Today it is sometimes hard to think of the songs in the early days of rock and soul as anything but innocent and whitebread, befitting the Leave it to Beaver haven, and that parents in that era had nothing to fear. To anyone who believes that I would like to point out the final verse in “Cherry Red,” the opening song to Big Joe Turner’s 1956 album The Boss of the Blues. Followed around by a few saucy, wah-wah trumpet notes, Turner exclaims:

Now you can take me, pretty mama
Jump me in your Hollywood bed
I want you to boogie my woogie
‘Til my face turns cherry red

On the other hand, considering the times, it seemed only black artists were able to release a song like that in the conservative climate of the 1950s. They may have been called race records, but racy is more like it. “Cherry Red” is just one of several hit songs Turner had made in the previous decade, then re-recorded for Atlantic Records following a career renaissance in his mid-40s which found him merging his Kansas City jump-blues style into rhythm and blues. He also became an early influence on the young rock and roll scene, with his best known R&B hit, “Shake, Rattle, and Roll,” brought to a wider/whiter audience via Bill Haley and His Comets, though in a sanitized version.

Even though Big Joe Turner had a blues voice (with a moniker like that, how could he not?), The Boss of the Blues is less a blues album than a jazz album. In fact, my copy, a 1981 re-issue, labels it as part of the Atlantic Jazzlore Series. Several Count Basie alumni back up Turner on these sides, including Frank Wess on tenor sax, Lawrence Brown on trombone, Freddie Green on guitar, and Walter Page plucking the bass strings.

But the biggest contributor is stride pianist Pete Johnson who is reunited with Turner, having accompanied him on many of these songs in their original incarnation. In fact, Turner and Johnson co-wrote several of these songs, including what sounds like an improvisation, “Roll ‘Em Pete.” Ostensibly a showcase for Johnson’s ivory tickling, Turner sings non-sequiturs and steals the scene on the couplet “You so beautiful but you gotta die some day/I want a little lovin’ just before you pass away.”

The music is taut, appropriate for a band that has played together for years. Listen to the long drawn out opening, led by Johnson, on the lament “Wee Baby Blues,” the longest cut on the album. The band is in perfect synchronicity behind Turner and Johnson on the verses, after which we hear the trumpet, trombone, and saxophone players take short but stately solos.

Or take how the band settles into a swinging groove on “You’re Driving Me Crazy (What Did I Do?),” a song Louis Armstrong made famous when someone added lyrics to the melody of "Moten Swing." The musicians sink their collective teeth so deep into the opening verse and solos that it could be rightly said that they are the stars of the track, with Turner a finger-popping garnishment.

Sometimes that good-time feeling gets the better of them, like on the classic W. C. Handy number, “St. Louis Blues.” Here the arrangement is given a big band flourish, sounding like a celebration of life as Turner sings “I’m as blue as I can be.” Surely he can’t be down for long with such boisterous playing right behind him.

On the slow, sultry “I Want a Little Girl,” Turner sounds drunk on longing, slurring the title of the song so that it sounds like he is singing “I wana li girl,” before going on to list a few of the characteristics of his ideal match:

“I don’t care if she don’t wave her hair, doesn’t wear silken clothes
I don’t even care if she don’t wear nylon hose”

The after hours “How Long Blues” features Johnson in the Basie role as pianist and leader of the band as the music swells from a quiet, pre-dawn cool down to a full-blown, wide awake realization that someone’s baby has left town.

The album comes full circle with the slow-burning closer, “Piney Brown Blues.” Turner could be speaking for all his fellow Kansas City natives when he sings:

Well I went back to Kansas City
My little girl was gone
Bye Bye baby
Get yourself a better home
Last time I see my baby
She was standing on Hollywood and Vine
She was sure cool
She wouldn’t pay me no mind

Throughout the album's generous 45 minutes, Turner plays it cool, too. Like a one-eyed cat peeping in a seafood store.


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