The Beyhive was abuzz when Beyoncé dropped a teaser for her two new country-adjacent song (“Texas Hold 'Em” and “16 Carriages”) during the Superbowl. But when it comes to African American soul divas dabbling in country music, as so often the case in pop culture history, Queen Tina got there first! I’d always mistakenly assumed Acid Queen (1975) was Tina Turner’s debut solo effort, but no – the record Tina Turns the Country On was released in September 1974 (so it turns fifty this year. Note that Tina started releasing solo material when she was still married to Ike). On it, the R&B tigress wraps her gravelly rasp around material by the likes of Kris Kristofferson, Dolly Parton, Hank Snow, Bob Dylan and James Taylor. While Turns the Country On garnered Turner a Grammy nomination that year for "Best R&B Vocal Performance, Female" it belly-flopped commercially (no singles from it were released) and the reviews were decidedly mixed (“She sounds so woeful doing country on Turns the Country On, you would think she grew up overseas” Ron Wynn concludes in his 1985 book Tina: The Tina Turner Story). You can judge for yourself – the album is streaming on Spotify. Ultimately, as the Saving Country Music website notes “perhaps Tina Turner’s biggest country music contribution came from being a muse, not a performer. In 1969, Waylon Jennings was hanging out at the Fort Worther Motel in Fort Worth, TX when he breezed by an advertisement for Tina Turner describing her as a “good hearted woman loving two-timing men.” Waylon immediately recognized the phrase as the perfect premise for a country song” – and it resulted in his 1972 hit “Good Hearted Woman.”