My Life Story: 1994

My Life Story

Things to know up front:

You can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. Click the back arrow key to return to the post.

Every chapter in My Life Story includes information about me, my work, my family and my friends. It also includes information about events that took place locally and nationally, etc. that I thought important enough to include. You’ll also find that I’ve included films, musicians and recordings/videos, in addition to books that were released in a given year.

While I have included many personal photos, most of the graphic content included below is borrowed from the Internet. I do not claim to own this material. I am just adding it for educational purposes. If the owners of any of the content in the “My Life Story” series want their stuff removed, I am happy to oblige. My email address is jrdiaz@arizona.edu. Thanks!

This particular entry is divided into two parts. The first is the narrative for my life story in 1994. The second part includes a lot of graphics, including photos, postcards, maps, documents, news articles etc.

I began the year by continuing to work at the University of Arizona Libraries and living with my partner Ruben in a spacious, two bedroom apartment on the west side of town on Shannon Road, near Pima Community College. I turned 35 in mid-January, and was presented with a beautiful birthday cake that our friend Roberto made for me. It was delicious too. At the end of February, Ruben and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary as a couple. We had our share of ups and downs during our first year together, but we managed to work things out as we got to know eachother. We’re still together 31 years later. In March, he started school at the Allure College of Beauty, and within a year he would become a licensed cosmetologist and hair stylist. In April, we bought a new car, a 1993 Nissan Sentra, and we soon began taking road trips to places like Albuquerque and the Grand Canyon. It was so nice having a car that didn’t break down every other week, and we kept it for a very long time, 11 years to be exact.

Work-wise, 1994 was a very busy year. I passed my second year review as I continued to juggle a variety of responsibilities in my role as Assistant to the Dean for staff development, recruitment and diversity. Each area of responsibility was quite demanding. I was also a member of the Administrative Group and Library Cabinet, the library’s leadership teams, and attended every meeting and every training session held for these groups. The restructuring process was still unfolding, and there was a great demand for staff development and training. I continued to set up, as I had the previous year (for example, see: Library Wide-Training Plan Summary, June, 1993-December, 1993), scores of training sessions for the staff and the administration this particular year, and allocated several thousand dollars of funding for staff attendance at workshops and other events. However, I enjoyed the work I did in the area of diversity the most. I worked with the Library Diversity Council to set up a variety of informative programs, including a lecture on women in Islam, a Passover seder, a lecture on Black aviators, as well as a Cinco De Mayo lecture and celebration, among others. In July, the Diversity Council wrote an annual report for 1993/1994, that outlined all of the activities it sponsored and issues that it confronted. The Dean of the Library was quite impressed and pleased, and commended the group for its work. In July, E.J. Josey, a distinguished leader in African American librarianship and former president of the American Library Association, visited and gave a lecture on diversity in librarianship for the campus. In the Fall, I received funding from the University administration to host the writer Leslie Feinberg, whose novel, Stone Butch Blues, had just won the ALA Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s Book award for fiction. Feinberg was at the forefront of the budding transgender rights movement, and I organized both campus and community events that gave people the opportunity to get to know this amazing individual. As a result of my organizing these events, I was invited to become a member of the board of directors of Wingspan, Tucson’s lgbt community center. I accepted the invitation, but within a month or so realized that this was too big a responsibility to take on, so I resigned. Wingspan needed a lot of attention, and I just didn’t have the time. In November, the Diversity Council hosted the Equity Institute, a diversity training organization that provided training to the Library faculty and staff on the issue of racism. This was the first of several all staff diversity-focused training events that I would be involved in coordinating while assistant to the Dean. Looking back, it’s a miracle I didn’t collapse from exhaustion. It was a very busy time for me. It was not without its ups and downs, either. I experienced some conflict with one of my senior colleagues in particular, whose good friend, one of our library consultants, told me flat out at one point that I was not qualified for the work I was doing. This was after I refused to go to the student union to buy her and my senior colleague sandwiches one night while we were working on planning training for the staff. I told them I wasn’t their errand boy. They also told me that they weren’t there to teach me, after I asked questions about the work we were doing. I later mentioned this to the Dean of the Library, and she gave me the authority to decide whether or not to bring this particular consultant back for more training. We never did bring her back as a consultant, but she managed to continue working with us in other ways.

I was also involved in a lot of service-related activities, including the ALA GLBTF Book Award Committee, which I’ve noted awarded Leslie Feinberg that year’s award for fiction; REFORMA, at both the national and local levels, and the Arizona State Library Association, where I chaired the Services to the Spanish Speaking Roundtable. I also managed the student chapter of REFORMA, and we took a number of field trips to various libraries, including a college library in Nogales, Sonora as well as local libraries like the El Rio Center Library, located in the heart of Barrio Hollywood. Because I was on the “tenure-track” at this point in my career, I also had to engage in scholarship. This took the form of either writing for publication or giving formal presentations at professional conferences. This particular year, something I had written while at Michigan, a chapter titled “Collection Development in Multicultural Studies” was published in the book, Cultural Diversity In Libraries, edited by my colleague Pat Tarin and Don Riggs, Dean of Libraries at the University of Michigan. I also participated in writing a couple of chapters for the publication, Magazines for Libraries. I recruited colleagues from the UA Library and the local public library to help me write descriptions of recommended core magazines and journals from Latin America for libraries. We also included magazines and journals focusing on the Latino experience in the US. The work would not get published for another year, but we completed it in summer, 1994, and the editor of the publication, Bill Katz, a well-respected library leader and publisher, was quite happy with our work. I also participated in a number of professional development workshops, including a seminar on time management, a workshop on working with the media, strategic planning training, facilitation skills training, and other programs. I also attended two national conferences, ALA Midwinter in Los Angeles and ALA Annual in Miami Beach, and one state library (ASLA) conference in Phoenix.

There were several major family events that occurred this year. My dad married his companion, Guadalupe Lopez, in March. They already had a child, my little brother Jose’, the previous September. The marriage took place in Bullhead City, Arizona, and was attended by most of my dad’s brothers and sisters. My great niece Estrella Ochoa had her first child, a boy named David. In December, both my aunt Dora Sainz, one of my mom’s younger sisters, and my cousin Martin Olguin died. I went to my aunt’s funeral in San Francisco, and attended my cousin Martin’s services in Tucson. I grew up with Martin, and we were very close at one point. His death made me very sad. He was only in his mid-30s.

My childhood friend, Richard (Ricky) Fass was killed in late June. He was an undercover DEA agent, and was shot by drug dealers in a botched up undercover operation. It was quite a tragedy. Ricky and his brother Bubba grew up two houses up the street from me, and we spent lots of time together as kids. Another friend, Kidd Rivenbark, also died this year. We weren’t that close, but he was a very nice man. I met him when I was with my first partner, John. They had been in the Air Force together. Kidd was from North Carolina. He was quite fond of me, but I was young and flighty and didn’t keep in touch with him.

Several major events occurred in 1994, including the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas, Mexico, and the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement by the US, Mexico and Canada. Both events occurred on the same day, January 1. Later in the month, a major earthquake hit southern California and was centered in the town of Northridge, just north of Los Angeles. 1994 also saw the emergence of both the internet, the World Wide Web, and the companies Yahoo and Amazon. OJ Simpson was accused of murdering his wife, and Nelson Mandela won the presidency in South Africa, in its first ever fair and free elections. California’s Proposition 187, which would have denied many social and public services to the undocumented, was passed and then quickly repealed as illegal.

