Big Joe Turner, aka "the boss of the blues," was a blues shouter, a singer who developed his powerful vocal style while working as a bartender in one of the many saloons in Kansas City's notorious Tenderloin district. Under 1930s mayor Teddy Pendergast, Kansas City was wide open territory where every vice imaginable was available for a price and the bars literally never closed. Turner sang while mixing drinks when the mood took him; the house piano player, Pete Johnson, soon noticed that he and Turner could perform songs together, even though they were at opposite ends of the club! Their partnership lasted for two decades, and in 1938 the two were chosen to represent Kansas City's version of the swinging blues piano style called boogie-woogie at the famous "From Spirituals to Swing" concert at Carnegie Hall. The event was staged by jazz fan and record producer John Hammond and was intended to demonstrate the history of African American music from slavery to the present day. The two performed several numbers including "Roll 'Em Pete," still a jazz and boogie-woogie classic. The concert launched a nationwide craze for boogie-woogie piano. Johnson went on to boogie-woogie fame as the partner of Albert Ammons. Turner sang with the famous Count Basie Orchestra and other Kansas City bands that made powerful, riff-based music based on a hard-driving, four-to-the-bar feel. In the early 1950s Turner was discovered by Neshui Ertegun of Atlantic Records, who made him a solo recording artist. Turner had a string of hit records during the '50s and early '60s, and he was often chosen by critics in the United States and England as the best jazz vocalist in the world.
The song "Shake, Rattle, and Roll" was written by African American bandleader and songwriter Jesse Stone and was first recorded by Turner in 1954. Cover versions were subsequently recorded by Bill Haley and the Comets (with a set of "cleaner" lyrics, as the originals were deemed too suggestive for white radio) and Elvis Presley. While the Presley version never found an audience, Bill Haley's was wildly successful. It hit only number seven on the U.S. charts, but in England it topped the charts twice and launched rock and roll in that country.
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Ethel Waters, Bessie Smith, Jimmy Rushing
Must Haves:
 "Roll 'Em Pete" (with Pete Johnson)
"Corrine Corrina"
"Chains of Love"
"Honey, Hush"
Wynonie Harris, Joe Williams, Ruth Brown, Big Maybelle
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