Although he came to his greatest fame in the 1950s with his pioneering rock and roll recordings, particularly "Shake, Rattle and Roll", Turner's career as a performer stretched from the 1920s into the 1980s.
(for stride pianist Joseph H. Turner (3.11.07-21.7.90) > Joe Turner)
Known variously as The Boss of the Blues, and Big Joe Turner (due to his 6'2", 300+ lbs stature), Turner was born in Kansas City and first discovered his love of music through involvement in the church. Turner's father was killed in a train accident when Joe was only four years old. He began singing on street corners for money, leaving school at age fourteen to begin working in Kansas City's club scene, first as a cook, and later as a singing bartender. He eventually became known as The Singing Barman, and worked in such venues as The Kingfish Club and The Sunset, where he and his piano playing partner Pete Johnson became resident performers. The Sunset was managed by Piney Brown. It featured "separate but equal" facilities for white patrons. Turner wrote "Piney Brown Blues" in his honor and sang it throughout his entire career.
At that time Kansas City was a wide-open town run by "Boss" Tom Pendergast. Despite this, the clubs were subject to frequent raids by the police, but as Turner recounts, "The Boss man would have his bondsmen down at the police station before we got there. We'd walk in, sign our names and walk right out. Then we would cabaret until morning".
His partnership with boogie-woogie pianist Pete Johnson proved fruitful. Together they headed to New York in 1936, where they appeared on a bill with Benny Goodman, but as Turner recounts, "After our show with Goodman, we auditioned at several places, but New York wasn't ready for us yet, so we headed back to K.C.". Eventually they were spotted by the talent scout, John H. Hammond in 1938, who invited them back to New York to appear in one of his "From Spirituals to Swing" concerts at Carnegie Hall, which was instrumental in introducing jazz and blues to a wider American audience.
Due in part to their appearance at Carnegie Hall, Turner and Johnson scored a major hit with "Roll 'Em Pete". The track contained one of the earliest recorded examples of a back beat. It was a song which Turner recorded many times, with various combinations of musicians, over the ensuing years.
In 1939, along with boogie players Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis, they began a residency at Café Society, a club in New York City, where they appeared on the same bill as Billie Holiday and Frank Newton's band. Besides "Roll 'Em, Pete", Turner's best-known recordings from this period are probably "Cherry Red", "I Want A Little Girl" and "Wee Baby Blues".
In 1941, he headed to Los Angeles where he performed in Duke Ellington's revue Jump for Joy in Hollywood. He appeared as a singing policeman in a sketch called "He's on the Beat." Los Angeles became his home base for a time, and in 1944 he worked in Meade Lux Lewis's Soundies musical films. Although he sang on the soundtrack recordings, he was not present for the filming, and his vocals were mouthed by comedian Dudley Dickerson for the camera. In 1945 Turner and Pete Johnson opened their own bar in Los Angeles, The Blue Moon Club.
Turner made lots of records, not only with Johnson but with the pianists Art Tatum and Sammy Price and with various small jazz ensembles. He recorded on several record labels, particularly National Records, and also appeared with the Count Basie Orchestra. In his career, Turner successively led the transition from big bands to jump blues to rhythm and blues, and finally to rock and roll. Turner was a master of traditional blues verses and at the legendary Kansas City jam sessions he could swap choruses with instrumental soloists for hours.
In 1951, while performing with the Count Basie Orchestra at Harlem's Apollo Theater as a replacement for Jimmy Rushing, he was spotted by Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegün, who signed him to their new recording company, Atlantic Records. Turner recorded a number of hits for them, including the blues standards, "Chains of Love" and "Sweet Sixteen". Many of his vocals are punctuated with shouts to the band members, as in "Boogie Woogie Country Girl" ("That's a good rockin' band!", "Go ahead, man! Ow! That's just what I need!" ) and "Honey Hush" (he repeatedly sings "Hi-yo, Silver!", probably in reference to The Treniers singing the phrase in their Lone Ranger parody "Ride, Red, Ride"). Turner's records shot to the top of the rhythm-and-blues charts; although they were sometimes so earthy that some radio stations wouldn't play them, the songs received heavy play on jukeboxes and records.