The following musicians, actors and other celebrities died in 1994: Amparo Ochoa, Cab Calloway, Papa John Creach, Dinah Shore, Jackie Kennedy, Cesar Romero, Harry Nilsson, Henry Mancini, Carmen MacRae Marion Williams, and Major Lance.

My personal interests at this time revolved around collecting Mexican music and classic movies. I loved the music of Lucha Villa, and sought out her recordings whenever and wherever I could. Pepe Aguilar and Alejandro Fernandez were two other Mexican ranchera singers who were both relatively new to the music scene, and I purchased every recording of theirs that came out. I even got to see Pepe Aguilar perform with his father Antonio Aguilar and his mother Flor Silvestre at the Pima County Fairgrounds.

Ruben and I became big movie buffs and we bought the following films, all on vhs:: The Story of Ruth, Of Human Bondage, El Cid, Paris is Burning, Shindig Soul, Two Mules for Sister Sarah, All In A Night’s Work, The Man in the Iron Mask, Stage Door, James Brown and Friends, Pretty Baby, Sweet Bird of Youth, Dark Shadows, 2,000 Year Old Man, A Stolen Life, The Children’s Hour, Barbarella, Making Love, Aretha Live at Park West, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Night of the Iguana, Reefer Madness, Norman Is That You?, The Country Girl, Nijinsky, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, Quartet, The Sound of Music, The Wizard of Oz, Guitarras, Lloren Guitarras, Where the Boys Are, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Midnight Cowboy, Yours, Mine and Ours, The Last Emperor, Fantastic Voyage, La Cage Aux Folles, The Count of Monte Cristo, In This Our Life, Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and Gone With the Wind.

Little did we know that the vhs format would soon be replaced by dvds. We still have some of these tapes, and they do work, but we gave many of them away and replaced them with dvds. Maybe one day they’ll, like lps, make a big comeback! You never know.

Happy New Year!

1-1-94 –The beginning of the Zapatista rebellion in Mexico.

On the same day-January 1, 1994-The North American Free Trade Agreement, signed into law in December by President Clinton, takes effect.

I celebrated my 35th birthday on January 15.
My friend Roberto Ramirez made me this gorgeous birthday cake. It was quite yummy.
An magnitude 6.7 earthquake hit Southern California’s San Fernando valley on January 17, 1994.

ALA Midwinter in Los Angeles was interesting and fun. The conference was held in the downtown area. I had never really spent any time there before, so it was a new experience. I stayed at a hotel called the New Otani Hotel, in Little Tokyo, which was close to City Hall, Olvera Street, the train station and skid row. One evening I took the bus to West Hollywood with my friend Mario, and we spent the night partying at a bar called the Ramrod II. It was great. I also found some very hard to find Lucha Villa recordings at a store called Ritmo Latino and I visited Olvera Street, where I had some very tasty champurrado and bought some Jesus Hilguera prints. It’s LA’s original site, and is home to several historic buildings.

The Northridge earthquake had just hit two week prior to this conference. Some of the hotels in downtown LA suffered damage. What was I thinking? In hindsight I should probably have skipped this conference and avoided LA for the time being, so soon after a major natural disaster! Oh well. Thank goodness things turned out fine.
This was my fifth ALA Midwinter Conference. I had been to Chicago in ’90 and ’91, San Antonio in ’92 and Denver in ’93. I would continue to attend these conferences every year for many more years before I slowed down.
A map of downtown LA showing all the hotels in the area. My hotel was the New Otani on the northeast side in an area called Little Tokyo. Getting to the Convention Center took some time, as it was at the opposite end of downtown.
This is the hotel I stayed at while in Los Angeles. I’d never stayed in the downtown area before. One had to be careful on the streets as skid row was not that far away.
An older postcard of Olvera Street. This is LA’s birthplace, and there are several historic buildings in the area. I had some delicious champurrado, which is like hot chocolate, but a bit thicker, and I bought some Jesus Helguera posters. It was fun–kind of like being in the tourist area in Nogales, Sonora, only much more compact.
This place, now closed has become legendary for carrying a very wide range of Latin music. I was in heaven!
I found the cd re-issue of this recording by Lucha Villa, one of her very first, issued in 1962, at a record store called Ritmo Latino in downtown LA. I was so happy when I bought it. There’s nothing like her early recordings. I was in the middle of my Lucha Villa craze and finding this recording was like finding the mother lode.
This is one of my very favorite Lucha Villa songs.

Amparo Ochoa dies. February 8, 1994. She was a great promoter of “la nueva cancion” in Mexico, and recorded some beautiful, traditional Mexican folk music including an entire album of corridos and songs from the Mexican Revolution.

What a sad, beautiful song. Amparo Ochoa was one of a kind.

Valentine’s Day cards.

My valentine card from Ruben.

Ruben and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary as a couple in late February. He celebrated his 31st birthday in June.

Ruben started beauty school at Allure in early March. The tuition was expensive, but in the end, it was well worth it. He’s been cutting hair now for nearly 30 years.
My dad and and his partner Lupe got married on March 19. Accompanying them in this photo are my Aunt Josie, Aunt Carmen, Aunt Helen, and Uncle Ralph.
I bought a new car in the Spring, a 1993 Nissan Sentra. We needed it badly. My old Corolla was literally falling apart. Unlike the car in the photo, mine was a four door.

Nelson Mandela wins the presidential election in South Africa on April 27 in South Africa’s first fully multi-racial elections. He becomes the first democratically elected president the following month.

In celebration of El Cinco de Mayo, Lupe Castillo, a well-known local Chicana activist and history instructor at Pima Community College, was invited to the Library by the Diversity Council to speak about the cultural and social significance of El Cinco de Mayo to Tucson’s Mexican American community. She talked about immigration along the way, which ruffled a few feathers, but I thought it was great. The event included a musical performance by Mariachi Arizona and a potluck. I coordinated this program on behalf of the Library Diversity Council. When Mariachi Arizona was playing, the leader asked me if I would sing the song “Volver, Volver”, and I did! It was a lot of fun, and I wasn’t even drinking any booze! Ha ha ha!

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis passed away on May 19, 1994.
Not sure exactly when, but this album be El Vez, Graciasland, has one of my favorite songs. It’s called “AZTLAN”.
This was our second trip to Albuquerque in two years. We went in 1993 for Ruben’s birthday and again this year in early June. We visited his sister Mina while there.

ALA Annual in Miami was a lot of fun, but getting around to the various meetings was a real challenge. Some of the meetings were held in Miami Beach, and others in the city of Miami. It was a logistical mess. I had fun any way and went dancing several times, hung out at the beach, and I also enjoyed spending time with my friends Richard DiRusso and Mario Gonzalez, who drove us around in a red convertible one bright, sunny day. It was great.

This was my sixth ALA annual conference. I had been to Dallas in ’89, Chicago in ’90, Atlanta in ’91, San Francisco in ’92 and New Orleans in ’93. I was on a roll. I loved to travel!
My buddy Richard DiRusso and I roomed together at the Hotel Carlton.
On this particular ALA trip, I roomed with my friend Richard DiRusso. He and I were both on the ALA GLBTF Book Award Committee.
Everyone was glued to their television sets as they watched O.J Simpson elude the police on the California freeways. He was tried for murdering his wife. It was a huge spectacle, and people argued at length over whether or not he was guilty. It even split some families apart.
Another American Tragedy –Richard Fass, a close childhood friend, is killed on 6/30.
What a great movie! The soundtrack is wonderful!
The Library Diversity Council held a get together at Libby Hilmar’s house on July 17. Libby was a wonderful friend.
July 25, 1994 cover of Time Magazine.

