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Joe Turner
For a Sound Recording by Richard Matteson:
Old-Time, Blues. USA, Texas.
ARTIST: Perrow: From Mississippi; negroes; MS. of M. F. Rubel; 1909
CATEGORY: Fiddle and Instrumental Tunes DATE: 1909 Late 1800’s; W.C. Handy, Walter Hirsch- 1916
RECORDING INFO: Rush, Tom. Tom Rush, Fantasy 24709, LP (1972), cut# 12; American Songbag, Harcourt Brace Jovan..., Sof (1955), p241 (Joe Turner); Douglas, Bob. Sequatchie Valley, Tennessee Folklore Soc. TFS-109, LP (198?), cut# 9
OTHER NAMES: Old Joe Turner Blues; Going Down the River Before Long;
SOURCES: 'Big Bill Broonzy: Interviewed by Studs Terkel' Folkways FG 3586. Red Williams (Dallas, Texas) [Christeson]. Christeson (Old Time Fiddlers Repertory, Vol. 1), 1973; pg. 155. Sandburg, p. 241, "Joe Turner" (1 text, 1 tune) Courlander-NFM, p. 137, (no title) (1 fragment) Handy/Silverman-Blues, p. 104-107, "Joe Turner Blues" (1 text, 1 tune, extremely heavily adapted; the original tune, with a single verse, appears on page 17)
NOTES: A Major. Standard. AB. One of the tunes played by Bond's String Band, a late 1920's six to eight piece string band from Corbin, Kentucky, whose personnel was composed almost entirely of railroaders. The band specialized in playing blues tunes, but did not record (Wolfe, 1982).
There are three separate blues entitled, “Joe Turner Blues:” Bill Big Broonzy’s ; W. C. Handy’s and Mississippi John Hurt’s versions.
W. C. Handy (1873-1958) was an American composer of blues songs. Handy did not invent the blues, which is a form of folk music. But he became known as the father of the blues because he brought the music to widespread public attention. Handy wrote some of the earliest commercially successful blues songs. These songs include "St. Louis Blues" (1914), "Beale Street Blues" (1916), "Memphis Blues" (1913), and "Joe Turner Blues" (1915).
Mississippi John Hurt recorded a 'Joe Turner Blues' on his 'Last Sessions' (Vanguard).The song is a different song with the title “Joe Turner Blues. Recorded by: Hofner, Adolph; & his Texans. Beer Parlor Jive. Western Swing 1935-1941, String STR 801, LP (1977), cut#A.06; Hurt, Mississippi John. Mississippi John Hurt, Last Sessions, Vanguard VSD 79327, LP (1972), cut# 3; Hurt, Mississippi John. Folk Songs and Blues, Piedmount PLP 13157, LP (1963), cut# 13
Big Bill Broonzy: Stewie from Mudcat- Joe Turner seems to have been 2 people - transmogrified from a 'mercy' man, almost an angel, into an ogre. I recall reading a reference somewhere that the 1920s Joe Turner may have been a real person, feared throughout the South as the chain gang boss whose job it was to deliver gangs of black prisoners to the prison farms. The Traditional Ballad Index gives the earliest record of that version as 1927. It gives references to Sandburg ('American Songbag'), Courlander ('Negro Folk Music USA') and the DT. Evidently, Courlander refers to the angelic Turner, a storekeeper who gave food and goods to people suffering as a result of a huge flood in the 1890s, but his fragment does not accord with that story. However, Big Bill Broonzy sang a blues about this Good Samaritan, 'Joe Turner No 1', and said it was the earliest blues he knew of - 'written back in 1892'. It's mostly talking, incredible guitar playing and the one line repeated twice:
They tell me Joe Turner been here and gone
They tell me Joe Turner been here and gone
They tell me Joe Turner been here and gone
Big Bill sang this and talked about it to Studs Terkel on a Folkways LP 'Big Bill Broonzy Interviewed by Studs Terkel'. The 'mercy' man seems to be the earlier. However, the pieces are linked because whatever Joe Turner was - angel or devil - he's done 'been and gone'. Bill Bill says the original Joe Turner was 2 people - 'Joe was a negro and Turner was a white man'.
TERKEL: Bill , we think of blues all the time as sad and mournful songs, yet you sang a couple of uptempoed, humorous blues. In the blues, isn't there always a feeling somehow that tomorrow things'll be better – or am I just imagining things?
BROONZY: Well, all people, all blues singers, feel that way. They sing because they figure there's gonna be a change in something – that people, that it's not gonna be the same. It is the same way with you: you don't think tomorrow is gonna be just like today.
TERKEL: I'm referring, Bill, to a blues that you once mentioned as the earliest you ever heard – dealt with a man named Joe Turner.
BROONZY: Joe Turner – oh yeh, I know that one. Why Joe Turner was a man that all the people in the South, they really believed in him. They really believed there was a man like that – and which it was. And nobody knowed who he was until he died. And the word Joe Turner, that was 2 people – because Joe was a negro and Turner was a white man. And Turner was a man owned a big store there and people that got drought, caught in drought, got caught in storms and big floods and things – they'd lose their stuff. Why old man Turner would put Joe on a mule and put a sack of groceries or whatsoever he had and send it to these people's houses. And they never did see nobody that bring it and they never did know who brought it – nuthin'. So they figured that that was the guy – that was all.
TERKEL: Sort of a Good Samaritan.
From Ballad Index: Courlander reports that this was based on an incident on 1892, when a flood cost a number of people their livelihood. A storekeeper named Turner (though not Joe Turner) anonymously supplied their needs until he died, whereupon the gifts stopped. It should be noted, however, that this does not match Sandburg's song at all, though it has the same lyrics as Courlander's fragment. Presumably Courlander's source adapted an older song to a local need. In support of this, we note that Handy/Silverman, though dating the song to the same time, regard Turner (actually Joe Tourney, brother of the governor of Tennessee) as the leader of a chain gang. The notes in Handy/Silverman regard this as the archetypal folk blues -- perhaps even the ancestor of the entire genre. The former statement may arguably be true; the latter I must seriously doubt.
From Jerry Silverman- 110 American Folk Blues: When Pete Turney was the Governor of Tennessee in 1892, He made his brother Joe the “long-chain man.” It was Joe Turney’s job to transport convicts from Memphis to the Nashville penitentiary. So when Joe came to town it was bye-bye for some woman’s man. Through a typical folk metamorphosis his name was changed to Joe Turner. This is , perhaps, the oldest recorded blues. It is sometimes referred to as “the Granddaddy of the Blues.”
Here are the lyrics from Perrow:
JOE TURNER collected by E.C. Perrow
SONGS AND RHYMES FROM THE SOUTH BY E. C. PERROW
(From Mississippi; negroes; MS. of M. F. Rubel; 1909)
Tell me Joe Turner's come to town;
Tell me Joe Turner's come to town;
Tell me Joe Turner's come to town.
He's brought along one thousand links er chain;
He's gwine ter have one *sinner fer each link,
Gwine ter get this *sinner fer one link.
*edited for racial content
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