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Pete Johnson & Big Joe Turner
From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist
Pete Johnson & Big Joe Turner · Pete Johnson and Big Joe Turner were a duo from Kansas City. Johnson played piano, Turner sang. Turner, born in 1911, left school at fourteen and worked in the city's nightclubs, first as a cook and later as a singing bartender. That earned him the nickname The Singing Barman. In clubs such as the Sunset he often performed with his friend Johnson. In those days Kansas City's clubs were regularly visited by the police, but after the inspection the party simply carried on until morning.
Music and breakthrough
In 1936 the two went to New York, but the city was not yet ready for them. In 1938 the talent scout John Hammond saw them and invited them to one of his concerts From Spirituals to Swing at Carnegie Hall, which brought jazz and blues to a wider American audience. Their great success followed: Roll 'Em Pete, in fact a collection of traditional blues lyrics. Turner often re-recorded the song in the years afterwards. In 1939 they played with the boogie-woogie pianists Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis at Café Society in New York, on the same bill as Billie Holiday.
Influence
Turner was known as a blues shouter: a singer with a powerful voice who could rise above a band. His greatest fame came in the 1950s with rock 'n' roll recordings such as Shake, Rattle and Roll. In 1987 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Roll 'Em Pete shows how boogie-woogie and blues prepared the way for rock 'n' roll.
Listening
Roll 'Em Pete · Pete Johnson & Big Joe Turner, 1938