordingly. Tina inspired me to do the same. We should all aspire to follow Tina Turner’s example.