Turner hit it big in 1954 with "Shake, Rattle and Roll", which not only enhanced his career, turning him into a teenage favorite, but also helped to transform popular music. The song is fairly raw, as Turner yells at his woman to "get outa that bed, wash yo' face an' hands" and comments that she's "wearin' those dresses, the sun comes shinin' through!" He sang the number on film in the 1955 theatrical feature Rhythm and Blues Revue.
Although the cover version of the song by Bill Haley and His Comets, with the risqué lyrics incompletely cleaned up, was a bigger hit, many listeners sought out Turner's version and were introduced thereby to the whole world of rhythm and blues. Elvis Presley showed he needed no such introduction. His version of "Shake, Rattle and Roll" combined Turner's lyrics with Haley's arrangement, but was not successful as a single.
In addition to the rock 'n' roll songs, he found time to cut the classic Boss of the Blues album.
After a number of hits in this vein, Turner left popular music behind and returned to his roots as a singer with small jazz combos, recording numerous albums in that style in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1966, Bill Haley helped revive Turner's career by lending him the Comets for a series of popular recordings in Mexico (apparently no one thought of getting the two to record a duet of "Shake, Rattle and Roll", as no such recording has yet surfaced). In 1977 he recorded a version of Guitar Slim's song, "The Things I Used to Do".
In the 1960s and 1970s he was reclaimed by jazz and blues, appearing at many festivals and recording for the impresario Norman Granz's Pablo label, once with his friendly rival, Jimmy Witherspoon. He also worked with the German boogie-woogie pianist Axel Zwingenberger.
It is a mark of his dominance as a singer that he won the Esquire magazine award for male vocalist in 1945, the Melody Maker award for best 'new' vocalist in 1956, and the British Jazz Journal award as top male singer in 1965. His career thus stretched from the bar rooms of Kansas City in the 1920s (at the age of twelve when he performed with a pencilled moustache and his father's hat), on to the European jazz music festivals of the 1980s.
In 1983, only two years before his death, Turner was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.
He died in Inglewood, California in November 1985, at the age of 74 of a heart attack, having suffered the earlier effects of arthritis, a stroke and diabetes. Big Joe Turner was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.
Tribute
The late, New York Times music critic Robert Palmer, said: "...his voice, pushing like a Count Basie solo, rich and grainy as a section of saxophones, which dominated the room with the sheer sumptuousness of its sound.
Most famous recordings
"Roll 'Em, Pete" - 1938; (available in many versions over the years. Used for the million-dollar first scene in Spike Lee's film, Malcolm X).
"Chains Of Love" - 1951 † (this was Turner's first million seller. The song was written by 'Nugetre' (words) - Ahmet Ertegün, Van Wallis (music), and the disc reached the million by 1954).
"Honey Hush" - 1953 †
"Shake, Rattle and Roll" - 1954
"Flip Flop And Fly" - 1955 † (has sold a million through the years. The song was written by Charles Calhoun and Turner, although credited to the latter's wife, Lou Willie Turner).
"Cherry Red" - 1956
"Corrine, Corrina" - 1956 † (the fourth million seller...with adaption by J. Mayo Williams, Mitchell Parish and Bo Chatmon in 1932. This disc was #41, and spent 10 weeks in the Billboard chart).
"Wee Baby Blues" - 1956; (a song Turner had been singing since his Kingfish Club days)
"Love Roller Coaster" 1956
"Midnight Special" - 1957
Tracks marked as † were million selling discs.
