Yes, You Had Better Shake, Rattle And Roll That Thing-With Big Joe Turner In

 

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

 

In the old days, the old blues days around the turn of the 20^th century and you can check this out if you want to and not take my word for it a black guy, a drifter and who knows what else named Joe Turner would come around the share-cropper down South neighborhoods and steal whatever was not nailed down, including your woman which depending on how you were feeling might be a blessing and then leave and move on to the next settlement and plunder. Got his grizzly self put into song out in the Saturday juke joints when the Willie’s liquor, white lightning home-made liquor so you that meant the blues and some guy with a scratch guitar would put some verses together and the crowd would egg him on. By most accounts a bad man, a very bad man just short of as bad as Mister’s plantation foremen or the enforcers of Mister James Crow’s laws. (Although I have heard at least one recording where Joe Turner was something like a combination Santa Claus and Robin Hood.) In any case the Joe Turner, make that Big Joe, Turner I want to mention here only as far as I know stole the show when he got up on the bandstand and played the “godfather” of rock and roll.         

That is what I want to talk about, specifically the place of Big Joe and one song, Shake Rattle and Roll in the rock pantheon. No question Big Joe and his snapping beat has a place in the history of rhythm and blues which is one of the musical forbear strands of rock and roll. The question is whether Shake is also the first serious effort to define rock and roll. If you look at the YouTube version of Big Joe be-bopping away with his guitar player doing some flinty stuff and sax player searching for that high white note and Big Joe snapping away being  very suggestive about who and what should shake you can make a very strong case for that place. Add in that Bill Haley, Jerry Lee, and Elvis among others in the rock pantheon covered the song successfully and that would seem to clinch the matter.      

In 2004, the fiftieth anniversary of the debut of Shake by Big Joe, there had been considerable talk and writing again by some knowledgeable rock critics about whether Shake was the foundational song of rock. That controversy brought back to my mind the arguments that me and my corner boys who hung out in front of Jimmy Jack’s Diner in Carver, a town about thirty miles south of Boston, had on some nothing better to do Friday nights during high school (meaning girl-less, dough-less or both). I was the primary guy who argued for Big Joe and Shake giving that guitar and sax work as my reasoning while Jimmy Jenkins swore that Ike Turner’s frantic piano-driven and screeching sax Rocket 88 (done under an alias of the Delta Cats apparently for contract reasons) was the be-bop beginning and Sam Lowell, odd-ball Sam Lowell dug deep into his record collection to find Elmore James’ Look On Yonder Wall. And the other corner boys like our leader Frankie Riley lined up accordingly (nobody else came up with any others so it was those three). Funny thing Frankie and most everybody else except I think Fritz Taylor who sided with Jimmy Jenkins sided with me and Big Joe. The funny part being that several years ago with the advent of YouTube I started to listen to the old stuff as it became available on-line and now I firmly believe that Ike’s Rocket 88 beats out Shake for the honor. What do you think of that.