How a Columbia Musician's Dedication Inspired the Tina Turner Tribute Show

Some artists appear as tall as trees, stretching out and refreshing the landscape.

Others live as perpetual seeds, opening, creating new growth.

For Phylshawn Johnson, Tina Turner remains both a tree and a seed. The late rock’n’roll icon charted her path to becoming a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, independent record label founder and music educator. And Turner’s vast discography fuels Johnson’s sense of discovery even today, decades after he fell in love with the music.

This outsized influence and intimate connection inspired Johnson to pay tribute to Turner, assembling a who’s who of Columbia musicians for a months-long investment of time, talent and soul. Their work will pay off at the Blue Note later this month, culminating with a tribute show to Turner on the first anniversary of his death.

And love has everything to do with it.

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A love like yours (Don’t come knocking every day): discovering Tina

Growing up in Missouri, Turner’s music was ambient, almost like the weather for Johnson: always in the atmosphere, rarely a conscious choice. Everything changed after the release of “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” » the 1993 biopic starring Oscar nominees Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne as Tina and Ike Turner.

Johnson’s church companions made references to the film and even repeated lines of dialogue, but she didn’t get the inside jokes. Then the film arrived on VHS, as part of a cassette club to which his mother subscribed.

Popping in the cassette at a movie night, Johnson recalls “being so inspired by this woman who, in fact, is my size, almost the same skin tone, someone who decided at one point that all music was his music.

This last sentence is essential. Those around Johnson’s church heard the devil in the details of secular music, actively discouraging listening to anything other than gospel. Tina Turner has delivered a collection of eye-opening songs.

“It was a freedom, in a way, to know his music,” Johnson said.

And this freedom has taken on a constantly evolving form. After watching and re-watching “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” Johnson’s mother rushed for the film’s soundtrack. Using the cassette, she acquired the whole thing on CD.

Then Johnson moved from film to the simpler story, as captured in Turner’s 1986 autobiography “I, Tina”; and from studio albums to the more “raw” live records from the artist’s early career.

Describing the connection she felt with this music, Johnson sounded like someone describing how lightning strikes. She first spoke about the power of Turner’s voice, but quickly moved from the physical to the metaphysical.

“When we have a favorite artist, their sound transfixes us – it connects to our soul and attaches itself to the events of our lives,” she said.

It’s Gonna Work Out Fine: The Making of a Tribute Show

Tina Turner died on May 24, 2023 at the age of 83. In online fan groups, Johnson noted an almost immediate organization of tribute concerts. Violet Vonder Haar, Johnson’s wife and longtime collaborator, urged her to do the same, but she wasn’t sure. Gauging her interest with an initial post on Facebook, she received waves of affirmation.

Johnson began reaching out to his friends in hopes of creating something both in-depth and tender. She firmly believes that anyone who is meant to be involved in any given project will be, and the band Johnson has assembled will astound anyone who has spent more than a few minutes in the Colombian music scene.

Johnson is one of six notable singers who will take the lead at different times; she joins Aina Cook, Augusta Cooper, Rochara Knight, Symonne Sparks and Alli O’Neil.

The band and the backing vocalists behind them include members of the local projects Johnson fronted – Violet and the Undercurrents, Stingrays, The Doxies – as well as Columbia bands past and present such as Mercury Trio, Bockman, Interstellar Overdrive and The Fried Crawdaddies .

Listeners will experience double guitar action, twice as many keyboards and a four-piece horn section.

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“If you’re going to do it, you’ve got to do it right,” Johnson said, laughing at the magnitude of the matter.

Rehearsals began in October, with Johnson choosing 20 potential songs for each of two sets: the first will focus on Turner’s music from the ’60s and ’70s, the second will look at music from the ’80s and ’90s. the band learned all 40 pieces, subsequent rehearsals were spent working out and fine-tuning the set, Johnson said.

Iconic songs will be there, but of course Johnson hears so much more in Turner’s catalog. She hears all the rich bar blues and spirituals as well as wonderful turns like a 1982 cover of the Temptations’ “Ball of Confusion,” which features a very early and very refined use of synthesizers in pop.

Turner’s sound and style always correspond exactly to innovations in music technology, Johnson added.

Ultimately, Johnson wanted the tribute show material to be “uplifting,” “accessible” and articulate the true story of Turner’s career. She and her fellow singers are far from Turner imitators, she said, and have focused on telling and selling each story in song.

“If you can convey the story, you’ll be there,” Johnson said.

This alignment of singer and story promises to produce moments of resonance. Hearing Symonne Sparks, for example, perform Turner’s “Black Coffee” will further highlight the experience of black women in the past and present, Johnson said, with the song using the drink itself as a metaphor for presence and personal power.

Something Beautiful Remains: What to do with Tina Turner’s music from here

Johnson talks about these songs, songs that rewrote her internal musical map, as if she were discovering them all over again. And much of Turner’s work, she says, remains to be discovered by the casual fan.

Just one of the songs that falls into the “Did you know?” category. category: Turner’s reading of the Albert Hammond-Diane Warren ballad “Don’t Turn Around”, released as the B-side of his 1986 single “Typical Male”; Ace of Base’s version of the song became a worldwide hit seven years later.

Listeners who attend the Turner tribute and then want to follow a parallel path have many options, Johnson said. For those who want to immerse themselves in music, she recommends four discs.

“Work together”, released by Ike and Tina Turner in 1970, contains the legendary “Proud Mary,” but also the opening title song, a “call to wake up, accept and love your neighbors,” Johnson said.

Multiplatinum from 1984 “Private dancer” is full of great songs, she said. And Johnson praises Turner’s last two studio albums, the final “bookends” of 1996. “Wildest Dreams” and the 1999s “Twenty-four-seven.” The former has a tomorrow is today sound and “really, really deep” production, she said; the latter seems to connect every sound Turner ever developed.

“From there, you can dive wherever you want to go,” Johnson said.

Queen of Rock N Roll: A Tribute to Tina Turner takes place at 8 p.m. Friday, May 24 at Blue Note; tickets are $10. Learn more at https://thebluenote.com/.