21 ‘Rock and roll would have neverhappened without him, ’ ’ songwriter Doc Pomus remarked in Rolling Stone magazine on the occasion o f Big Joe

Turner’s death in 1985 at the age o f seventy-four. Turner, a Kansas City- born-and-bred blues shouter, had

already more than earned the I appellation the Boss o f the Blues I when he found himself the harbinger

o f a new sound and style. The version o f ‘ ‘Shake, Rattle and Roll’ ’ he recorded for Atlantic in 1954 was the sort o f forthright rhythm and blues side that generally never made it to the pop charts—as he sang it, the tune wasn’t exactly about dancing. But later that year, when Bill Haley and His Comets sanitized the lyrics and simplified the beat, they really started something.

That put Turner in a curious position as both a starfrom the old world o f the blues and a seminalfigure in the new world o f rock and roll. He was suddenly in demand with an emerging young audience. Turner was on the bill, fo r example, with Fats Domino and the Drifters during DJ Alan Freed’s Rock and Roll Ball at Harlem’s Saint Nicholas Arena in January 1955; that same month, he joined Domino, the Moonglows, the Clovers and others in the traveling Top Ten R&B Show, which kicked o ff in New York City fo r a tour made up o f42 one- night stands. He shared the stage at Harlem’s Apollo Theatre with Bo Diddley, participated in one o f impresario Irvin Feld’s touring R&B extravaganzas and, in 1957, even went to Australia with Atlantic label mate LaVern Baker to support, ironically enough, Bill Haley on a two-week tour. He courted the new market overtly with his singles ‘ ‘Flip, Flop and Fly, ’ ’| ‘Lipstick, Powder and Paint’ ’ (which was written by rock and roll’s premier songwriting duo, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller) and “Corrine Corrina” (his biggest hit, later covered in 1960 by Ray Peterson).

But Turner never left the blues behind. He had begun performing while tending bar at clubs in Kansas City. Eschewing the big-band format popular among many blues singers, Turner chose to collaborate with pianist Pete Johnson. In December 1938, he and Johnson went to New York City at the behest o f John Hammond to perform in Hammond’s first From Spirituals to Swing show, at Carnegie Hall on Christmas Eve, along with Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday and Hazel Scott. With boogie- woogie in vogue, Turner and Johnson became a regularfeatured act at the fashionable Cafe Society; in 1941, they were asked to join Duke

' Ellington ’ s Jump fo r Joy Revue in Hollywood.In 1956, Atlantic released The Boss of the

Blues: Joe Turner Sings Kansas City Jazz, in which Turner essayed genre classics like ‘ ‘St. Louis Blues’ ’ and pop standards like ‘ ‘You’re Driving Me Crazy. ’ ’ In his long career, Turner worked with many o f thefinestjazz performers, including Basie, Art Tatum and Dizzy Gillespie. Although in later years he was forced by infirmity to remain seated when he sang, Turner never gave up recording or performing, showing how a man and a sound can survive, change and grow, outlasting trends until they become timeless.

BEN E. KING

RIO JOE TURNERBora May 18th, 1911 Kansas City, Missouri Died November 24th, 1985 Los Angeles, California

CHUCK WILLIS

BY MARTY OSTROWSEYMOUR STEIN CALLED me one morning last month. “ Marty,” he said, “ you were at Cash Box when the whole rock and roll era began to develop. At the time, Cash Box captured the essence of what was happening in our industry. Coyld you do a feature for our Hall of Fame program on the role Cash Box played in the early development of rock and roll?”

Seymour was right. Cash Box did play an important role in the growth of rock and roll. To understand how, let’s step back a third of a century to the early Fifties and see what the record business was like then, in the period when R&B, country and indie-label pop were all beginning to rub shoulders with one another.

At the time, pop stations aimed their programming at a white audience, playing such artists as Perry Como, Dinah Shore, Rosemary Clooney and Doris Day. But each city with a significant black population had at least one station that featured another type of pop music, playing Jimmy Reed, Ruth Brown, Big Joe Turner, Fats Domino, Muddy Waters, James Brown and Chuck Berry.

Billboard was the leading music trade paper. And since the major labels were making most of the big noise in the industry, they were getting most of B illboard’s editorial space.

Cash Box was known at the time as the jukebox operator’s publication. We had a big section dealing with trade news about jukeboxes and coin machines. We got involved in music when our subscribers began requesting a chart of the records that were getting heavy play on the nation’s jukeboxes.

Cash Box started a weekly Top Ten jukebox chart, based on weekly phone calls to leading jukebox operators . While Compiling this, we were often told that the most profitable locations were the taverns in black neighborhoods.

