ROCK ‘N ROLL’S UNLIKELY FRIENDSHIP: THE BOSS AND THE KING
BILL HALEY AND BIG JOE TURNER
by David Lee Joyner and Chris Gardner
“…Big Joe Turner records use to fascinate me. I kept feeling the need for a style of my own in music.” -Bill Haley (from his unpublished autobiography)
“That time in New Orleans we partied all night until the next morning, and everywhere we went, it was ‘Oh! Bill Haley and Big Joe Turner.’” -Martha Haley (from an interview with Bill Haley’s wife)
In looking back at the formative years of rock ‘n roll, an interesting connection emerges, one that might be seen as unlikely among aficionados of this era. The towering blues singer Big Joe Turner had a big influence on the evolving cowboy yodeler Bill Haley in the late 1940s, steering him in a direction that would help rhythm and blues make the leap to what would come to be known as rock ‘n roll. At the peak of his popularity in the last half of the 1950s, Haley toured with his hero throughout the United States and Australia. In the 1960s, when both he and Turner were experiencing a downturn in their career, they worked together again in Mexico. Haley’s partially completed autobiography, written in the last couple of years of his life and carefully guarded, gives us an intimate look at the time he spent listening to and working with Big Joe and his perception of their relationship.
Big Joe Turner was already a well-established figure in jazz and blues well before much of anyone had heard of Bill Haley. Born in Kansas City on May 18, 1911, he became a part of that city’s vibrant musical scene that benefited from boss Mayor Tom Pendergast’s Prohibition-proof policies. Known locally as The Singing Bartender, he hooked up with boogie-woogie piano pioneer Pete Johnson and eventually came to the attention of producer John Hammond. On December 23, 1938 Turner and Johnson were part of Hammond’s multi-artist Black music showcase at Carnegie Hall, From Spirituals to Swing. It kicked off a boogie-woogie craze in America and landed the pair in a long run and Hammond’s Café Society in New York and a series of recordings for the Vocalion label, including the landmark “Roll ’Em Pete” in 1938 and “Cherry Red” in 1939.
After spending most of the 1940s on the West Coast, Turner’s record sales were slumping, but fortunately he came to the attention of Ahmet Ertegun, who signed him for his Atlantic label around 1950. Jesse Stone was a house writer for the label, a seasoned Kansas City bandleader and composer who, among his other accomplishments, was the director and arranger for the pioneering all-female war time big band The International Sweethearts of Rhythm. Under the pseudonym “Charles Calhoun,” Stone penned “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” that was recorded by Big Joe in 1954. It was a huge hit in the post-war rhythm and blues genre and would come to the attention of a country singer from Chester, Pennsylvania who had been aggressively reinventing himself and his music.
William John Clifton Haley was born July 6, 1925 in Highland Park, Michigan, the son of a factory worker father from Firebrick, Kentucky and an English-born mother. Growing up in the Delaware River Valley, his early musical influences were the stars of Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry and singing movie cowboys. Starting in 1948, he recorded a number of records for regional labels including Cowboy, Keystone and Holiday. Prior to that, from late 1947, he did multiple duties at the new radio station WPWA in Chester. As librarian, he was checking out records of all styles that were submitted to the station for airplay, including rhythm and blues material that would motivate him to bring elements of that style into his own. Big Joe Turner records were among them.
As Haley’s brand of rock ‘n roll emerged, he and his Comets signed with Decca Records and recorded under the supervision of Milt Gabler. It was at the Pythian Temple in New York in April, 1954 that the band recorded their ground-breaking version of “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock.” Its subsequent placement in the film Blackboard Jungle made the band a star attraction and moved them to the top of the rock ‘n roll mountain. Looking for a second hit, Big Joe Turner’s recording of “Shake, Rattle, and Roll,” also recorded and released in 1954, was chosen by Gabler for the Comets to cover, though Haley usually took the credit for selecting it. Recording cover versions of existing songs and recordings was common practice at this time and not considered exploitative. Haley had already covered Jackie Brenston’s “Rocket 88” and swing band leader Ralph Marterie had already covered Haley’s “Crazy Man Crazy.” Composer Jesse Stone must have certainly enjoyed the extra royalties!
