Craig Turner Death: Facts To Know About Tina Turner's Eldest Son's Family

Musician Tina Turner’s eldest son, Craig Turner, was found dead in his California home in an apparent suicide Tuesday. He was 59 years old.

The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner confirmed to E! that Craig was declared dead at 12:38 p.m. local time (3:38 p.m. EDT) in his Studio City residence. The cause of death was a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the authorities said. Tina is yet to comment on her son’s death.

Not much is known about Craig as he mostly stayed out of the limelight.

Craig worked as a real estate agent in the San Fernando Valley, Variety reported. He was also a member of elite realtor organization the National Association of Realtors and the California Association of Realtors, according to his Rodeo Realty profile.

Craig’s biological father was Tina’s ex-boyfriend, Raymond Hill, a saxophonist, but, he was later adopted by her ex-husband, musician Ike Turner. Hill and Ike were colleagues and played in the same band.

Hill was a saxophonist who played with many blues and R&B artists. In the 1940s, Hill joined Ike’s band called Kings Of Rhythm. It was then he started a romance with the young backup singer of the band — Tina Turner, who then went by the name Anna Mae Bullock. Soon Tina was pregnant with her first child at the age of 18. Shortly after Craig was born, the two called off their relationship.

Ike and Hill did not have the friendliest of relationships. Hill continued playing with Ike’s band for several years but quit the group in 1952 after he was reportedly not paid royalties. He did go on to record a number of solo tracks under labels such as Highwater Records and Sun Records, according to All Music. Hill died in 1996 due to congestive heart failure.

In the late 1940s Ike started his own band, which eventually traveled to Memphis to record at the eminent Sun Studios run by recording legend Sam Phillips, Biography reported. Kings of Rhythm, his band, was also how Ike met Bullock, who was a teenager at the time.

The two of them married in 1958 and he helped Bullock develop her stage persona of Tina Turner. The duo performed as Ike & Tina Turner Revue and went on to record an array of R&B hits, including "I Idolize You," "It’s Going to Work Out Fine" and "Poor Fool" in the early 1960s. In 1971, the pair won a Grammy Award for Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Proud Mary."

Tina’s domestic life with Ike, however, was far from successful. Ike was known to be addicted to drugs and as a result, Tina alleged he physically abused her on a regular basis — incidents that she documented in her 1986 autobiography, “I, Tina.” The abuse eventually started affecting her eldest son, Craig, whom Ike had adopted shortly after their marriage.

“They saw the black eyes. Ike’s children never reacted, but my oldest son, Craig, was a very emotional kid. He’d always look down in sadness. One day when Ike was fighting me, Craig knocked on the door and said, ‘Mother, are you all right?’ I thought, ‘Oh, please, don’t beat me at home.’ I didn’t want my children to hear. I tried to have meals with the children, talk to them about life. But Ike had no sense of that. He’d always come home late from the studio. It was awful,” Tina Turner previously told Oprah Winfrey.

Tina left Ike in 1976 and the latter continued to struggle with his drug addiction long after that. He died of a cocaine overdose in Dec. 12, 2007.

According to Hollywood Life, Craig has a half-brother Ronnie Turner, 57, who is a musician and performed with his parents in the past. Ike had two more sons from his previous marriage, Michael and Ike Turner Jr., who Tina adopted and raised with Craig and Ronnie.

If you have thoughts of suicide, confidential help is available for free at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Call 1-800-273-8255. The line is available 24 hours, every day.