Label: Collectables
Blues
How can you have a forum about Jump Blues and not mention Big Joe Turner? Big Joe Turner was born in Kansas City, and it was in that freewheeling city’s jumping nightspots that he began his career as a bartender and singer. As a young man, Turner hooked up with pianist Pete Johnson. Turner and Johnson were among the earliest to help develop jump blues by using boogie woogie to add "jump" to the blues.
Big Joe Turner has been called the "Boss of the Blues" and the "World's Greatest Blues Shouter," but he is also considered a major part of early Rock 'n' Roll. He´s a respected name in the world of Jazz, too. Although he came to his greatest fame in the 1950s with his pioneering rock and roll recordings, particularly "Shake, Rattle and Roll", and "Flip Flop and Fly." Turner's career as a performer stretched from the bar rooms of KansasCity in the 1930s (at the age of 12 when he performed with a penciled moustache and his father's hat), on to the European jazz festivals of the 1980s.
In early 1956, Big Joe Turner took a break from his duties as one of the stars of the emerging music called rock & roll to hook up with an eight-piece band--including his longtime cohort, boogie-woogie pianist Pete Johnson--to make an album of the Kansas City jazz he'd helped advance as a blues shouter in the '30s. In addition to the stellar performances by Turner and Johnson, the band also consisted of a tight backing ensemble featuring veterans of Count Basie's band, including tenor saxophonist Frank Wess and trumpeter Joe Newman. Most of the material on The Boss of the Blues is from the Turner-Johnson songbook, with "Roll 'Em Pete," "Cherry Red," and "Piney Brown Blues" among the bedrock pieces of the form. Their treatment here is vigorous and swinging, but the best cut may be a long, blowzy version of "Wee Baby Blues" that sounds as much at home in today's late-night bars as Turner's work did in those of the era in which it was made. The Boss of the Blues is widely considrerd to be one of Big Joe Turner's finest albums.
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Here is the real Kansas City stuff.The great Big Joe Turner (not to be confused with the great Harlem stride pianist Joe Turner),born in Kansas City in 1911,swings high here.The band is a real all stars one,with some Basie-ites like Joe Newman,trumpet,Frank Wess,tenor sax,Walter Page,bass and Freddie Green,guitar,a great member of Duke Ellington's band,Lawrence BRown on trombone,plus Pete Brown on alto sax,Cliff Leeman on drums and... Pete Johnson himself on piano.
The result is a great swing session,with one of the greatest blues shouters on the front line.And even if the immense Jimmy Rushing will always be my man (listen to his incredible Columbia albums,"Little Jimmy Rushing and the big brass","the jazz odissey of James Rushing Esq","Cat meet chick" and "sings the Smith girls"),Big Joe is the other great KC voice;maybe his voice doesn't have that smoky flavor Jimmy had,and maybe he isn't so much at ease on jazz tunes that Mr Five by Five (Rushing's nickname referring to his impressive stoutness),but KC's jumping blues are his thing,and he is in this music like a fish in the sea.The masterful support of Page and Greene make the rhythm section swing like mad (like in the good old times of the Count Basie band),and the drive of Pete Johnson's piano (which can sometimes be as down to earth as Montana Taylor's) brings the band back to the essence of Kansas City swing.Big Joe was starting a new career at the time this recording was made (1956),a new career that will be going on for thirty years.
As essential as his fourties sides (the 1940 duets with Willie "the Lion" Smith,the magnificent 1941 "nobody in mind" with Sammy Price or the 1944 "little bittie gal's blues" with Pete Johnson,his associate since the early thirties,as necessary as his 1971 "Texas style" album,with a great Milt Buckner on piano and the imperial Jo Jones,the greatest master of drums,this record is a great moment of music you've to treasure.
By JEAN-MARIE JUIF.
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Frank Wess- Tenor Saxophone
Freddie Green- Guitar
Joe Newman- Trumpet
Seldon Powell- Tenor Saxophone
Lawrence Brown- Trombone
Big Joe Turner- Vocals
Walter Page- Bass
Jimmy Nottingham- Trumpet
Pete Johnson- Piano
Cliff Leeman- Drums
Pete Brown- Alto Saxophone
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01. Cherry Red 3.26
02. Roll 'Em Pete 3.47
03. I Want A Little Girl 4.22
04. Low Down Dog 3.47
05. Wee Baby Blues 7.21
06. You're Driving Me Crazy (What Did I Do?) 4.16
07. How Long Blues 5.50
08. Morning Glories 2.15
09. St. Louise Blues 4.23
10. Piney Brown Blues 4.52
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