martes, 27 de octubre de 2009

Big Joe TURNER - Blues On Central Avenue 2002


Big Joe TURNER - Blues On Central Avenue 2002

Blues

"Boss of the Blues" Joe Turner owns the distinction of laying legitimate claim to being one of the founding fathers of both rhythm & blues and rock & roll; this in addition to being regarded as one of the most powerful bluesmen in history, a physically imposing man with a huge voice and a singing style unadorned by gimmickry. The very straightforwardness of his approach was its own recommendation: Whether shouting it out or getting into what passed for a gentle mode, Turner's voice remained a stately instrument: dynamic without being ostentatious, long on legato, short on melisma, always moving.

Turner's career dates to the mid-'20s, when he landed a job tending bar in his native Kansas City; as an extracurricular activity he took up shouting the blues with pianist Pete Johnson. Turner, Johnson, Sam Price, and Jay McShann became the key figures in a vital Kansas City music scene that merged blues and jazz into the boogie-woogie which swept the country after Turner's appearance at New York's Carnegie Hall in 1938. Turner remained in New York, ensconced at Café Society, and recorded under his own name and with other prominent jazz and blues artists. A 1956 Atlantic release, Boss of the Blues, re-creates the fertile Kansas City period of Turner's career, reuniting him with the estimable Johnson and other first-rate players on the tunes that secured Turner's early acclaim: "Cherry Red;" and "Wee Baby Blues" and "Low Down Dog," both Turner originals. In their original recordings, these and other sides that Turner cut in the late '40s constituted a new sound that would evolve into rhythm & blues -- spurred in no small measure by Turner's own voluminous 1950s recordings for Atlantic. It wasn't a long leap from Turner's style of R&B to rock & roll, as evidenced by the success of Turner's "Shake, Rattle, and Roll" in a sanitized cover version by Bill Haley and His Comets. Other of Turner's sides remain important genre-busting entries that are considered rock & roll by some, R&B by others: Of these, the most prominent are "Flip, Flop and Fly," "Honey Hush," "Corrina, Corrina" and "Sweet Sixteen." This fruitful era is well documented on Big, Bad & Blue, Big Joe Turner's Greatest Hits, Memorial Album -- Rhythm & Blues Years, and Rhino's succinct 16-song overview, The Very Best of Big Joe Turner.

Turner continued to record sporadically through the '60s, then found his career in high gear again come the '70s, thanks to producer Norman Granz, who teamed Turner with jazz giants Count Basie, Milt Jackson, Roy Eldridge, and others on several recordings for the Pablo label. Age hardly diminished the authority of Turner's singing; moreover, his stellar accompanists inspired him to fine performances. Of note here are Flip, Flop & Fly, with the Count Basie Orchestra (recorded in 1972), Nobody in Mind, with Milt Jackson, Roy Eldridge, and Pee Wee Clayton among the supporting cast; and In the Evening, a moody set featuring Turner's swaggering, laconic take on George Gershwin's "Summertime." A remarkable summit meeting defines the whole of The Trumpet Kings Meet Joe Turner, a 1974 project that found the sine qua non of blues shouters holding forth with a quartet of equally imposing trumpet masters in Dizzy Gillespie, Roy Eldridge, Harry "Sweets" Edison, and Clark Terry.

In 1983 Turner got together with the great songwriter Doc Pomus to cowrite a new tune, "Blues Train," that became the centerpiece of Turner's final album. Coproduced by Pomus (who had been inspired to become a singer and songwriter after hearing Turner's recording of "Piney Brown Blues" in 1941) and Bob Porter, Blues Train rumbles and roars mightily, with Turner backed by Roomful of Blues and Dr. John on nine cuts that take him all the way back to Kansas City and bring him forward into the present. Two years later he proved conclusively that age and experience were virtues for a blues singer, when he teamed with another master, Jimmy Witherspoon, for some low-down carousing on Patcha, Patcha, All Night Long. It was the last great testament of a great singer. Turner died in 1985, but oh, how those melodies linger on (DAVID MCGEE)
The New Rollingstone Magazine.
**
01. I Got a Gal  2.59
02. It's the Shame Old Story 2.54
03. Rebecca 2.40
04. S. K. Blues (Part.2) 2.50
05. Cry Baby Blues 2.50
06. Blues on Central Avenue 2.35
07. Ice Man 2.53
08. Johnson and Turner Blues 2.58
09. Rocks in My Bed 3.12
10. I Got My Discharge Papers 2.39
11. Somebody's Got to Go 2.53
12. Watch That Jive 2.55
13. Chewed Up Grass 2.31
14. Doggin' the Blues 3.03
15. Little Bitty Gal's Blues 3.18
16. Goin' to Chicago Blues 2.58
**
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