JED REINERT | Digital Staff
Tina Turner, icon of soul, R&B and pop music, died Tuesday at 83 after a long illness.
The trajectory of her life was a remarkable one - musical stardom with her husband, Ike, whose abuse she survived before launching a successful solo career decades later.
Right in the middle of her first career, on March 10, 1972, Tina Turner performed a fiery set with the Ike and Tina Turner Revue at Franklin & Marshall College's Mayser Gymnasium.
The show was scheduled to begin at 8:30, but the band was two hours late arriving. The opening act, a blues musician named Paul Geremia, was subjected to insults and boos from the restless crowd and eventually cut his set short, according to the Intelligencer Journal.
When the Turners finally arrived, the gym exploded with cries of "Turn us on, man!" The brass-driven band obliged, launching into a set of relentlessly uptempo R&B that had the mostly young audience dancing, shouting and singing along.
Amid the array of covers and originals, the band debuted one new song that night - "New Delhi Funk," a piece that wedded R&B brass to flute-driven Eastern melodies.
The show increased in tempo and fury with each song, ultimately reaching a "fever pitch" with the final numbers.
"Although the brass howled and the drums thundered, the voices were smooth," the Intell's concert review said.