The problem with covering “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” was the coded sexual references in the Turner version. This was common in Black blues where double entendre was a fine art and a culturally veiled nose thumbing at proper pop music sensibilities. Turner had recorded several risqué songs in the past, such as “Cherry Red” and “Around the Clock.” Turner’s version starts out in bed, points out what is revealed when the sun shines through a sheer, low-cut dress, and how up-and-down motions make him grit his teeth. The only way Gabler would agree to record a cover version with the Comets was if Haley altered the lyrics to make them more family-friendly. Haley did so, with the exception of the stanza about the one-eyed cat peeping in seafood store, a reference to male and female genitalia. One might think that Jesse Stone and Big Joe slipped one past Haley, but with all the time Haley and Turner spent commiserating over the years, it is more likely that the “oversight” was indeed a co-conspiracy and the topic of much laughter and high-fives between the two. (Another consideration is that Haley related to the one-eyed cat because he was blind in one eye.) In fact, Bill gives an account of their humorously discussing that very line while flying to Australia. “I said to Joe, ‘Now that is really an expression of longing and wanting.’ We laughed about this and Joe, going along with the kidding as he always did, said ‘Now Billy, them other cats don’t know how to write love songs and sing about feelings, about pretty little mamas. You got to write and sing them like you see them.”
The Biggest Rock & Roll Show of 1956 was the first big showcase for a number of R&B and rock ‘n roll acts. In 1978, Bill Haley wrote in his autobiography, “The highlight of this moment was that I was to finally meet my main man, Big Joe Turner, and have the chance to work with the ‘Boss of the Blues.’ I had admired Big Joe for a long time on records but now, as we became friends and I watched him work, I admired him even more. When we met on opening night of the tour, I found this gentleman to be everything that I hoped he would be…full of laughter, spirit, and fun. We struck up a friendship that lasts until this day.” Joe’s portion of the show featured several numbers with the same flavor as his version of “Shake, Rattle, and Roll,” including his hit follow-up song “Flip Flop and Fly,” a number Haley and the Comets also covered for Warner Brothers Records in 1961.
Backstage and road hijinks were also fondly recalled by Haley. “We were always in each others’ dressing rooms. A typical evening would start with the dressing room door opening and a booming voice would announce ‘Have no feah, Big Joe is heah.’ In would come Joe with his bottle of Cutty Sark or Johnny Walker, passing around the drinks.” Some moments on the tour were not so rosy. When the show toured the South, trouble awaited. Not only were mixed audiences not allowed, but Black and White performers traveled in separate buses, stayed in separate lodgings, and weren’t even allowed on the stage at the same time. Drummer Ralph Jones’ home movies of the tour rarely show Black and White performers in the same scene, even in the most casual settings. As many bomb threats as they received, at one stop it seemed to be for real. Haley writes, “Arriving backstage just before our part of the show, we were preparing to go on. Big Joe came to me and said, ‘Billy Boy, I don’t like the smell of this place, so be careful out there.’ Now nothing ever disturbed Big Joe, so when he said this, I really got shook.” Sure enough, the performers were prompted to cut the show short and a live bomb was indeed found under the stage.
Back in the 1950s, Haley never spoke out against racism in general or the treatment of his Black touring partners in particular, though he clearly didn’t like what he saw. Louis Armstrong, probably considered by Whites as the happiest and most passive of Black entertainers, piped up in 1957 when Arkansas governor Orval Faubus sent the National Guard to prevent African-American students from entering Central High School in Little Rock after the Supreme Court made segregation illegal in 1954. He cancelled his State Department sponsored tour of the Soviet Union and called out President Eisenhower for being “two-faced” and having “no guts.” This immediately put him on the FBI’s watchlist where he remained for the rest of his life. Bill Haley found his way on to the watchlist a year earlier, not for his words but for his music that the establishment considered poisonous to youth and morals in general. His advocacy for civil rights was more in the form of readily acknowledging his musical influences and partnerships with African-American performers and his quest to develop a type of music, rock ‘n roll, that would cross not only stylistic but racial barriers. However, when push came to shove, Haley could be capable of a more tangible defense. In the biography Sound and Glory, written by Bill’s son John Haley and John von Hoelle, there is a harrowing story from one of the tours of the South. A young Chuck Berry was fleeing from an angry mob and was taken aboard the Comets’ bus to hide while Bill intervened and got the hounds off the scent.
