Big Joe Turner & Pete Johnson

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Big Joe Turner & Pete Johnson · Joe Turner was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1911. He left school at fourteen to work in the city's nightclubs, first as a cook and later as a singing bartender, which gave him the nickname The Singing Barman. In clubs such as the Kingfish Club and the Sunset, his friend Pete Johnson played piano. The partnership was a fruitful one. In 1936 they tried their luck in New York, but the city was not yet ready for them. In 1938 the talent scout John Hammond saw them and brought them back for a concert in the series From Spirituals to Swing at Carnegie Hall, intended to bring jazz and blues to a broader American audience.

Music and breakthrough

After that appearance they had a big success with Roll 'Em Pete from 1938, a collection of traditional blues lines set to a driving boogie-woogie rhythm. Turner would go on to record the song many times over the following years. In 1939, together with the boogie-woogie pianists Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis, they began a residency at the New York club Café Society, where Billie Holiday also performed.

Influence

Turner was a blues shouter: a singer with a powerful voice who could carry above a band without a microphone. His greatest fame came in the 1950s with rock 'n' roll recordings such as Shake, Rattle and Roll, and in 1987 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The songwriter Doc Pomus said that rock 'n' roll would never have come into being without him.

Listening

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  Roll 'Em Pete · Big Joe Turner & Pete Johnson, 1938
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