The world wide web was born in 1994. According to some estimates, there were just 10,000 websites and two million computers connected to the Internet. Amazon, Yahoo! and Mosaic Communications (later Netscape) were in the beginning stages.

This was published in early August.

I contributed a chapter to this book back in 1991-1992, while I was working at the University of Michigan Undergraduate Library. It finally saw the light of day in early August, 1994. It’s available here: Collection Development in Multicultural Studies, book chapter in Cultural Diversity in Libraries, edited by Don Riggs and Patricia Tarin, Neal-Schuman Publishers, 1994.

Grand Canyon with Ruben. First week of August.

This was my second visit to the Grand Canyon taken during the first week of August. Ruben drove most of the way. My first visit took place back in 1976 when I was 17.
What fun, crazy movie. Some of the scenes are quite racy, to put it mildly.
Leslie Feinberg won the 1994 ALA GLBTF Book Award for fiction, and as a member of the book award committee, I had the pleasure of meeting her and inviting her to speak at the Univeristy of Arizona campus on September 30.

This beautiful flyer was designed by Ken Godat of Godat Design.
Gay Pride program, Tucson, 1994

California’s Proposition 187 was designed to deny social services, non-emergency health services, and public education to undocumented immigrants. California voters passed the proposed law by a margin of 59 percent to 41 percent at a referendum on November 8, 1994. The law was challenged in a legal suit the day after its passage, and found unconstitutional by a federal district court on November 11, 1994.

Mom’s sister Dora died in early December. She was one of my favorite aunts. She and her husband left Tucson in the late 40s and never turned back. They lived in the city at first, but then settled in South San Francisco, and lived there until her death. Our family visited them when I was a kid, back in 1966. In 1978, I visited again. Aunt Dora was a very smart lady. She had to quit school at a young age to help support her family, however.

My cousin Tish drove a bunch of us into the city when we visited for my Aunt Dora’s funeral. I asked her to take me to the Mission District so I could buy some Lucha Villa stuff at the Mission Music Center, and I wound up purchasing a number of cassettes there. Unfortunately, many of them have deteriorated and are no longer playable. I should’ve bought the lps instead!
My crazy cousin Martin. This photo was taken while he was in high school. He was a very talented musician, but didn’t keep it up. We took a summer school class together in high school, but ended up partying a lot more than we studied. He was a travieso.

Cousin Martin dies.

Some new music releases from 1994.

I was a member of the ALA Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s Book Award Committee in 1994. I received complimentary copies of a number of books, many of which are listed below. My job as a committee member was to review them and to be prepared to discuss and debate which ones were the best in their respective categories. It was quite an assignment, as there were many, many wonderful books published in 1994.

That’s all, folks!

My life story: 1993

My Life Story, , ,

Things to know up front:

You can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. Click the back arrow key to return to the post.

Every chapter in My Life Story includes information about me, my work, my family and my friends. It also includes information about events that took place locally and nationally, etc. that I thought important enough to include. You’ll also find that I’ve included films, musicians and recordings/videos, in addition to books that were released in a given year.

While I have included many personal photos, most of the graphic content included below is borrowed from the Internet. I do not claim to own this material. I am just adding it for educational purposes. If the owners of any of the content in the “My Life Story” series want their stuff removed, I am happy to oblige. My email address is jrdiaz@arizona.edu. Thanks!

As I look back at 1993, I have come to realize that my job was just a part of my life, not my entire life. I’ve delayed writing about this period because I’ve been avoiding writing about the years when I served as Carla Stoffle’s assistant at the University of Arizona Library. In many ways, I felt inadequate, humiliated and burned as the Assistant to the Dean for Staff Development, Recruitment and Diversity. By the time I stepped down from the job eight years later, I was totally fried. I don’t want to just focus on the bad stuff, however, and I don’t have to, so I’m going to mostly write about all the other stuff that happened in my life. I have many fond memories.

1993 was a year that changed my life for the better overall. However, I had just been hired at the University of Arizona Library in June the previous year and was beginning to realize how intense my job was. It was very demanding, and at times I struggled to keep up with the pace. We were in the midst of a major organizational overhaul, and there was a constant demand for staff development and on-the-job training. I worked with a variety of people–national consultants, local consultants and other staff– to coordinate and deliver these efforts. We were in unknown territory, working to completely change the structure and culture of the library while consolidating units, changing work priorities and trying to convince people that diversity and working in teams were good ideas. There was a lot of resistance among the staff to these changes, but we charged forward.

My colleague Karen Downing and I worked on this project before I left Michigan in early 1992. It was finally published at the beginning of 1993. We received very positive reviews for our contribution and were later asked to conduct this workshop live at UC Berkeley. Click the link below to access the full chapter.

“Instruction in a Multicultural/Multiracial Environment”, co-authored with Karen Downing, in the book, Learning to Teach: Workshops on Instruction. American Library Association, 1993.

This recording was released on January 1, 1993. Judy Collins and Bob Dylan have known each other since early 60s, when they both were part of the Greenwich Village folk scene. Many of her albums contain Dylan material. Her versions of Masters of War and The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll are outstanding. This album is great and full of new Dylan material like Sweetheart Like you and Gotta Serve Somebody.

I lived alone at the beginning of the year and turned 34 on January 15, but didn’t do anything but watch movies at home. My car was giving me problems, so I was stuck. The photo below is what my car, a 1980 Toyota Corolla, likely looked like back in 1980, when it was brand new. After having survived 12 Michigan winters, it was not nearly as pretty as it once was, but it was what I had at the time. I spent a lot of money on repairs, but by the following year, I’d have a new vehicle.

This is a 1980 Toyota Corolla, the same model that I owned in 1993. I bought mine in 1990. It never looked as good as this one.

Here are some of my birthday cards from that 1993.

My sister Irene has been sending me birthday cards every year for over 30 years.
I really missed my Michigan friends. Barb Hoppe and I were very close. She was one-of-a-kind.
This was from the staff at the UA Library. There were some very nice people who worked there.
My buddy Richard and I attended this Charlie King concert on January 16, a day after my birthday. King is a professional protest singer, and that night I wasn’t in the mood to hear that kind of music, so I made fun of it the entire time. I still feel had about my behavior. I was being a real jerk.

Nevertheless, here’s one of the songs of Charlie’s that I really like:

I have had lots of trouble with the issue of political correctness over time. I think my leftist friends can get quite dogmatic and they easily put people down who aren’t “enlightened” like they are. I disagree with a lot of what they espouse, especially when it comes to one’s chosen use of language/ terminology and attitudes about various issues like what foods one should or should not eat. There are certain words like queer and latinx, for example, that I’ll likely never use in my own day-to-day speech because I don’t like those terms, but they’re politically correct, so to speak. I also refuse to add pronouns to my signature. If you can’t tell I’m a dude, something is wrong! Seriously, if you want to know, just ask. But don’t make me feel obliged to include it as part of my signature. Oh well. I know who I am–a gay Chicano socialist, or as Archie Bunker might say a “commie, pinko, fairy” through and through. That won’t ever change.

Bill Clinton became our new President in January. He was on several magazine covers. The one on the far right was photoshopped, for sure, but was quite popular with the gay crowd at the time.

Even though I had an uneventful birthday, a week or so later I got to go to Denver to attend the 1993 ALA Midwinter conference. I’d never been there before.

I love Denver. What an interesting city!

