The Very Best Of

Big Joe Turner was the premier blues shouter of the postwar era and did everything from boogie-woogie and jump blues to the first wave of rock & roll. Even those who have never heard Turner sing have heard "Shake, Rattle & Roll," which was specifically written for him by Charles Calhoun (Jesse Stone), but you probably heard the sanitized version that was popularized by Bill Haley and the Comets. On "The Very Best of Big Joe Turner" you get to hear the original version, with its big bounce and raunchy lyrics. You will also learn why you should associate the name Big Joe Turner with the idea of screaming rock & roll songs.

With this issue from Rhino Records, part of their series of reissuing classic blues and R&B material from the vaults at Atlantic Records. What Rhino did was take a dozen tracks from Atlantic's "Big Joe Turner's Greatest Hits" and add another four tracks, "TV Mama" and "Midnight Cannonball," both of which were written by Turner, and "You're Driving Me Crazy (What Did I Do?)" and "Tomorrow Night." The common denominator on those tracks is that they are more rock & roll than R&B, which is just fine with me. The choice tracks are the rocker "Honey Hush," the aforementioned original version of "Shake, Rattle & Roll," "Flip, Flop and Fly" (which supposedly has leftover verses from "Shake, Rattle & Roll"), "The Chicken and the Hawk (Up, Up and Away)" and "Corrine Corrina," which has been done by everybody from Red Nichols to Dean Martin. But then you will discover that the more you know about the early days of rock & roll the more you will realize you have heard covers of some of these songs by the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley.

Also, because this is Rhino, we are once again talking excellent liner notes, compiled this time around by Billy Vera. The only complaint is that the cover picture of Big Joe Turner is actually the smallest picture of the singer I have seen to date. Irony abounds. The only reason not to give this album five stars is because there are Big Joe Turner collections that have more than 16 tracks on them, but I really like the selection here because my primary interest is in rockabilly and the early days of rock & roll more than the blues and R&B you get with some of the other collections, which are five star albums in their own rights. Most of these songs were produced by Atlantic's Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler, which explains why there is a definitive sound here. If you check out the 1956 film "Shake, Rattle & Rock" you can catch Turner lip-synching a couple of his hits, along with Fats Domino and the music of Frédéric Chopin.

For years, Atlantic had a great CD simply called "Greatest Hits," now OOP but easy to find (and still listed on Amazon.com). Rhino has replaced that CD with this one, "The Very Best of Big Joe Turner." Here are the differences:

1. "Oke-She-Monke-She-Pop" on this CD is the original single/45 version, the first time it's ever been used for a CD. "Greatest Hits" uses an earlier, slower version (and makes the mistake of listing the session date and credits of the single/45 version).

2. "Boogie Woogie Country Girl" has an extra 20 seconds at the end (it basically fades out 20 seconds later than the version on the "Greatest Hits" CD). I'm not sure if this is how it's supposed to be, but it's a good thing to have.

3. A complete set of liner notes by Billy Vera. Well-written and informative, the "Greatest Hits" CD had none. Furthermore, songwriting credits have been corrected - real names replace pseudonyms and songs originally credited to Big Joe Turner's wife are now credited to him (he is the actual writer, but for various reasons gave credit to his wife).

4. "Honey Hush" is slower and has a lower pitch (not-quite-half-a-semitone lower) than the "Greatest Hits" CD. This may or may not be correct.

5. Though 9 great tracks from the "Greatest Hits" CD do not appear here in any form or version, you do get 4 very good tracks that don't appear on the "Greatest Hits" CD. Still, that only leaves 16 on this disc with over a half-an-hour to spare. They could have easily squeezed 25 to 28 classic tracks on one CD.

6. There's less tape hiss than the "Greatest Hits" CD possibly from better source tapes, but like many Atlantic R&B CD's mastered by Dan Hersch and Bill Inglot, the sound is even brighter and harder from a treble and upper midrange boost. These recordings were pretty bright to begin with, and now they sound really harsh. The sound is also more bottom heavy and a lot louder than the "Greatest Hits" CD.

So not a bad introduction. If you're not a fan of Joe Turner or early r&b in general but want at least a little Joe Turner to round out your collection, this isn't a bad buy. Still, if you can find the old "Greatest Hits" CD, I'd pick that. It's not perfect, but in the long run, it will be more satisfying.

This certainly isn't everything you could want from blues shouter, jazz singer, Kansas City swing king Big Joe Turner, but as far as single-CD compilations go, this is a very fine one.

"The Very Best Of Big Joe Turner" takes the place of Atlantic Records' "Big Joe Turner's Greatest Hits", offering one of the great pioneering shouters of swinging, jazz-flavoured blues and hard-rockin' R&B at his wild and raving best.
At once loose and thoroughly committed, Big Joe Turner is at his very best on "Honey Hush", "TV Mama", "Corrine, Corrina", and the original version of "Shake, Rattle & Roll", written for Turner by Atlantic producer Jesse Stone.
Unfortunately, some of Turner's best slow songs are missing, including his magnificent take on "Honeydripper", but you can't argue with what is here, and if you don't already have "Shake, Rattle & Roll" and "Honey Hush" in your collection, the handsomely packaged and excellently remastered "Very Best Of Big Joe Turner" is one disc you need to add to your library posthaste!
4 1/2 stars - highly recommended.