Big Joe Turner Discography
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 Big Joe TurnerRocks Release Date 2011 Label Bear Family Records Rating:  There is no question that Big Joe Turner rocked. He rocked harder than any jump blues bandleader, his band hitting the downbeat with a vengeance matched only by Turner’s full-throated roar. This was big-band blues in sound but not in style; it was rock & roll before there was a name for it. Bear Family’s 2011 set Rocks concentrates on his hardest-swinging R&B, leaning hard on Turner’s classic sides for Atlantic: &“Roll 'Em Pete”; &“Honey Hush”; &“Flip, Flop and Fly”; and &“Shake, Rattle and Roll,” which Bill Haley sweetened up for the first crossover rock & roll single. There’s no saccharine sweetness here, just thundering R&B, with the tracks dipping into his latter career just enough to prove that Turner was no few-years dynamo -- he was a force of nature who could still deliver after his time passed. There are other collections that perhaps serve up the expected hits in a cleaner fashion, but this has the big, bold infectious swing of the man at his best. Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi |
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