Big Joe Turner

Big Joe Turner (born Joseph Vernon Turner Jr., May 18, 1911 – November 24, 1985) was an American blues shouter from Kansas City, Missouri. According to the songwriter Doc Pomus, "Rock and roll would have never happened without him." 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. Turner was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.

Read more about Big Joe Turner:  Tributes, Most Famous Recordings

Famous quotes containing the words big, joe and/or turner:

    We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones.
    François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)

    We saw a pair of moose-horns on the shore, and I asked Joe if a moose had shed them; but he said there was a head attached to them, and I knew that they did not shed their heads more than once in their lives.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    O shining Popocatapetl, It was thy magic hour:

    The houses, people, traffic seemed
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    Chimborazo, Cotopaxi
    They had stolen my soul away!
    —Walter James Turner (1889–1946)