Simply the Best – Tina Turner Tribute

Simply the Best – Tina Turner Tribute brings the music, energy, and sheer force of Tina Turner’s stage presence to downtown Westerly on Friday, September 11, with Jenn Cristy and a live band taking over the UNITED’s Black Box Auditorium.

The 7:30 p.m. concert isn’t designed as a Tina Turner impersonation. Cristy isn’t trying to convince the audience that Turner has somehow walked onto the stage. The production describes itself as a celebration, built around the songs and the explosive live-performance style that made Turner one of rock music’s defining performers.

That means Proud Mary, River Deep – Mountain High, What’s Love Got to Do with It and The Best, along with music spanning Turner’s career in rock, soul, R&B and pop.

And Cristy brings a considerably deeper musical résumé to the job than simply being able to sing the songs.

Jenn Cristy Toured and Recorded With John Mellencamp

Before creating a nationally touring Tina Turner tribute, Jenn Cristy spent part of her career onstage and in the studio with another Rock & Roll Hall of Famer.

Cristy toured and recorded with John Mellencamp as a backing vocalist and multi-instrumentalist.

Her credits on Mellencamp’s 2001 album Cuttin’ Heads are unusually extensive. She played flute, percussion, piano, organ and violin in addition to singing background vocals. The album also included musicians Steve Jordan and Willie Weeks and guest vocal appearances by Chuck D, India.Arie and Trisha Yearwood.

Cristy’s work with Mellencamp took her onto national television as well, with appearances that included Today, Late Show with David Letterman, Good Morning America and Larry King Live.

She eventually established her own career as a singer-songwriter and touring performer, working across rock, pop and soul and developing projects through Bloomington, Indiana-based One Pulse Entertainment.

That versatility turns out to be particularly useful when the artist you’re celebrating is Tina Turner.

This Isn’t a Look-Alike Show

The distinction Cristy makes about Simply the Best is worth noting.

It’s not an impersonation.

Tribute shows can take several forms. Some attempt to reproduce a performer visually as closely as possible, right down to costumes, mannerisms and physical resemblance. Others concentrate almost entirely on recreating the original recordings.

Cristy’s show takes a third approach.

She’s interested in recreating what it felt like to watch Tina Turner perform.

That means the voice matters, but so do movement, personality, interaction with the audience and the sense that the person at the center of the stage is having as much fun as everyone watching.

Cristy has said she has long felt a kinship with Turner’s music and performing style.

It’s easy to understand the attraction.

Both are singers who don’t stand still behind a microphone.

Tina Turner Was Built for the Stage

There are artists whose definitive work lives on records.

Tina Turner was different.

The records mattered, but the stage completed them.

Her voice could be gritty, soulful, vulnerable or ferocious. Then there was the physical performance: the dancing, the hair, the miniskirts, the heels and the seemingly inexhaustible ability to command an arena.

Turner didn’t simply sing rock music.

She performed it with an intensity that helped redefine what a female rock frontperson could look and sound like.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame describes her as an artist who shattered barriers for Black women in rock while raising the standard for generations of lead singers who followed.

That influence reaches from Janis Joplin and the rock performers of Turner’s early career through Prince, Beyoncé, Janet Jackson, Rihanna and generations of artists who came afterward.

Cristy’s challenge Friday night isn’t simply hitting Turner’s notes.

It’s finding some of that electricity.

Before Tina Turner, There Was Anna Mae Bullock

The story began far from an arena stage.

Tina Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock in Brownsville, Tennessee, in 1939 and grew up in the rural South.

Her musical career began after she encountered Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm in St. Louis. Eventually she joined the act, adopted the name Tina Turner and became the focal point of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue.

By the 1960s, the revue had developed a reputation as a formidable live act.

Then came one of the great recordings of the era.

River Deep – Mountain High Was Too Big to Fail, Until It Did

Producer Phil Spector saw something in Tina Turner that went beyond the revue.

In 1966, he put her voice at the center of River Deep – Mountain High, constructing one of the grandest examples of his famous Wall of Sound production technique around her.

Today, the recording is regarded as a landmark.

At the time, America largely ignored it.

The single performed much better in Britain than in the United States, where it failed to become the enormous hit Spector expected.

Turner’s performance, however, was undeniable.

She had a voice capable of standing in front of an almost absurdly dense production and not disappearing inside it.

Decades later, River Deep – Mountain High remains part of the repertoire Cristy brings to the stage.

And it represents an important part of Turner’s story.

She could sing over almost anything.

Then Came Proud Mary

Ike & Tina Turner released their version of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Proud Mary in 1971.

They didn’t simply cover it.

They rebuilt it.

The arrangement famously begins slowly before exploding into the fast second half that became inseparable from Tina Turner.

It was a major hit and earned the duo a Grammy.

More than half a century later, it’s almost impossible to imagine a Tina Turner tribute that doesn’t include it.

The song also captures why a live tribute to Turner works differently from a conventional greatest-hits show.

Everyone knows what’s coming.

The audience knows the tempo is going to change.

They know the performance is about to take off.

And they wait for it anyway.

Leaving Ike Turner Meant Starting Over

Behind the success was an abusive marriage that Turner later described publicly in painful detail.

She left Ike Turner in 1976.

The separation brought personal freedom but didn’t immediately bring career security. Turner had to rebuild.

