Big Joe Turner (vocals; born May 18, 1911, died November 24, 1985)

Big Joe Turner was the brawny-voiced “Boss of the Blues.” He was among the first to mix R&B with boogie-woogie, resulting in jump blues - a style that presaged the birth of rock and roll. Indeed, Turner’s original recording of “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” cut for Atlantic Records in 1954, remains one of the cornerstones numbers of the rock and roll revolution. Turner’s lengthy career touched on most every significant development in popular music during this century, taking him from the big bands of the Swing Era to boogie-woogie, rhythm & blues, and rock and roll. James Austin of Rhino Records noted that “[Turner’s] raucous style first blended R&B with boogie-woogie. The result was jump blues, and Joe was its foremost practitioner.”

But how important was he to the development of rock and roll?

“Rock and roll would have never happened without him,” opined legendary songwriter Doc Pomus.

Turner was a huge man with a husky, booming voice who could out-shout a big band without amplification while projecting clarity and control. He was born in Kansas City, and it was in that freewheeling city’s jumping nightspots that he began his career as a bartender and singer. Kansas City was, in those days, a hotbed of jazz and blues whose many clubs rocked around the proverbial clock. As a young man, Turner worked at various of these joints - including the Backbiter’s Club and the Sunset Café - as a bouncer, bartender and singer. It was here that he hooked up with pianist Pete Johnson (nominally referred to in the songs “Roll ‘Em Pete” and “Johnson & Turner Blues"). Turner also sang with the big bands of Count Basie and Benny Moten when they came through town.

Turner and Johnson helped popularize boogie-woogie and jump blues in the late Thirties and early Forties. “Everybody was singing slow blues when I was young,” Turner told Rhino’s James Austin, “and I thought I’d put a beat to it and sing it uptempo.” Crowds would clamor for Johnson to play some boogie - “Roll ‘em, Pete!” Make ‘em jump!” - and he’d oblige. Thus did this duo help ignite a musical trend in the nightclubs of Kansas City and beyond. The songs Turner sang (and sometimes wrote) were often risqué, employing coy slang words and metaphors for sex in ways that would amusing a partying club crowd.