Tina Turner and Annie Rose & the Thrillers at the HUB Ballroom, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, April 24, 1981

Tina Turner’s (1939-2023) vibrant image advertises this appearance with Seattle’s Annie Rose and the Thrillers at the University of Washington on April 24, 1981. In the late 1970s, Turner struggled to maintain her solo performing status by touring small venues like the Husky Union Building Ballroom. However, with the assistance of manager Roger Davies (b. 1952), Turner began to revitalize her career, and in 1981 she opened for three shows on the Rolling Stones’ tour before acquiring a recording contract with Capitol Records the following year. She would finally cinch her comeback in 1984 with the album Private Dancer, featuring the number one hit “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” which sold five million copies in the United States. 

After moving to Seattle from Norman, Oklahoma in 1972, Annie Rose De Armas (b. unknown) led the Country-Rock Band Rose and the Dirtboys until 1975. De Armas is an openly gay singer known for performing with her dance band, Annie Rose and the Thrillers, at local venues including the University District’s Rainbow Tavern and Baby O’s in Pioneer Square, and throughout the Pacific Northwest from 1978 to 1984. Over the years Thrillers vocalists included Kristen Anderberg (b. unknown), Donna Beck (b. unknown), Susan Johnson (b. unknown), Denise Roselle (b. unknown), Judy Schnepps (b. unknown), and Patti Vincent (b. unknown), also a tenor saxophonist, along with Doug Reid (b. unknown) on alto saxophone. Drummers included Paul Black (b. unknown), Don Kammerer (b. unknown), and Carson Michaels (b. unknown), alongside bassists Dave Liston (b. unknown) and Gary Oldroyd (b. unknown). 

Art Chantry (b. 1954), born in Seattle and raised in Tacoma, created this poster early in his career as a graphic designer, in which he would become known for his posters and album covers for many Pacific Northwest bands, including Mudhoney and Soundgarden, as well as his work as art director for local music magazine The Rocket. As with most of his works, Chantry used inexpensive, analog methods: first, he photocopied a mid-1970s photograph of Tina Turner, then he inked the degraded image in red on goldenrod-colored blotter paper. He finished the poster by drawing the lettering by hand and adding a black border. Though Chantry told the museum in an oral history interview that he “never thought it was a very good poster,” Paul Grushkin (b. unknown) selected it for the back cover of The Art of Rock, a book of concert posters, and it has since become one of Chantry’s most well-known pieces.