The rock ‘n roll revue took three more tours that year totaling eighty to a hundred nights on the road, and Haley recalled spending many hours backstage playing guitar while Big Joe sang blues songs. They drank many bottles of Johnny Walker Red together while Joe told Bill stories about the heyday of Kansas City jazz and blues. All the time together deepened this particular friendship; Haley rarely speaks of any colleague with such affection, other than his faithful saxophonist Rudi Pompilli. When, according to Haley, Turner expressed an interest in traveling with him and the Comets, Bill arranged to have Big Joe and singer LaVern Baker come along on a tour of Australia that began in January of 1957. Joe had never traveled so far and was deathly afraid of flying, so he had many questions for Bill, including how he should dress for the weather. As a joke, Bill told him that it was indeed January and that Joe had better dress warm, knowing that the seasons are reversed in Australia. When they all showed up at the Los Angeles airport to embark on their flight around the world, it was evident that Bill’s prank had succeeded. “There I spotted a large gentleman dressed in a beautiful black overcoat with a grey Homburg hat, scarf and gloves and it took me a moment to realize that this was Big Joe. He was already sweating when I greeted him.” When they stepped off the plane into Sydney’s 100+ degree heat, the sweat was pouring off poor Big Joe. Realizing he had been suckered, he told Haley, “Billy, I’se the onliest cat in Australia with an overcoat on.”
Bill and Big Joe’s friendship was particularly good for Haley’s spirits at this time. He had recently lost both his parents and, though he was at the height of his career, fame, crazed fans, and the storm of controversy over his music was getting to him. Drawing him out of his malaise were the jokes, the jamming, the scotch-drinking sessions, the shared fear when they flew through violent storms, and the performing. During a fueling stop-over in Fiji, Bill and Big Joe threw together an impromptu concert for the fans who had gathered at the airport. Bill said it was the first of many times they performed “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” together, a recollection that should quell any idea that Haley “stole” the song from Turner or that Turner had any problem with the Comets’ cover version. Sometimes Haley had to intervene as “translator” for Big Joe, such as the time when Joe was rehearsing with a local orchestra that had no idea how to play in the proper style. He was in a rage, shouting at Bill “I been tellin’ them over and over they ain’t puttin’ it down and how am I goin’ to pick up on it if the cats ain’t puttin’ it down?” Bill decoded Joe’s “hep” talk for the bandleader and told him to play a heavier backbeat. They responded and, for the rest of the tour, all was well. Upon their return to New York, Bill picked up another of Joe’s distinctive phrases when he saw a pretty waitress at the airport. A pretty girl was a “diveeny.” The next level up was a “double diveeny,” then a “trawswaw” and topped out at a “triple trawswaw.” Bill would ad-lib the phrase “double diveeny” on a remake of his hit “Skinny Minnie” in Mexico in 1966, the next time he and Big Joe would hook up.
1956 and 1957 were the peak times in both musicians’ careers. Big Joe, in his mid-40s, had successfully transitioned from a Kansas City blues singer into a rock ‘n roll star and Haley was on the crest of his popularity wave with several major hits and the propulsion of “Rock Around the Clock” in the movie Blackboard Jungle, a sensation within itself. Both Haley and Turner became movie starts themselves. The Comets were featured in two films, Rock Around the Clock and Don’t Knock the Rock and Big Joe got at least three features in the 1957 teen movie Shake, Rattle, and Rock. The Comets continued to record covers of Big Joe’s signature hits — “Hide and Seek” in 1956, “Corrine Corrina” in 1958, “I Want a Little Girl” in 1961, and “Flip, Flop, and Fly” in 1968. By the end of the 1950s, both Haley’s and Turner’s careers were in a slump.
