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#joeturner

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Joe Turner was the father figure for all of the 1940s and 1950s rhythm & blues shouters. He honed his craft in the bars and night clubs of Kansas City during the late 1920s and early 1930s, and by the time he appeared in the 1938 "From Spirituals to Swing" concert at Carnegie Hall and made his first records with pianist Pete Johnson, he was already at the peak of his powers.

Turner achieved his greatest commercial success in the 1950s when he joined the roster of Atlantic Records and recorded a lot of contemporary material penned by writers like Jesse Stone, Doc Pomus and Leiber & Stoller. Although he was already in his forties, he became an unlikely rock'n'roll star and recorded a a few teen-oriented songs. But like just about all of his Atlantic releases, even these were excellent records.

Turner's wife, Lou Willie Turner (real name: Luella Brown) was credited as the writer of "Oke-She-Moke-She-Pop" (1953). As the song was released on the flip side of "TV Mama", one of Turner's major hits, it did not make the R&B charts on its own, but it is still a very entertaining record, with Turner fully in charge even in this live video version from 1954:

Joe Turner: "Oke-She-Moke-She-Pop" (1954)
youtube.com/watch?v=NnytNEuw3VE