I was in Denver for just a few days, so I made the most of it and had a very nice time, but I was also there to work. In 1992, I had been elected national secretary of REFORMA, The National Association for the Promotion of Library Services to the Spanish Speaking, so I was obligated to attend and take minutes at all of the REFORMA meetings held at Midwinter ’93. Here are the minutes from two of the meetings I attended:

Reforma Executive Board Meeting minutes 1-24-93 Denver ALA MW

Reforma II Minutes ALA Denver 1-24-93

Denver has a beautiful skyline.
My hotel was right in the middle of downtown Denver. It was a great location. It was formerly called The Brown Palace Hotel and is now a Holiday Inn Express. At the time of my visit it was a Comfort Inn.

We were in Denver at a time when there was a lot of conflict in Colorado over Amendment 2, a ballot initiative passed by Colorado voters in 1992 that prohibited the state from enacting antidiscrimination protections for gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, but that had been blocked by the courts. I and other colleagues from the UA Library, including our Assistant Dean Shelley Phipps, attended a protest rally at the Capitol in support of the gay population of Colorado. I did my best to keep up with what was happening.

These are some of the lapel buttons that I collected during my visit to Denver.
The protest rally I attended was held at the steps of the State Capitol.

The following article provides more detail about the controversial conference location and many of the activities that took place at the conference.

Under Protest ALA Midwinter in Denver

Here are two more articles that summarize the activities that took place at the conference:

A_Rocky_Time_in_Denver ALA Midwinter

American Libraries Midwinter by the Numbers

The highlight of the trip for me was seeing the exhibit titled “Aztec” at the Denver Museum of Natural History. I was blown away by the incredible sculptures and artifacts that were on display. The exhibit was gorgeous. I remember I hitched a ride with one of my colleagues, Janet Fore, but the car was crowded and Janet wasn’t very happy, so I had to find my own way back to my hotel.

Exterior view of the West side of the Denver Museum of Natural History and Science at dusk.
A very fuzzy photo of the exhibit gallery.
I bought this poster and book while visiting the exhibition at the museum in Denver. I was blown away. I later gave it to my partner Ruben and we had it framed. We still have it.
This book served as the exhibition catalog. I bought a copy for my personal library.

I also got to eat at a few really good restaurants and explore the various record stores and bookstores in the downtown area, as well as the 16th Street Mall.

16th Street has always been the center of downtown. It’s now a pedestrian mall.
Waxtrax Records, Denver.
I enjoyed visiting this bookstore. It was well stocked and busy.

I also went out a few times to the gay bars and nightclubs. I remember one in particular. It was called “Charlie’s” and it was a very crowded country western bar. There were other gay bars around too, just to the east of the Capitol building on Colfax.

Colfax Avenue went on for miles and miles. It was very busy thoroughfare.

I really enjoyed the conference, but I had a lot of work to do at the Library when I got back. We were training our staff how to become teams, and we worked with a consultant named Maureen Sullivan. It was my job to communicate our plan to the staff. This work kept me quite busy. Having fun was a luxury, but I did manage to go to a few concerts like the one noted below.

This was released in 1993, the same year I saw these guys at Coyote’s on W. Lester. They were a fun group.
This was one of my friend Richard’s favorite songs of all time.
Arizona Daily Star, February 12, 1993.
Premiered on February 17, 1993. This is a great movie and the book is fantaastic too.

We held a Mardi Gras celebration for the UA Library staff on February 23. My good friend Chestalene Pintozzi helped out a lot. It was a fun party. It’s been a long, long time since I was this thin!

I recently found the following announcement in a 1993 Library newsletter.

The woman standing next to me is Debbie Friesen, a good friend. She worked in our business office and was longtime volunteer for Tucson Meet Yourself.

On the last day of February, I met someone. His name was Ruben. We hit it off and we fell in love. His mom grew up in the thirties in Superior, Arizona, next door to my dad’s family. She used to play with my aunts Carmen and Helen, and my dad knew her brother, Maclovio Barraza, a union organizer who had recruited my dad to join the union at the mine. Ruben and I had also gone to the same high school and worked at the same grocery store, but at different points in time so our paths never crossed before. It was uncanny. We became inseparable and by May, we decided to live together. It’s now been over 30 years!

I had never heard of the great transgendered writer and leftist activist Leslie Feinberg at the time of the publication of this book, but within a year or so, she would win the American Library Association’s GLBT Book Award and I would bring her to Tucson to speak to the gay community.
Released on March 23, 1993.
What a song!
Released on March 25, 1993. Dwight Yoakam is one of my favorite contemporary country singers.
I just love this song.
Ruben was born in the year of the Rabbit and I was born in the year of the Boar, and according to this place mat, which we got from a Chinese restaurant on Speedway near Tucson Blvd, it says we were compatible. I’ve kept the place mat all these years! Ruben thinks I’m crazy.
Piel de Nina was released on April 1, 1993. Alejandro Fernandez was new to the music scene, and this was his second album. He and Pepe Aguilar started out roughly at the same time, and I bought every album of theirs that I could find. At this point in my life, I was deeply into Mexican ranchera music, and Lucha Villa was my very favorite singer of all, although I sought out all the traditional material I could find. Que viva la musica ranchera!
This guy is amazing.

In early April, at Easter time, I rented a car and Ruben and I drove with his friend Enrique Gomez and another guy named Roberto, who Enrique was dating, to Rocky Point. We had to take the long way, through the back roads in Sonora to get there, because Roberto was from the other side and could not cross into the US. It was a rough road, and the rental car I drove took a beating. This was not a great trip. We had some misunderstandings with Enrique, and things got tense. I realized on this particular trip that I didn’t like Enrique at all, and was never able to get over it. Ruben and I ended up finding our own hotel room in Rocky Point. The only thing that I liked about the trip was the food. We ate grilled fish and later found a little taco stand outside the hotel that sold the most delicious tacos. There’s nothing like tacos and beer to satisfy one’s hunger!

The grilled fish was amazing.
Our hotel wasn’t the best, and the water barely made it out of the shower spigot, but we got by. We stayed for just one night.
The tacos we ate were mouthwatering. We must’ve eaten at least six apiece.
I bought this in Rocky Point. I’m sure there were a few other things I found, but I can’t remember what! It’s been thirty years!
Best American rock band ever.
Arizona Daily Star, April 18, 1993. I’ve seen this group so many times, I’ve lost count. They are my all-time favorite band.
Aaron Neville’s newest release, The Grand Tour became available in record stores on April 20, 1993. I love Aaron Neville’s voice and have several of his albums. This one includes the Song of Bernadette and Betcha By Golly Wow as well as other great classics.
It’s rare to hear a man sing this one, but he does it justice.
I missed it! This event drew thousands.
Urvashi Vaid was an Indian-born American LGBT rights activist, lawyer, and writer. An expert in gender and sexuality law, she held a series of roles at the National LGBTQ Task Force. I loved listening to her. I found her inspiring and eloquent. She is shown here speaking at the National March on Washington. I was quite saddened to learn that she had passed away in May, 2022.

At the same time as the March on Washington, Tucson was hosting its 11th annual Tucson International Mariachi Conference. This year’s featured performers were Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlan, Mariachi Cobre, Mariachi Los Camperos de Nati Cano, Angeles Ochoa and Linda Ronstadt. I made sure not to miss this event!

Here’s Linda Ronstadt singing the great song, Por Un Amor.
I had the honor of meeting Cesar Chavez twice in my life, the last time just two years before he passed. My dad saved the newsclipping shown below. Chavez died on April 23, 1993. He was 66 years old.
There are various version of this corrido. This one by Los Perros del Pueblo Nuevo is great.