Occasionally, we asked the white operators how they chose records for the jukeboxes in the black areas. They often said something like this: “ One of the Negro kids in my stockrooin and one of my drivers tell me what to get. They listen to this R&B stuff day and night. I don’t know good from bad when it comfs to R&B. You guys at Cash Box oughta compile a list of the best R&B records on the jukeboxes like you do for the pop records.”

In our desire to cover some aspect of music in greater depth than B illboard - r and in the hope that it would result in increased advertising revenue - we decided to cover the R&B area more thoroughly and develop a Top Ten R&B chart.

We went to the independent distributors who handled the R&B labels and got a list of key retail shops in black areas. These distribs also gave us a rundown of one-stops (subdistributors who sold records to jukebox operators, candy stores, shoeshine parlors and so forth).

When we started surveying these outlets, we found that the hits varied greatly from city to city. What was Top Teh in New Orleans often never made it onto the Top Ten in L.A. This was because these small R&B labels were seldom in control of their own destinies. They may have had just one national promotion man (if they had one at all). They shipped their records to some thirty different independent distributors and had to hope that these indie distribs would get excited! about a new release. ,,

Promotion in the early days of R&B was very crude. The late Leonard Ghess related his modus operandi in the early years Of Chess Records:

“ When I had six or seven new records, I would press up as many 78s as I could fit in the trunk, front seat and back seat of my car and would head out from Chicago to my distributor in Shreveport, Stan Lewis. I would head through the back roads and drive through every black area, looking for transmitting towers. I would walk into these little R&B stations (most of which never saw record-company people), give them a free copy of each of the

six or seven new titles, tell them that they were getting an exclusive and beg for regular play. Then I would drive over to the record shop in town, tell them this was getting heavy play and sell them a box right out of the car.

‘ ‘The rest of the country was blanketed by sending a box or two of the new singles to my indie distribs and then getting on the phone and threatening the distrib that he’s gonna lose the line if he doesn’t break all seven singles in his area. ”

Because the hits in each area were sO v a r i e d Box developed a series Of regional R&B charts known as the Hot Charts, reporting weekly on the Top Ten R&B singles in the twelve cities that had the heaviest R&B sales,

It was this feature that eventually made Cash Box important. In the early years, songs like “ Shake a Hand,” by Faye Adams, and “ Sixty Minute Man” ’ by.Billy Ward and the Dominoes, would rise to the top of these charts - in every city - and never be heard by any white people other than those music junkies who tuned into R&B stations. This material was never even considered for a pop cover at that time. Then, over a short span of a year or two, Bill Haley covered Joe Turner’s “ Shake, Rattle and Roll,” Perry Como covered Gene and Eunice’s “ Ko Ko Mo,” Pat Boone covered Fats Domino’s ‘*Ain’t That a Shame,” the McGuire Sisters covered the Moonglows’ “ Sincerely,” the Crew Cuts covered the Chords’ “ Sh*-Boom,” and the Fontane Sisters cov­ered Otis Williams and the Chârms’ ‘ ‘Hearts of Stone. ’ ’

And since nothing awakens interest among record-industry people like a new, steady source of hit material, the major labels, music publishers, radio stations and songwriters all developed a keen interest in the Cash Box Hot Charts.

At this point, radio was still totally divided, with pop covers being played onlf On white radio and the original R&B versions being played only on black radio. Then along camé Alan Freed, who, more than any other single individual, changed the face of radio. He Would play a pop version of â hit, followed immediately by the original R&B version of the same song. The R&B sound became more acceptable to the white ear. Soon the white market began to prefer the original versions. It wasp’t long before little independent record manufacturers were coming up with one big pop or rock and roll hit after another.

During this series of events, the Cash Box staff was called into a meeting to resolve a dilemma. A record called “ Gee,” by the Crows, oh George Goldner’s Rama label, had been riding high on the R&B charts. Then it began to get heavy reports out of the white record shops. Although the word was not yet in the record-industry lexicon, we were experiencing the first “ crossover” record.

We resolved the problem by keeping the record on the R&B chart and by placing the same record on the pop chart. Needless to say, this opened a Pandora’s box of discussions and arguments on the proper way to compile the total volume from both charts. Similar problems of categorization developed out of the country- music area when Elvis Presley and,, later, the Everly Brothers - both originally regarded as country acts - got heavier acceptance in the pop area than they did in country.

I remember a series of meetings during the late Fifties at which we discussed whether a record should be reviewed in pop, R&B or country, or in all three, or in two of the threei We even discussed doing away with the R&B section altogether, because we didn’t want to limit a record to only one audience when we couldn’t tell from the sound who it would appeal to.

Of course, our confusion at Cash Box reflected the changes that were taking place in music and in society. It was a privilege to be able to cover from its inception - and to contribute to - one of the most creative music periods in our history.

COUNTRY WIHHERSOF “ THE CASH BOX

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Dm M Bex Publishing Co., I% Wot 47th Stmt, New Yerk 36, N.Y.

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