For several years she performed wherever she could, including television appearances and smaller venues, while the music business increasingly treated her as a performer whose biggest years were behind her.

She was a Black woman entering her 40s in an industry particularly unforgiving of women as they aged.

Then Tina Turner pulled off one of the most extraordinary second acts in popular music.

Private Dancer Changed Everything at 44

Turner released Private Dancer in 1984.

She was 44 years old.

The album transformed her from a veteran performer fighting to maintain a career into an international superstar.

Better Be Good to Me became a hit.

The Mark Knopfler-written Private Dancer became one of her signature recordings.

But the song that changed everything was What’s Love Got to Do with It.

It reached No. 1 in the United States and became Turner’s biggest hit.

At an age when the music industry routinely considered female pop stars past their commercial peak, Turner was suddenly bigger than she had ever been.

The song earned three Grammy Awards, including Record of the Year and Song of the Year.

The comeback wasn’t nostalgia.

It was a new peak.

MTV Met Its Match

Turner’s timing was perfect in another way.

MTV had arrived in 1981 and was transforming popular music into an increasingly visual medium.

Turner was made for it.

She didn’t have to invent a camera-friendly stage personality. She’d been developing one for decades.

Videos for songs from the Private Dancer era introduced her to an audience that may have had little memory of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue.

Her look became instantly identifiable.

Her movement became part of the songs.

And her voice worked just as well against the polished synthesizers and arena-rock production of the 1980s as it had against soul and R&B arrangements two decades earlier.

She had reinvented herself without ceasing to sound like Tina Turner.

We Don’t Need Another Hero and The Best Kept It Going

The comeback didn’t stop with one album.

Turner starred as Aunty Entity opposite Mel Gibson in 1985’s Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and recorded We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome) for the soundtrack.

Then, in 1989, she released Foreign Affair.

That album included The Best.

The song wasn’t originally hers. Bonnie Tyler had recorded it first.

But Tina Turner took possession of it so thoroughly that most people now associate the song with her.

Its enormous chorus, Turner’s vocal delivery and its natural fit with an arena crowd transformed it into another signature song.

It also gave Cristy’s tribute its obvious name.

An Eight-Piece Band Recreates the Music Live

Simply the Best isn’t built around backing tracks and a singer.

The touring production uses a full eight-piece live band, allowing the arrangements to retain the punch that Turner’s music needs.

That’s particularly important because the catalog covers several musical eras.

River Deep – Mountain High comes from the densely orchestrated soul production of the 1960s.

Proud Mary moves from slow-burning soul into full-speed rock and R&B.

What’s Love Got to Do with It belongs unmistakably to the polished pop production of 1984.

Private Dancer is moodier.

We Don’t Need Another Hero is cinematic.

The Best is built for an arena.

Cristy’s touring materials also reveal a broader repertoire including Nutbush City Limits, Let’s Stay Together, I Can’t Stand the Rain, Better Be Good to Me and Private Dancer.

The show even reaches beyond Turner’s own recordings for an eclectic selection of additional favorites.

The common denominator isn’t one musical genre.

It’s energy.

Turner’s Career Ultimately Lasted More Than 50 Years

Tina Turner eventually became one of those rare artists whose life story became almost as culturally familiar as the songs.

She sold out stadiums around the world.

She wrote autobiographies.

Angela Bassett portrayed her in the 1993 film What’s Love Got to Do with It.

Her story became the stage production Tina: The Tina Turner Musical.

The documentary Tina revisited both her career and the complicated reality of repeatedly being asked to relive the most painful period of her life.

And the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inducted her twice.

Ike & Tina Turner entered together in 1991.

Thirty years later, Tina Turner was inducted again as a solo performer in 2021.

She died in Switzerland in 2023 at age 83.

By then, the comeback that once seemed so improbable had become only one chapter in a career spanning more than half a century.

The UNITED Makes This One Intimate

Friday’s Westerly performance isn’t happening in a giant arena.

It’s in the UNITED’s Black Box Auditorium.

The show is fully seated, which makes this a more intimate version of a production that tours nationally.

That could work particularly well for Cristy’s approach.

Turner’s concerts were famous for scale, but her stage presence depended on connecting with an audience. In a smaller room, there’s nowhere for the performer to hide and considerably less distance between the front row and the band.

Cristy has spent years touring as a performer in her own right.

She isn’t trying to become Tina Turner for two hours.

She’s taking what Turner left behind and putting it back where much of it made the most sense in the first place.

On a stage.

With a band.

And with Proud Mary waiting to speed up.

Details

Event: Simply the Best – Tina Turner Tribute
Date: Friday, September 11, 2026
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Running Time: Approximately 120 minutes
Performer: Jenn Cristy
Production: Simply the Best: A Tribute to the Music of Tina Turner
Music: Rock / soul / R&B / pop
Band: Full live band
Venue: UNITED Black Box Auditorium
Address: 5 Canal Street, Westerly, RI 02891
Seating: Fully seated performance
Ticket Policy: Tickets are non-refundable and non-exchangeable
Accessibility: The UNITED is wheelchair accessible; the theater recommends contacting the box office before purchasing tickets if accessible seating is needed
Box Office: 401-388-8208
Parking: Street and public-lot parking is available in downtown Westerly

More information is available at the Event Website link below.

To purchase tickets, click the Event Ticketing link below.

 

 

Featured image is an artistic representation inspired by the event and may not depict the actual people, location, or activities shown.