Sometime in late Spring, Ruben’s niece Marissa, Jerry’s daughter, had her first holy communion at St. Ambrose Church. She was only five or six at the time, and was the cutest little girl. She lived with Ruben and her grandparents. Ruben bought her a beautiful dress for the occasion. We all gathered at his parent’s house afterwards. This was the first time I had been around his extended family. Here are some photos of the occasion.

By early May, Ruben and I were living together in a two-bedroom apartment on N. Shannon Rd, on the far west side of town, just down the road from Pima Community College West. The apartment complex was called Desert Hills Apartments and had been built sometime in the Sixties. He had convinced me to move there because the rent was a lot cheaper and it was close to his parent’s house. The complex consisted of several long buildings like the one shown below. We spent a lot of time at Ruben’s parents house, and they were very nice to me. Before I knew it, I was part of the family. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about my own family. They weren’t very nice at all.

The photos that follow were taken around his birthday on June 7. Our friends Roberto and Enrique Navarro joined us during the day, and later we drove to Albuquerque and stayed for a day or two. It was a fun trip. Some of the photos were taken on our drive back through central Arizona.

Ruben and I on his birthday, June, 1993.
I had visited Albuquerque 10 years earlier when I went to see my friend Frank. Brent and I also drove through there on our way to Michigan in 1985. I’ve always enjoyed visiting this place. It reminded me to the Tucson I grew up in, before the population swelled.
Ruben and I visited the Spanish History Museum and I bought this coat of arms. It’s one of many Diaz coats of arms out there.
Central Avenue, looking east from San Mateo Boulevard. We visited several antique stores along this street.
These photos were taken somewhere near Globe Arizona. We were on our way home from Albuquerque.
These photos were taken in our apartment.

As soon as I got back to work, I had out of town guests to take care of and host. They were visiting the library from the University of Michigan. Barbara MacAdam was head of the Undergraduate Library there and Karen Downing was a librarian and member of her library staff. Lester Refigee was a student assistant who worked at the reference desk and was part of the Peer Information Counseling program. Carla Stoffle asked me to arrange for them to visit the UA Library to talk about undergraduate services and peer information counseling. They stayed at the Arizona Inn. Over the weekend, I took them on a tour of southern Arizona. We visited San Xavier, Patagonia, Tumacacori, Nogales and the Saguaro National Monument. It was a fun, but exhausting day, and they really enjoyed themselves. I did too. Barbara is now retired, and Karen still works at Michigan. Lester went on to get a medical degree and is now a physician in the Chicago area.

Barbara MacAdam is the woman with the blonde hear on the left and Karen Downing is the the right of Lester in the above photo taken in front of the Arizona Inn.
This is Gloria Estefan’s masterpiece. It was released on June 22, 1993.

At the end of June I was traveling again, this time to New Orleans to attend the American Library Association’s annual conference. Man, it sure was hot there, and very, very humid. I cannot stand this kind of weather, but I wasn’t about to stay indoors. New Orleans is a hopping place, and I made sure to visit the sites and eat a lot of good food in the French Quarter. While at the conference, I attended REFORMA meetings and took minutes, but also found time to have dinner with friends, party at the gay bars and visit various bookstores and record stores, of which there was an abundance.

This was my first of several trips to the Big Easy.
My hotel was just outside the French Quarter. It was nice.
A pocket guide to gay New Orleans. There were bars everywhere in the French Quarter.
The Rawhide. Wow, what a place! I had a lot of fun in this bar over the years.
This was one of several amazing record stores in the French Quarter. I spent a lot of money in these places. Unfortunately, only one or two of them are left. Lps, while having made a comeback in recent years, were not as sought after for a long time after compact discs and mp3 files were introduced into the marketplace, and many record stores ended up closing their doors. Now all the old records are collector’s items!
I bought this for Ruben. It was the first of three that I purchased over the years.
I spent quite a long time sorting through zillions of these, until I found just what I wanted.
This is Bourbon Street, the heart of the French Quarter. It got very, very crowded at night, with people drinking and carrying on in the street. The fist time I was there, it was fun. After that, the novelty wore off and I felt claustrophobic most of the time while there.

In early July, the Diaz clan held its first family reunion in Tucson. My dad and all of his living brothers and sisters showed up with their children and grandchildren. His brothers Raul and Val had already passed, but their children and families and the rest of the brothers and sisters and their families came from all over to partake in the festivities, which were held at St. Demetrius’s social hall and at Reid Park. We held another family reunion in 2007, and there’s currently talk of another being planned.

My dad’s family in 1993. Ruben and I felt totally out of place. I had no idea my extended family would react so badly to our being at this event together. It was awful. I was the first in the family to openly admit to being gay. It would take a few more years for others to come out. We now have several family members who are happily out and proud.
The families of Raul, Valentin, Belarmino and Tony Diaz, 1993.
The families of my tios: Ralph Diaz, Josie Diener, Helen Mendoza and Carmen Basurto, 1993.
My dad and his wife-to-be, Lupe at the park during our family reunion in 1993. She was pregnant at the time with my little brother, Jose’, who was born in September.
Premiered on July 16, 1993. What a fun film!
Ruben and I bought two birds just like these at the Desert Pet Center on July 18, 1993. The are called orange cheek waxbill finches. They were so cute!
The Clinton administration came up with this policy, which was officially enacted by the end of the year. It was disastrous. The gay community had such high hopes when he was elected, and this was a real let down. It would take years and years before more progressive measures were put in place that allowed gay men and women to serve proudly and openly in the nation’s armed services.
I was the primary organizer for the opening reception for this conference, held in Special Collections at the UA Library. I wrote a separate blog post on it. See below.

Status of Hispanic Library and Information Services : A National Institute for Educational Change, July 29-31, 1993. I was a member of the planning committee for this institute and was responsible for coordinating the opening reception. Members of the Library staff and students from the Library School assisted with the logistics and with hosting the event. A fun time was had by all.

Some of my library colleagues who helped at the event. They include Patricia Promis, who would later become my team leader, Atifa Rawan, and Mimi Hernandez. The other two people’s names escape me at this point.
Dr. Arnulfo Trejo, Tami Echeverria and Carla Stoffle, whose face is just barely visible.
I rarely wore a tie at work. It was a very casual atmosphere most of the time.
My best friend Richard with his daughter Luz. He and his wife Emily were so proud of her.

I had spent the first half of the year at work coordinating workshops, participating in training and learning how to juggle many responsibilities at the same time. In August, after new team leaders were hired or appointed, we were finally ready to get the staff together to begin designing the work of their individual teams. We held all staff workshops, led by our ARL consultant Maureen Sullivan, at the Student Union in mid-August. The photos that follow give a snapshot of the work we did.

This anthology of previously released and unreleased recordings by Los Lobos was issued on August 31, 1993. It included songs both in English and Spanish.
I furst heard Los Lobos’ version of Bertha on the Just Another Band from East LA Anthology. This live version is just great.
This is yet another film that first appeared as a book. It premiered on September 8, 1993. Both are excellent.
Released on September 18, 1993.
This rare tune appears on the above anthology. Joan sings this Donovan-penned tune with her sister Mimi Farina.
Released on September 28, 1993.
I think this is her masterpiece. Oh, Emmylou, I sure do love you!
I participated in the Tucson Aidswalk again this year. There was a high turnout at this particular event, and lots of money was raised to support the cause.

