Week 45
Big Joe Turner, Boss of the Blues
(Collectables 6327)

Since the intertwined birth of both genres around the early 20th century, the line between jazz and blues has often been a fuzzy one. And while record companies, listeners, and academics have often relied upon placing musicians on one or the other side of this line, many of these artists have simply bestrode it with such grandeur that any attempts to categorize them have become meaningless. Among these is "Big" Joe Turner.

A man of tremendous stature, voice, and influence, Turner's professional start was in the teeming nightclubs of 1930s Kansas City. Here, from behind the bar, he would sing over the noise and tumult, "shouting" his blues with a phrasing informed by the instrumental soloists of the city's big jazz bands. His reputation growing, he was in 1938 invited to perform at the landmark From Spirituals to Swing concert in New York City. Performing with his long-time piano accompanist Pete Johnson, Turner brought the house down, launching both men's recording careers as well as a national craze for boogie-woogie.

Turner recorded prolifically over the following decade, turning out hits with the backing of large bands as well as the small combos that were becoming increasingly popular and defining what would soon be known as "R&B." Signing to Atlantic Records in 1951, he focused even more on this emerging music, and the resulting recordings catapulted him to even greater fame. Now in his early forties, Turner suddenly found himself a star of "rock and roll." Said Turner, however, "it wasn't but a different name for the same music I been singing all my life."

In 1956, Atlantic label founders Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegun sought to confirm Turner's assertion, reuniting him with Pete Johnson and others from the legendary heyday of Kansas City swing for a marathon one-day session. "We looked upon [Boss of the Blues as a way] to spread some really great music to fans who might not had ever heard these songs before." Indeed, many of the numbers had long been out of print, held dearly by collectors but forgotten by the public. "But mostly, we wanted to please ourselves. There weren't many commercial considerations."

Wexler and Ertegun's labor of fandom failed to sell many copies to Turner's new audience at the time of its release. It has since been readily acknowledged as a classic, however. Digging into a terrific selection of 10 songs, alumni from the Basie and Ellington orchestras combine with Johnson's thundering piano and Turner's unmistakable voice to blow the roof off. Playing what they always have, with a feel and swing that transcends genre, they eradicate the line between jazz and blues, leaving the listener grateful for it and forever indebted to the "Boss."

Listen: Big Joe Turner - "Roll 'Em Pete"
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