Big Joe Turner

Blues singer

• Born: May 18, 1911
• Birthplace: Kansas City, Missouri
• Died: November 24, 1985
• Place of death: Inglewood, California

Turner was one of the most beloved blues singers of the twentieth century. His music bridged the gap between jazz and blues, and he was respected and admired by musicians and listeners of both musical traditions.

Early Life

Joseph Vernon Turner, Jr., was born in Kansas City, Missouri. His father died in a railroad accident when Turner was barely three years old, and he was raised by his mother and grandmother. He reached his maturity during Prohibition. In the 1920’s, Kansas City was run by a corrupt “boss” named Pendergast, and the downtown area was filled with illegal alcohol vendors known as speakeasies. Turner shined shoes and ran errands but gravitated toward the Backbiter Club, a speakeasy where piano player Pete Johnson worked. The teenage Turner was too young to enter, so he drew on a false mustache with eyeliner to get past the doorman and asked Johnson if he could sing with him. Johnson agreed, and Turner made a good impression, singing without a microphone or amplification.

Turner and Johnson became a performing team and later formed a quartet that performed around Kansas City through the end of Prohibition in 1933. The quartet toured the Midwest, but upon Prohibition’s repeal they returned to Kansas City. There, they landed a position at the Sunset Club, a prestigious venue where Count Basie also played. Their act eventually grew into a seven-piece group, and they were given the opportunity to broadcast from the club. One of these broadcasts was heard by New York producer and talent scout John Hammond, who came to Kansas City to lure the Basie orchestra to New York. He was impressed by Turner and asked him to come along with the Basie group, but Turner declined. In 1938, Hammond sent Johnson and Turner a telegram asking them to appear at his newly organized “Spirituals to Swing” concert in Carnegie Hall.

Life’s Work

At the Carnegie Hall concert, Turner and Johnson were teamed with piano players Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis. The resulting quartet was a sensation, and the four quickly found a job playing at the prestigious Café Society in New York. Turner and Johnson also won a recording contract with Vocalion Records and soon afterward recorded for Decca Records. Turner became a very popular performer and recording artist. He appeared in the Duke Ellington stage musical Jump for Joy (1941) and, during World War II, sang in Hollywood nightclubs.

Turner was known as “Big Joe” to differentiate him from a jazz piano player of the same name; he was over six feet tall and had become rotund after years of good eating. At the age of twelve, he had escaped a fire by jumping from a second-story window, breaking both of his legs. The legs gave him trouble into his adulthood, and for decades he performed while sitting.

Turner sang up-tempo songs almost exclusively. He said that slow blues tunes made no sense to him, and that the faster numbers suited him. His Kansas City upbringing trained him to sing blues tunes with top jazz musicians, and the intersection of these two musical idioms gave Turner the ability to work with some of the most accomplished names in jazz. In 1954, he recorded “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” which was quickly remade by white rock-and-roll pioneer Bill Haley. This song was a huge nationwide hit, and it introduced Turner to a new generation of listeners. He spent the balance of the 1950’s as a rock-and-roll star on Atlantic Records, then during the 1960’s and 1970’s, he returned to singing with small jazz combos.

For the last two decades of his life, Turner remained a celebrated singer, appearing at festivals and winning awards in America and Europe. He died on November 24, 1985, in Inglewood, California.

Significance

Turner’s style of blues singing, aggressive yet smooth, was a sound he held to throughout his fifty-year career, allowing successive generations to regard it as blues, jazz, rock and roll, then soul. Personable and strong of voice, with or without a microphone, Turner became the model for how a blues singer should sound and act.

Bibliography

Balliett, Whitney. American Singers. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. Balliett’s section on Turner describes an interview with the singer in a New York nightclub, when Turner was working with another musical legend, piano player Lloyd Glenn.

Guralnuck, Peter. Lost Highway: Journeys and Arrivals of American Musicians. Edinburgh, Scotland: Canongate Books, 2002. The section on Turner in this source also is based upon an interesting visit with the singer. Includes some interesting anecdotes about Turner’s career.

Kempton, Murray, and Arthur Kempton. “Big Joe Turner: The Holler of a Mountain Jack.” In Bluesland: Portraits of Twelve Major American Blues Masters, edited by Pete Welding and Toby Byron. New York: Dutton, 1991. This interesting chapter on Turner focuses on his years working for Atlantic Records during the 1950’s.

Tosches, Nick. Unsung Heroes of Rock ’n’ Roll: The Birth of Rock in the Wild Years Before Elvis. New York: Da Capo Press, 1999. Offers an absorbing and detailed account of Turner’s career.