In October, I attended a workshop on management skills in Chicago. It was another program sponsored by the Association of Research Library Office of Management Services. I had attended one the year before in Raleigh, NC called “The Training Skills Institute”. Once I was done with the workshop, Ruben flew in from Tucson and we stayed and enjoyed a nice vacation in the city. It was lots of fun. I had been to Chicago before, but this was Ruben’s first visit. We went to the Art Institute, the Natural History Museum, the Al Capone Museum, and the Chicago Historical Society, and saw some great exhibits. We also went to the top of the Hancock building, and ate tons of great food.

Ruben and I stayed at this hotel on Ohio St.
We took a boat tour along the Chicago River and Lake Michigan. It was a lot of fun.
Visiting the Art Institute of Chicago was one of the highlights of our trip.
When we visited the Chicago Historical Society we saw Lincoln’s death bed. It was a somber moment for sure.
We visited the short-lived Al Capone museum. Public outcry over the glorification and celebration of a know murderer led to the closing of the museum. That didn’t stop me from taking a picture with him. What was I thinking?
The Chicago Historical Society was a wonderful place to visit. It had some great exhibits.
This is one my favorite Jackson Browne albums. I especially love the title cut. The album was released on October 26, 1993.
I love this song. It’s one of my all-time favorites.
Released on November 2, 1993. This album is great, one of my favorites.
I love this.

I spent a lot of time in my job establishing ties with various Latino groups, including the services to the Spanish-speaking staff of the public library and Latino faculty on campus who were members of the Arizona Association of Chicanos in Higher Education, of which I became secretary for a year. I also met with Latino students enrolled in the library science graduate program. They helped me coordinate the reception for the Trejo Institute in July, and I later hosted them for dinner one evening at my home. On November 12, several of us took a field trip to Nogales, Mexico, where we visited with staff from El Colegio De Sonora and had lunch. It was a great group of students. One of them is now a library science professor at San Jose State. Others have already retired or are continuing their work as librarians in communities across the country.

These are some of the graduate students enrolled in the library science program at the UA that I worked with in 1993. Their names are Adrian, Jose’, Ramiro, April and Pilar, if I remember correctly. Adrian works and lives in the San Jose’ area. Jose’ is now a professor of Library Science at San Jose’ State University, Ramiro is a retired public librarian, April, who is married to Jose’, works in Phoenix for a medical library, and I don’t know whatever became of Pilar. I think she moved to Colorado shortly after having graduated.
Premiered on November 19, 1993.
Premiered on November 22, 1993.

Released on November 23, 1993.
Linda’s powerful vocals on this Tish Hinojosa song transform it into something far beyond what’s written on paper.
The Arizona State Library Association conference was held in Phoenix in early December. I was chair of the ASLA Library Services to the Spanish Speaking committee, and coordinated a panel program on library services to the Latino community. It was titled, “Library Services to Latinos in Arizona: A Diversity of Perspectives,” and in addition to me, who filled in for someone who didn’t show up, it featured three speakers, including Liz Rodriguez-Miller, Guadalupe Castillo, and Pernela Jones.
The ASLA Conference took place December 1-4, 1993. I traveled by bus from Tucson and back this time around.
Ruben and I took Vivian Sykes, a library consultant to the Desert Museum on December 5. It had been a long time since I had been there.

Right before Christmas, Ruben and I were invited to Nogales by his friend Enrique Gomez, the same Enrique that we went to Rocky Point with back in April. We stayed in a hotel about seven blocks from the border, and hung out with Enrique and his friends at his house. We were supposed to go out to the bars with them, but decided to stay at our hotel. Enrique and I did not like each other, and I think we sensed that things weren’t going to go too well if we went along. Ruben, who doesn’t speak Spanish, was also badly treated by one of Enrique’s friends. We ended up eating campechanas at a small seafood stand across the street from our hotel, and shopping in the tourist area. I always enjoyed doing that.

Our hotel has since changed its name to the Motel San Luis, but when we were there it was the Motel Don Luis. It wasn’t a five star hotel, that’s for sure. Not even a two star…
Premiered on December 22, 1993.

A summary of the bulk of my 1993 staff development, training and diversity-related work activities (mostly June, 1993 to the end of December 1993) is included in the report linked below. I wrote this in January 1994. It gives one an idea of how busy I was in 1993. And the fun was just beginning….

1993 (June-December) Summary of Activities

We bought a couple of movies to help us get into the Christmas spirit.

The lady in the photo is Joanne Preston. She was our receptionist at the UA Library. I really liked her, and was said when she took a job somewhere else.
I met Teresa Jones when I was a member of Teatro Libertad back in the 1980s. We re-connected when I moved back to Tucson and would have lunch together all the time. She worked at KUAT television and produced a program called “Reflexiones” that was very popular in the local Mexican American community.

Although we had a bit of a rocky start, Ruben and I made it to the end of the year. This was our very first Christmas tree in our new apartment. We bought a lot of new decorations. Shopping for them was fun.

Tina Turner remembered

Music, My Favorite Things,

Most of the material included here–record albums, photos, cds and magazine articles, etc.– comes from my personal archives. However, I’ve added a few videos, photos and graphics from other sources to help tell the story of my lifelong infatuation with the music of Tina Turner.  

My earliest recollections of Tina Turner go back to when I was a 12-year old kid watching her on television performing Proud Mary with Ike Turner and the Ikettes back in the early 70s. She had long legs, wore mini-skirts and a long dark brown wig, and could dance and sing like nobody’s business. I can close my eyes and clearly see her and her girls dancing in unison like crazy, tossing their hair back and forth as they did a rolling motion with their arms, while Tina belted out the lyrics to Proud Mary. It was a wild thing to witness. The group must’ve appeared on several tv shows in the Sixties and Seventies. Their onstage energy was unmatched.

The Soul of Ike and Tina Turner / 1961

I must admit, I have not studied Ike and Tina Turner’s recording history much until just recently. Slowly but surely, I’m piecing things together. They first recorded together in 1960-61 and had a couple of hits that included “A Fool In Love” and “It’s Gonna work Out fine” which I remember hearing on some of the oldies anthologies that I had bought when I first started collecting albums in earnest while in college. I have a cd re-issue of their first album, shown above, titled “The Soul of Ike and Tina Turner”.

This version of A Fool In Love was recorded for the program, Shindig on November 25, 1964, not 1960 as the note on the video screen indicates.
This is from my music videos collection. Tina performs Ooh Poo Pah Doo.

I also have a video of Tina performing with Marvin Gaye on the tv show Shindig in the mid-60s. I think they sang the song Money and I’ll be Doggone. She also performed A Fool in Love and Ooh Poo Pah Doo on the program. I used to love to watch the show on television. Aretha Franklin also appeared on it a number of times. It was great. Lots of popular groups performed on it and other shows like Hullabaloo.

On this tape, also from my music videos collection, Tina performs A Fool In Love.
The medley includes the tunes, “Money”, “I’ll Be Doggone” and “That’ll Be The Day”. What a pair!
Here’s another TIna Turner performance on Shindig. It’s available on the following–“Shindig Presents Legends of Rock N’ Roll”:
1992 video compilation of Shindig programs from the Mid-1960s. From my collection of music videos..
Ike and Tina also performed on a television concert program called the “Big T.N.T. Show” in 1966. The songs they performed were:  Shake, A Fool In Love, It’s Gonna Work Out Fine, Please, Please, Please, Goodbye, So Long and Tell The Truth. The above concert tape is from my music video collection.