The two had not seen each other since the end of the Australia tour in 1957. Both of their careers were in the pits. Haley had been reduced to working dives for cheap money. He was working at the Whisky a Go Go in New Orleans in 1965 when he got a surprise phone call. It turned out that his old friend was living in the Crescent City at that time and was likely reaching out in desperation to see if Haley could get him a gig. He was in luck. Bill told a BBC interviewer in 1974, “I got Joe to come down and got him back on the stage with me at the Whisky a Go Go and the audience went mad to see Joe Turner and Bill Haley together.” In the meantime, Haley had found new popularity in Mexico, where the Comets had been rebranded as a “twist” and “go go” band, following the dance trend of the time. They changed their beat from the shuffling country/R&B groove of the 1950s to a more even surf-music type rhythm. They toured Mexican cabarets, appeared on Mexican dance-pop television programs, and recorded extensively for the Mexican Orfeon record label. After a night on the town, fondly recalled by Bill’s wife Martha, Haley invited Big Joe to come down to Mexico to record, which took place in January of 1966. It was a huge gesture of compassion and friendship to share his own second chance with his old buddy.
Once again, Turner was thrust into a foreign context, backed by musicians that weren’t supplying him with the traditional blues style that was the essence of his music. Nevertheless, the Comets were happy to see him and to work with him. Guitarist Johnny Kay remembered that, uncharacteristically, Bill Haley was in the studio the whole time, even though he did little playing. “Joe made the room feel alive with his soul. He sang twelve-bar blues, and we just followed along. Some of the lyrics he made up while he was singing. Now that was art.” There was a rumor that Bill and Big Joe recorded two duets during this session, but the released masters don’t bear that out; what a shame. However, we can see Big Joe, Bill, and the Comets performing on the Mexican pop music television show Discoteque Orfeon a Go Go in 1966, produced by the record label. Though blues purists might bristle at these performances, there is no doubt that the love and enjoyment show through, even when Bill’s platform collapses under him toward the end of the television segment.
Bill Haley and Big Joe Turner would appear on the same stage one more time, at the Hollywood Bowl on June 30, 1972, part of producer Richard Nader’s rock n’ roll revival concert tours that indeed revived the careers of both Haley and Turner. The show toured for a few days drawing large audiences. Turner was beginning to get proper recognition for his legacy as a blues and R&B singer by the 1970s. He made a number of recordings for Norman Granz’s Pablo jazz label, loosely jamming with a number of jazz luminaries. Haley, however, was gradually dialing back on touring and recording, content to stay home with his young family in south Texas but, unfortunately, also succumbing to alcoholism and mental illness. He died in 1981 and Turner died four years later in 1985.
In his interviews and his unpublished autobiography, Bill Haley paints a picture of a deep and lasting friendship between himself and Big Joe Turner, but he was prone to exaggeration when talking about the depth of his relationship with other rock ‘n roll artists, such as his relationship with Elvis Presley (the topic of another article). In an interview with BBC Radio in 1974, Haley give the impression that he “picked Joe Turner” to go on the 1956 rock ‘n roll revue tour. It is doubtful that Haley had any influence or power on the producers of the show. Los Angeles blues author Mary Katherine Aldin interviewed Turner on a number of occasions and Bill Haley was never discussed. We might assume that Haley was only on Turner’s mind for the duration of their work together, then out of sight, out of mind. It could also be that Turner assumed that the blues interviewer wouldn’t be particularly interested in a rock ‘n roll icon like Haley and obliged by just not bringing him up, particularly if not prompted to do so. Nevertheless, even if their friendship was only a series of “flings” in the course of professional collaborations, there is no doubt about the impact of Big Joe Turner’s music on Bill Haley’s entire career and the joy that their time together brought him.
David Deacon-Joyner and Chris Gardner are authoring a new biography of Bill Haley, commissioned by the Haley estate.
Another article on Medium from these writers, “The Father and the King,” is forthcoming, probing the relationship and historical context of Bill Haley and Elvis Presley and drawing from Haley’s own unpublished memoir.