2023-05-25 16:28:01
BROWNSVILLE, Tennessee (AP) —
Standing in a Tennessee museum near resplendent dresses worn by Tina Turner, Lisa Lyons wiped tears from her cheeks as she recalled the impact the singer-actress had on her life.
Lyons recalled Turner’s performance in the movie “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” as Aunt Entity, the tyrannical leader of a post-apocalyptic civilization.
“She was fierce and strong and powerful, and that stuck with me,” said Lyons, who, like Turner, is black. “As a girl of color who didn’t have that kind of role model in real life, she stuck with me all these years.”
Turner died on Wednesday at the age of 83, after a long illness at his home in Küsnacht, near Zurich, according to his manager. His Grammy Award-winning career includes the hit songs “Nutbush City Limits,” “Proud Mary,” “What’s Love Got To Do With It,” and “We Don’t Need Another Hero,” the latter from “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.” . His film credits also include “Tommy” and “Last Action Hero.”
Lyons, 56, of Jackson, said he learned of Turner’s death on Wednesday and drove to the museum in Brownsville, just west of his city.
When it comes to musical legacy in a region known for its blues, rock and roll, R&B and soul music, Turner was the “cream of the crop,” Lyons said.
“She is the standard. She is the goal to aspire to,” Lyons said. “She did it and she did it well, and she did it on her own terms.”
The museum opened in 2014 inside the renovated Flagg Grove School at the West Tennessee Delta Heritage Center in Brownsville, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast of Memphis. Turner attended school in the one-room building when she was a child growing up in nearby Nutbush, one of the small rural towns that dot the farms and fields of West Tennessee.
The building stood on farmland owned by Benjamin Flagg, who saw a need for a school for black children in the area and began construction in 1889. The school is representative of the institutions for African-American children that sprang up in rural areas. South after the American Civil War.
The school closed in the 1960s and was used as a barn before the dilapidated building was moved by tractor-trailer from Nutbush to Brownsville.
The museum contains a recreation of the classroom, including the original blackboard and wooden desks used by Turner and his fellow students. It also has photos of Turner and dresses by Armani, Versace and Bob Mackie that the star wore onstage during the energetic performances for which she was known.
On Wednesday, Turner fans came to the museum to pay tribute to him. Some of them had already planned to visit him before the news of Turner’s death broke, while others made a special trip after finding out.
Sherry Raggett and her husband, Tom, had already planned to visit the center as the last stop on a museum tour that took them from their home in Collierville, a suburb of Memphis, to places in Kentucky and Nashville, and then back to the western Tennessee.
Sherry Raggett called Turner “a wonderful person” and praised her for “her strong influence on women and how they can overcome so much.”
“I grew up listening to her, and she was a fantastic artist,” said Tom Raggett. “I loved every minute watching it.”
The center’s director, Sonia Outlaw-Clark, said she met Turner in 2019 in New York at the opening of “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical.”
“It was a great honor to be in his presence, but it was also a great feeling of ease,” Outlaw-Clark said. “Even though she was an international icon, a superstar, she still felt like she was a girl from her hometown. It was like meeting a neighbor.”
Outlaw-Clark said the center hoped to honor Turner this weekend during its annual Exit 56 Blues festival and during another event in September that falls on the anniversary of the museum’s opening.
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