Here’s more about the Big T.N.T. concert from Wikipedia : “The Big T.N.T. Show is a 1966 concert film. Directed by Larry Peerce and distributed by American International Pictures. It includes performances by numerous popular rock and roll and R&B musicians from the United States and the United Kingdom. A sequel to 1964’s The T.A.M.I. Show, and, like it, executive produced by Henry G. Saperstein, The Big T.N.T. Show was likewise shot on videotape and transferred to 35-millimeter film. Some footage from it was reused in the film That Was Rock,  a.k.a. The T.A.M.I. / T.N.T. Show (1984).”

River Deep, Mountain High / released in the US in 1969.

Two of the first record albums I acquired when I was in college were the legendary recording, River Deep Mountain High, and a compilation album titled, The Soul of Ike and Tina Turner, which consisted of songs recorded in the mid-60s on the Kent record label. Phil Spector recorded Tina singing River Deep Mountain High in England. He paid Ike to stay away from the recording studio while he recorded Tina’s vocals. The song has that very unique “wall of sound” quality that Spector was so famous for, and it features Tina singing her heart out. It was released in both the US and England, where it was a big hit. It didn’t do well at all in the States, however, and it is said that Phil Spector closed down his record company and went into seclusion afterwards because he was so disappointed in how the song did in the U.S. The album, while recorded in 1966, was released in England in 1967. In the US, the A & M label issued it in 1969. My copy has a few snap, crackle and pops, but doesn’t skip.

The original release of The Soul of Ike and Tina Turner, released in 1966, is on the left , and the 1971 French re-issue which I have in my collection is on the right.

I have a 1971 French import issue of the album, “The Soul of Ike and Tina Turner” (not to be confused with their very first release from 1961, which has the same title), which consisted of songs Ike and Tina recorded in the mid-60s on the Modern and Kent labels. The album was released originally in 1966 on the Kent label. The recording I have is in pristine condition and sounds amazing.

Two additional albums that I have are of live performances recorded at the Skyliner Ballroom (Fort Worth, Texas) and the Lovall’s Ballroom (Dallas, Texas) in 1964.

The first recording was originally titled, “Live!: The Ike and Tina Turner Show” and was released in January 1965 on the Warner Bros. label (Catalog Number: W 1579). The version I have is titled “Somehing’s Got A Hold On Me”. It was  released in 1971 on the  Harmony Records label. Three of the songs on the original recording are omitted from this version.

The second recording of the 1964 live performances was originally titled, “The Ike and Tina Turner Show, Vol. 2”, and was released in January 1967 on the Loma label, (Catalog number: LS 5904). The version I have was released in 1969 on the Harmony Records label,  and is titled Ooh Poo Pah Doo,

Because I had no idea of the details around the nearly 20 year recording history of Ike and Tina Turner, when I first started buying their records, I collected whatever I could find at the used record stores. There was no rhyme or reason to my collecting strategy, except that I liked finding records that cost under $5, and most of the ones I have averaged about $3 a disc.

The Hunter / 1969________________________The Best of Ike and Tina Turner / 1973

In the late sixties, the group recorded for the Blue Thumb label, and many of the songs on the albums from this period are blues numbers. I really love the album, The Hunter, which I gave away to my good friends Mike and Denice. In hindsight, sometimes I think it was dumb of me to do that, but they were leaving town and I had to give them a gift, something memorable, so I chose that recording plus a John Lee Hooker album and a Taj Mahal album, all of which I had a hard time finding later. I did manage to find some of the Blue Thumb recordings on compact disc later.

She sang the blues like nobody’s business, but I’ve read that she didn’t like singing those songs that much. Dang. She’s one of the best blues singers I’ve ever heard. That’s really too bad, but there’s probably too much association with Ike Turner and the pain she endured while with him. I don’t think she sang the blues in the eighties at all.

This is the only 45 I have of Ike and Tina Turner.

Ike and Tina Turner began performing Proud Mary in their live shows in 1969. In 1970, they recorded the song and it came out on their album, “Workin’ Together”. It became a huge hit in 1971. The performance that follows was recorded for the Ed Sullivan Show, where they appeared live on January 11, 1970. It also includes Bold Soul Sister.

Bold Soul Sister appears on this anthology of musical performances from the Ed Sullivan Show. From my personal collection of music videos.

I didn’t know this, but Ike and Tina were the first rock act to play at the brand new Tucson Community Center back in October, 1971.  Here’s a brief announcement about the concert:

A lot of their recordings in the 70’s appeared on the United Artists label. Here are the ones I have in my collection:

Acid Queen / 1975 _______ Greatest Hits / 1976

Tina suffered severe abuse as Ike’s wife, but she finally broke free in July, 1976, and never looked back. Their divorce was finalized in 1978. All she got out of it were two cars and her name, which Ike had trademarked years ago. The ensuing years were difficult for her, but she persevered. Her Buddhist faith kept her strong and focused.

It took her a bit of time to get back on her feet and find her own way, but by the early 80’s she was once again performing and attracting attention as a great singer and performer, this time as a solo act. I hadn’t really known the details about what was going on with her, but in the early 80’s, I clipped and saved some Village Voice ads promoting her performances at the Ritz in New York in September and October of 1981. They appear below:

In the late 70s-early 80s Tina would make her entrance flapping these wings. It reminds me of the drag shows I used to see at Jeckyl and Hyde’s in Tucson back in the late 70s. This was a very popular costume!

Here are a couple of import cassettes that I found, both released in 1981. Both have the exact same song lists too. I can’t seem to find the original albums in which these songs first appeared.

I found a copy of the 12” single, “Let’s Stay Together” shortly after it was recorded in 1983 and released early in 1984. Al Green wrote the tune and it was a big hit for him in 1972.   It was the first big record for her since she had left Ike, and it marked a major turning point in her career. She was especially big in England where the song went to the top of the charts.

Throughout her career, Tina has been on of the hardest working performers in show business. This concert is one of many examples of her amazing energy and talent. It’s from 1982, when she was performing on her own, a year before things started getting much better for her:

Here’s another amazing performance from around the same time:

Tina’s version of Let’s Stay Together, released in late 1983 in England and early 1984 in the US, rose to the top of the charts in England, and was the beginning of her rise to superstardom. Within a year, her breakthrough recording of Private Dancer would change things for her in a big, big way. She finally got the recognition she deserved as the world’s queen of rock and roll.

This version of Al Green’s classic went to the top of the charts in England.
Rolling Stone, October 11, 1984. This is one of three Rolling Stone magazine covers on which Tina appears. Details of the abuse she endured are revealed in this lengthy feature. People Magazine, however, back in 1981, was the first national publication to reveal why Tina left Ike.

Private Dancer was released shortly after this in May, 1984.

Here is a snippet from Wikipedia, that details the incredible success of this album:

“The album was released on May 29, 1984, and became an outstanding global commercial success.[20][21][22] The album peaked at number three on the Billboard 200 chart for ten consecutive weeks[23] and remained in the top ten for 39 weeks from August 1984 to May 1985. In the United States it was certified 5× platinum.[24] In Germany, the album went 5× gold becoming one of the best selling albums in history. It peaked at number two on the UK Albums Chart, where it was certified 3× platinum, remaining on the charts for 150 total weeks. It was certified 7× platinum for the shipment of over 700,000 copies in Canada by the Canadian Recording Industry Association. The album has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide.[25][26] At the 1985 Grammy Awards, Private Dancer won four of the six awards for which it was nominated.”

Her first big hit after her breakthrough album Private Dancer was released was “What’s Love Got To Do With It”. I liked the record a lot, but Tina has said she was reluctant to record it. She didn’t really care for it. I heard her say in an interview that “love has everything to do with it”, so I can understand why she didn’t care for the song. However, she also noted that the tune was catchy and that the public loved it. The video was quite popular, if I recall correctly.

