Songfacts®:

• This song isn't about a wine or a breed of chicken, but a woman. Tina Turner plays the part of young lady with dangerous curves and big ambitions who rebels against her small-town life in Louisiana and moves to New Orleans, where she becomes a star. Why they call her Sweet Rhode Island Red isn't clear.
• This was released as the follow-up up to "Nutbush City Limits," which like this track, was also written by Tina Turner. "Nutbush" though, is autobiographical, about Turner's upbringing in Nutbush, Tennessee. "Sweet Rhode Island Red" showed that she could write from the perspective of a character with refined storytelling. Despite her chops as a songwriter, when she went solo, she didn't write her own songs; her comeback album Private Dancer was written entirely by others, with the title track penned by Mark Knopfler.
• Turner mentions Sweet Rhode Island Red's measurements a few times in this song: 34-22-38 (or as she phrases it, "34-38, 22 at the tummy"). These rather unrealistic proportions resemble a Barbie doll; the girl in The Commodores' "Brick House" was a little more plausible: 36-24-36.
• John Waite covered this song on his 2011 album Rough & Tumble, singing it in the third person. "'Sweet Rhode Island Red' is a song I've wanted to cut since I was about 24," he said. "I heard it for the first time over at my brother's house. He had a live album of Ike and Tina Turner called What You See Is What You Get and it was just stormin'. I mean, I remember us just lying there on the floor playing that album a lot, especially through one Christmas. I'd go over there just to hear it. That song killed me."
  
  He added: "Tina wrote the song by herself. It shows you the profound talent that she has. Not only could she blaze through those songs and put her heart out in front of all those people that she sung to, but she could also write stuff like that. It just knocked me out." >>

  Suggestion credit:
  DeeTheWriter - Saint Petersburg, Russia Federation