Big Joe Turner

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the ice hockey player see Joe Turner

Big Joe Turner
[[Image: \|220px\|]]
Background information
Birth name	Joseph Vernon Turner Jr
Born	May 18, 1911
Origin	Kansas City, Kansas
Died	November 24, 1985
Genre(s)	Blues
Years active	1920's - 1980's
Label(s)	Atlantic Records Various
Associated acts	Pete Johnson Count Basie Orchestra
Website	* www.hoyhoy

Big Joe Turner (born Joseph Vernon Turner Jr., May 18, 1911 – November 24, 1985) was an American blues shouter from Kansas City, Missouri.

1 Career
2 Quotation
3 Most Famous Recordings
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Career

Although he came to his greatest fame in the 1950s with his pioneering rock and roll recordings, particularly "Shake, Rattle and Roll", Turner's career as a performer stretched from the 1930s, into the 1980s.

Known variously as The Boss of the Blues, and Big Joe Turner (due to his 6'2", 250+ lbs stature), Turner was born in Kansas city and first discovered his love of music through involvement in the church. He began singing on street corners for money, leaving school at age 14 to begin working in Kansas City's club scene, first as a cook, and later as a singing bartender. He eventually became known as The Singing Barman, and worked in such venues as The Kingfish Club and The Sunset, where he and Pete Johnson became resident performers. The Sunset was managed by Piney Brown, and which featured "separate but equal" facilities for white patrons. Turner wrote "Piney Brown Blues" in his honor and sang it his entire career.

At that time Kansas City was a wide-open town run by "Boss" Tom Pendergast. Despite this, the clubs were subject to frequent raids, but as Turner recounts, "The Boss man would have his bondsmen down at the police station before we got there. We'd walk in, sign our names and walk right out. Then we would cabaret until morning".

His partnership with boogie-woogie pianist Pete Johnson proved fruitful, and together they headed to New York City in 1936 where they appeared on a bill with Benny Goodman, but as Turner recounts, "After our show with Goodman, we auditioned at several places, but New York wasn't ready for us yet, so we headed back to K.C.". Eventually they were spotted by John Hammond in 1938, who invited them back to New York to appear in his "Spirituals to Swing" concert at Carnegie Hall, which was instrumental in introducing jazz and blues to a wider American audience.

Due in part to their appearance at Carnegie Hall, Turner and Johnson scored a major hit with "Roll 'Em, Pete", which Turner recorded many times under various names over the years.

In 1939, along with boogie players Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis, they began a residency at Cafe Society, a club in New York City, where they appeared on the same bill as Billie Holiday and Frank Newton's band. Besides "Roll 'Em, Pete", his best known recordings from this period are probably "Cherry Red", "I Want A Little Girl", and "Wee Baby Blues".

In 1941, he headed to Los Angeles where he performed in Duke Ellington's revue Jump for Joy in Hollywood. He appeared as a singing policeman in a sketch called "He's on the Beat". L.A. became his home base for a time, and in 1945 he opened his own bar, The Blue Moon Club with Pete Johnson.

Turner continued to record blues with small combos on several record labels, particularly National Records and also appeared with the Count Basie Orchestra. In his career, Turner successively led the transition from big bands to jump blues to rhythm and blues, and finally to rock and roll. Turner was a master of traditional blues lyrics and at the legendary Kansas City jam sessions he could swap choruses with instrumental soloists for hours.

In 1951, while performing with the Count Basie Orchestra at Harlem's Apollo Theater as a replacement for Jimmy Rushing, he was spotted by the Ahmet Ertegun and Nesuhi Ertegun, who signed him to their new recording company, Atlantic Records. He recorded a number of hits for them, including the blues standards, "Chains of Love" and "Sweet Sixteen" before hitting it big with "Shake, Rattle and Roll", which not only transformed his career, turning him into a teenage favorite, but also transformed popular music.

Although the version of the song by Bill Haley and his Comets, with the suggestive lyrics incompletely cleaned up, was a bigger hit, many listeners sought out Turner's version and were introduced thereby to the whole world of rhythm and blues. Elvis Presley showed he needed no such introduction. His version of "Shake, Rattle and Roll" combined Turner's lyrics with Haley's arrangement, but was not successful as a single release.

After a number of hits in this vein, Turner left popular music behind and returned to his roots as a singer with small jazz combos, recording numerous classic albums in that style in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1966, Bill Haley helped revive Turner's career by lending him the Comets for a series a popular recordings in Mexico (apparently no one thought of getting the two to record a duet of "Shake, Rattle and Roll", as no such recording has yet surfaced).

It is a mark of his dominance as a singer that he won the Esquire Magazine award for male vocalist in 1945, the Melody Maker award for best 'new' vocalist in 1956, and the British Jazz Journal award as top male singer in 1965. His career thus stretched from the bar rooms of Kansas City in the 1930s (at the age of 12 when he performed with a penciled moustache and his father's hat), on to the European jazz festivals of the 1980s.

He died in Los Angeles in November 1985 of a heart attack, having suffered the earlier effects of a stroke and diabetes. Big Joe Turner was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.

[edit] Quotation

Roll 'em boy,

Gonna jump for joy

Yeah man, happy as a baby boy

My baby just brought me a brand new choo-choo toy

"Roll 'Em, Pete" -- by Joe Turner and Pete Johnson

[edit] Most Famous Recordings

"Roll 'Em, Pete" - 1938; available in many versions over the years
"Chains Of Love" - 1951 *
"Honey Hush" - 1953 *
"Shake, Rattle and Roll" - 1954
"Flip Flop And Fly" - 1955 *
"Cherry Red" - 1956
"Corrine, Corrina" - 1956 *
"Wee Baby Blues" - 1956; a song Turner had been singing since his Kingfish Club days
"Midnight Special" - 1957

Tracks marked as * were million selling discs.

[edit] References

The Blues - From Robert Johnson To Robert Cray - ISBN 1-85868-255-X
The Book Of Golden Discs (Second Edition) - ISBN 0-214-20512-6
The Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues - ISBN 1-86155-385-4
Jumpin' the Blues - Joe Turner with Pete Johnson's Orchestra - Arhoolie Records - Liner notes
Rocks in my Bed - Big Joe Turner - International Music Co. - Liner notes
The Chronological Joe Turner - 1949-1950 - Classics Records - Liner notes
Rock and Roll - Joe Turner - Atlantic Records - Liner notes
Shout, Rattle and Roll - Big Joe Turner - Proper Records (Four CD boxed set - 2005) - Liner notes