The single, “Private Dancer” was also a big hit, but I didn’t like it much. I saw Joan Baez sing it in concert once with just her guitar. I thought it quite odd, but Joan loved Tina Turner, and there are several photos of them together, including the one below.

Joan Baez and Tina Turner

Tina sang on the We Are The World record, recorded on January 8, 1985. She was part of a huge superstar line-up that included Willie Nelson, Cyndi Lauper, Lionel Ritchie, Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, Madonna and Bob Dylan.

I enjoyed seeing her on Live Aid on July 13, 1985. Her duet with Mick Jagger was quite memorable, especially the part where he rips off her skirt. I vaguely remember Patti Labelle and Tina getting into a bit of a tiff over one of them touching the other, and there being a bad reaction from one of them, because of the sweat that was pouring out. What the hell?

Just a few days after Live Aid, Tina appeared on the cover of People magazine. (This article and the US article are both in my personal collection of memorabilia). No mention is made of her life with Ike Turner and the abuse she endured during their marriage. She revealed all those details the following year in her autobiography.

Released on September 1, 1986. I read it at the time, but never had my own copy.

A week later, she appeared on the cover of US magazine. In this interview, she provides details about her relationship with Ike Turner. She had such a rough life with him, it’s incredible that she endured it for so long.

After Private Dancer, Tina appeared in the film, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. I never saw the movie, nor do I have any of the recordings from it, although the song, “We Don’t Need Another Hero” was a big hit. I never took to it for some reason.

The following year, Tina released the cd, Break Every Rule. I never bought it, but I do have a 45 of one of the songs from it. I also have just the cover of another song from that album. I have no idea where I acquired it.

I just love this song. Man oh man!

Tina appeared in concert in Tucson in early December, 1987. I was living in Ann Arbor at the time, but would have gone if I’d been here.

By 1988, Tina was an international super star She had millions of fans, and drew immense crowds to her concerts. Here are some items from my collection, including her live album (part 1 is on cd, part 2 is on cassette. I don’t know how that happened) and an ad for a HBO special of a concert she gave in South America.

Tina turned 50 in 1989. I clipped this article from the Ann Arbor news.

I also have the following two photos in my Tina Turner file. These are from 1990.

In 1991, Tina released the following greatest hits compilation, which I have in my collection.

She has said that her favorite song is “Simply the Best”. She noted that her record producers didn’t care for the tune, but that she fought hard to have it recorded. Thank goodness. It’s become her signature song, and every time I see her perform it, I’m amazed at her energy and joy.

Little did I know, but I had this in my movie collection all along!

In 1993, the movie, “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” was released. Directed by Brian Gibson and written by Kate Lanier, it is based on Tina’s 1986 autobiography I, Tina, and stars Angela Bassett as Tina and Laurence Fishburne as her abusive husband Ike Turner. I’ve seen bits and pieces of the film, but not the entire thing. It’s something I plan to do soon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIDq6xa3K7g

Jumping forward to 1999, Tina appeared in the VH1 Divas 1999 concert. She tore the place up with her songs, “The Best” and “Proud Mary” on which she shared the stage with Elton John and Cher. She arrived in a limousine, and walked right on to the stage to sing Simply the Best. It was a moment to behold.

Rounding out my collection of Ike and Tina Turner recordings are two cd compilations from the late 60s, both consisting of material recorded on the Blue Thumb label.

When I hosted my radio show, “The Chicano Connection” (1983-1986, 2005 to 2020), I would regularly feature the music of Ike and Tina Turner. Below is a quick bio sheet I wrote up for my segment on Tina Turner in celebration of her birthday one year. I’ve also included a sheet full of the songs by Ike and Tina Turner that I played over the years while on the air.

Aretha Franklin had her feathers ruffled in 2015 when Beyonce’ called Tina “the queen” at the Grammys 50th anniversary show. This only made Aretha look bad.  She was always quite insecure about her status as one of the world’s greatest singers. Tina later noted that Aretha was the queen of soul and that she was the queen of rock and roll and said there’s room for more than one at the top. I heartily agree.

Those performances that Tina Turner did live on television with Ike and her dancers will be forever embedded in the collective memory of people from my generation. There’s no justification, however, for what Ike did to her over the years, but I believe that you can’t just erase what you don’t like about the past. You have to acknowledge it. It happened and that’s that. However, there are indeed other things one can focus on at present, so I would rather just do that rather than ever, ever glorify Ike Turner.

Tina didn’t let her fame go to her head. She was a devout Buddhist and remained so from the mid-70s to the very end. She chanted the same chant my cousin Tish chants. I still have the card Tish gave me with the words Nam Myoho Renge Kyo.

For a long time, my favorite songs were the blues tunes from the late 60s. 3 O’Clock in the Morning Blues, Dust My Broom, You’ve Got my Running, and Mean Old World are all very heartfelt and beautifully sung. Tina’s raspy, low voice is well suited to these kinds of songs. Too bad she didn’t care for the genre much. Oh well. At least we have the Blue Thumb records and cd compilations.  

Lately, I’ve been enjoying discovering some of her newer work. I really like, “It’s Only Love”,  the duet she sings with Bryan Adams, and I enjoy the song Steamy Windows a lot. I’m sure there are a lot more songs that I’ll enjoy as I continue to listen and learn.

What a wonderful recording legacy she left us. And it started in 1960, not 1983.

Here are two recent magazines featuring Tina Turner that I bought for my collection at Walgreens in early June, 2023.

My newest acquisition, People’s Tina Turner commemorative issue, published in June 2023.
I recently went on a shopping spree and found these cds–Greatest Hits Vol. 1 (1989); In The Beginning (1993); Break Every Rule (1986); Foreign Affair (1989); Wildest Dreams (1996); and Twenty-Four Seven (1999). The first two are Ike and Tina Turner compilations from the Sixties and Seventies, and the rest are from Ms. Turner’s solo career.
I couldn’t resist. My very own Tina Turner T-Shirt!
I borrowed this book from the University of Arizona Library and read it in just a few days. It was published in 2005. I finished in on 6/21/23. It was okay. Bego got a lot of the details of Turner’s life wrong and he’s very repetitive. A good editor would have helped clean it up a bit. Nevertheless it did have a lot of interesting information, especially about Tina’s relationship with Ike Turner.
My latest acquisition, received in the mail on 6/23/23, “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” released in conjunction with the movie by the same title in June 1993. This compilation includes versions of some of Tina’s earliest hits as well as her latest efforts.

I had no idea this duet existed until today, which is July 12, 2023. It’s amazing. The are great together. I’d never even heard of Jimmy Barnes until today, but he’s quite popular.

For more information, consult Wikipedia’s entries on Ike and Tina Turner and Tina Turner. Also see the entries, Ike and Tina Turner Discography and Tina Turner Discography for a more complete listing of their recordings than what I have included in this post. The site Discogs includes a lot of additional information about their various recordings.

AN IKE AND TINA TURNER TIMELINE TO EARLY 1991 (borrowed from the book, “Rock Movers and Shakers” by Dafydd Rees).

Tina Turner left behind a lengthy, rich recorded legacy going all the way back to 1960. The following lists of Ike and Tina Turner and Tina Turner 45 rpm singles is borrowed from the book “Goldmine 45 RPM Records Price Guide, 8th edition“, by Dave Thompson. (Krause Publications, 2018).