Select discography
Big Joe Rides Again (1956)
The Boss of the Blues (1956)
Bosses of the Blues, Vol. 1 (1969)
Texas Style (1971)
Flip, Flop & Fly (1972)
Life Ain't Easy (1974)
The Trumpet Kings Meet Joe Turner (1974)
When The Sun Goes Down
Big Joe Turner Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Baby, when the sun goes down
In the evening, baby when the sun goes down
Well, ain't it lonesome, man ain't happy, Sonny Boy
When your love is not around
Oh, when the sun goes down
Last night I laid sleeping
Last night I lay there sleepin'
I was thinkin' to myself
Thinkin 'bout the one that we loved best, gone
Mistreat you for somebody else
Oh, when the sun goes down
Sun rises in the east
It sets in the west
Sun rising east, Sonny Boy
Said take me in the west
Well, ain't it hard to tell, your heart to *car'
Which ones that will fit you the best
Oh, when the sun goes down
Woo, hittin' me
Oh, ooh, oh
Hoo, hittin' you
Love, is cold, Sonny
Hoo, gettin' mean
Lordy!
Goodbye, my old sweetheart
Where have you been?
Yeah, just went away
I may be back there, see you again
Some rainy day
Well, in the ev'nin, in the ev'nin, baby
Honey, when the sun goes down
Oh, when the sun goes down.
The lyrics to Big Joe Turner's song "In the Evenin' When the Sun Goes Down" revolve around a man who is feeling lonely and lovesick, especially when his lover is not around. He contemplates about the love he has lost and the one who mistreated him for somebody else. The song talks about how it can be difficult to choose the right person to love and how easily someone can hurt the heart.
The phrase "in the evening when the sun goes down" creates a melancholic feel to the song. It emphasizes the loneliness and yearning for someone's company. The lyrics speak about the passage of time, the rise and set of the sun, and how nothing remains the same. It's about moving on and finding love again after heartbreak.
Interestingly, despite the sorrowful tone of the lyrics, the upbeat tempo and Turner's lively delivery add a sense of joyousness to the song. The contrast creates a unique blend of emotions.
Line by Line Meaning
In the evening, in the evening
I feel lonely and sad in the evening when I am all by myself.
Baby, when the sun goes down
When the sun sets, I feel even more lonely without my loved one.
In the evening, baby when the sun goes down
The loneliness gets worse as the night approaches.
Well, ain't it lonesome, man ain't happy, Sonny Boy
The absence of love makes me feel like I am missing something essential, and it makes me unhappy.
When your love is not around
I feel alone and sad when my loved one is not nearby.
Oh, when the sun goes down
The feeling of loneliness and sadness amplifies when the sun sets.
Last night I laid sleeping
While I was sleeping last night,
I was thinking to myself
I was lost in thought,
Last night I lay there sleepin'
I was sleeping,
I was thinkin' to myself
I was pondering about something deep.
Thinkin 'bout the one that we loved best, gone
I was thinking about the person I love the most, who is no longer with me.
Mistreat you for somebody else
That person left me for someone else.
Sun rising east, Sonny Boy
The sun rises in the east, Sonny Boy.
Said take me in the west
It sets in the west.
Well, ain't it hard to tell, your heart to *car'
It's challenging to decide which option fits with your heart's desire.
Which ones that will fit you the best
Which one of the options is the right choice for me?
Woo, hittin' me
I am emotionally overwhelmed.
Oh, ooh, oh
Sigh of distress.
Hoo, hittin' you
You are also emotionally overwhelmed.
Love, is cold, Sonny
Love can make you feel cold and empty inside, Sonny.
Hoo, gettin' mean
The situation is getting ugly and difficult to handle.
Lordy!
Expressing shock or disbelief.
Goodbye, my old sweetheart
Saying farewell to my former lover.
Where have you been?
Asking where they have been all this time.
Yeah, just went away
The person you loved just left without any explanation.
I may be back there, see you again
I might come back to the place where we met and see you again.
Some rainy day
Sometime in the future when things are not as perfect or bright.
Honey, when the sun goes down
Addressing a loved one, telling them that this feeling of loneliness and sadness is worse when the sun sets.
Oh, when the sun goes down.
Reiterating how the feeling gets worse when the sun sets.
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: LEON L. N. CARR
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@murph5438
A Great blues singer --- go on big Joe---- shout the blues !
@user-ex1po6fo3c
Классно!!
@naomiogle4997
I can't believe people don't know about this.
@patmcq
If people are here reading your comment, they must know about this.
@DanielLopez-tb2fl
Them saxes are too low down
Chucho Agrelot