Big Joe Turner

Big Joe Turner, born Joseph Vernon Turner Jr. in Kansas City, Missouri, was one of the great blues shouters of the twentieth century and a direct link between prewar boogie-woogie and the birth of rock and roll. He came up singing in Kansas City clubs in the late 1920s and 1930s, often paired with boogie-woogie pianists like Pete Johnson, developing a booming, unamplified voice built to cut through a loud room without a microphone.

Turner's biggest commercial success came in the 1950s on Atlantic Records, where hits such as «Shake, Rattle and Roll», «Honey Hush», and «Flip, Flop and Fly» blended blues shouting with the driving backbeat that would define rock and roll. «Shake, Rattle and Roll» in particular became a foundational song of the genre once covered by Bill Haley and His Comets, though Turner's original recording carried a rawer, more explicitly blues-rooted energy.

Across a career spanning roughly five decades, Turner moved fluidly between blues, jump blues, and early rock and roll, recording with jazz and R&B musicians alike and remaining an active performer into the 1980s. He is widely regarded as one of the essential bridges between prewar blues shouting and the rock and roll that grew out of it.