Turner, who became a pop icon in the 1980s with a string of hits including What’s Love Got To Do With It (1984), We Don’t Need Another Hero (1985) and The Best (1989), died at her home in Switzerland after a long illness, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
She had suffered ill health in recent years, undergoing a stroke, being diagnosed with intestinal cancer and having a kidney transplant, according to news outlets.
‘Rock’n’roll icon’
Polish Radio music presenter Paweł Sztompke said: “I grew up on Tina Turner’s songs and her temperament. She mixed rock energy with musicality.”
He also hailed Turner’s “staying power as a pop star,” adding that her hits had made her “a rock’n’roll icon.”
Polish Radio music journalist Maria Szabłowska said that Turner “made an enormous impact on pop music,” thanks to “not only her singing, musicality and stage presence, as well as the way she could enchant the audience, but also her unbelievable and inspirational life story.”
Szabłowska described Turner as “a natural stage performer,” adding she would “never forget” her performance at a concert in Poland in 1981.
“The Queen of Rock’n’Roll” performed in Poland’s capital Warsaw and the southern city of Katowice in 1981 before returning to Warsaw for a concert in 1996, according to music historians.
Tina Turner’s last performance in Poland took place in August 2000 in the Baltic Sea resort of Sopot as part of her Twenty Four Seven Tour, the PAP news agency reported.
As tributes poured in following her passing on Wednesday, US President Joe Biden said in a tweet that Turner was "a once-in-a-generation talent that changed American music forever."
Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger posted a picture of Turner and him performing together, and wrote: "I'm so saddened by the passing of my wonderful friend Tina Turner. She was truly an enormously talented performer and singer. She helped me so much when I was young and I will never forget her."
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, The Times, CBS News