His Greatest Recordings – Big Joe Turner

Big Joe Turner is a great recording artist, and listeners should be encouraged to dig deeply into his discography, as if a plate of Kansas City-style barbecued turkey breast and sausage was placed in front of them. Vegetarians should feel free to substitute collard greens, kale, red cabbage, or whatever else suits them. Just the fact that he was called "big" isn't the reason to create such an image, since the nickname could have easily been applied to his voice, and not just his girth. But Turner was fond of sending thank-you letters to critics who wrote positive reviews about him, these notes invariably accompanied with a snapshot of the singer and his wife chowing down on a huge lunch. Once a critic has received one of these pictures, the image is forever planted and an appetite begins building as soon as the first strains of "Honey Hush" come out of the speakers. Hopefully, the listener's appetite for this artist will extend well beyond a greatest-hits package, yet this sampling of 14 songs is by itself musically faultless. "Hits" or not, these are also not tunes that have been played to death over the radio 30 or 40 years after they were recorded, so the overfamiliarity that mars some greatest-hits packages shouldn't be a problem here. Turner can be compared to one of the other early giants of rock & roll, Chuck Berry, in that both helped create the new genre by combining swing and R&B styles in the perfect proportion. Whereas Berry took a few pages from country & western with its clever, humorous, and down-to-earth lyrics, Turner preferred a harder edge. Some of these numbers literally stomp, but always still maintain a sense of swing. Hard rock and boogie bands have been attracted to numbers such as "Flip Flop and Fly" and the aforementioned "Honey Hush," yet anyone who has been stuck in a bar listening to such an outfit will immediately recognize what is missing: the swing. Turner's "Shake, Rattle & Roll" has all three elements, and beyond such a simple description the essence of his music dictates the combination of a variety of rural and urban musical influences. The listener will hear the old country blues and the new R&B style -- and running through it all is the solid Kansas City swing that gives the jazz from this town such a solid groove. Turner's vocals are just fantastic. It's rare to hear a rock & roll singer who can hit notes with the precision of an opera baritone, and this skill is combined with extreme charisma, a thick dollop of good humor literally built up from his years shouting blues numbers from behind the bar where he worked. An advantage of this particular greatest-hits package is the fact that these recordings are presented in all the glory of their original mono, while some other sets that are available have ghastly stereo versions. It is a gatefold album design, but with much wasted space. The long essay is fine, but on the opposing face there is nothing but an extremely ugly bit of graphics nonsense that already gets too much play on the back cover. More details about the original recordings would have been better, including a list of the session players. These anonymous musicians figure a great deal in the success of these tracks, despite the fact that Turner would have sounded good singing over an organ grinder and his monkey. Another oversight is the jacket identifying him as Joe Turner, flying completely in the face of one of the basic rules of the music business: Once an artist has been given the "big" prefix to his or her name, it should always be used. It's a shame this big guy is no longer around to respond with one of his thank-you notes. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, All Music Guide