This Town Made Tina Turner. She Made It Famous.
Ms. Ewing lost touch, but she admired Ms. Turner’s resilience, particularly as she clawed her way back from her abusive relationship with Ike Turner. “Knowing you can have calamities but if you’re strong enough, strong-minded and have a strong will, you can make it to the top of the hill,” she said.
Pam Stephens, a resident who attended the memorial, often cautions outsiders who know of the community only from “Nutbush City Limits” to temper their expectations. For one thing, referring to Nutbush as a city is a stretch. The unincorporated area comprises Woodlawn Missionary Baptist, a cotton gin and some houses. “There’s not even a stop sign,” she said, “unless you pull off the main road.”
But the Tina Turner Museum, at her childhood schoolhouse, has given visitors another reason to exit the interstate. The one-room schoolhouse, which had been deteriorating on property owned by Ms. Stephens’s family, was moved next to the West Tennessee Delta Heritage Center in Brownsville, a nearby town.
The refurbished white wooden building is filled with artifacts that Ms. Turner personally sent for display. Sequined outfits by Bob Mackie and Giorgio Armani. Tour stops written by hand on a calendar: Stockholm, Helsinki, Paris. Royalty even drops in: King Charles, then the Prince of Wales, wrote a letter on Kensington Palace stationery, gushing about seeing her. “It was a great pleasure to meet you,” he wrote, underlining “great.”
“I now find that I am gradually becoming something of an expert on the rock scene,” he added, “and can occasionally impress those who are considerably younger than me with my knowledge of some of the pop groups!”
Source: The New York Times
