Big Joe Turner, too heavy to stand for long, sat impassively in a chair in front of the band and filled the room with his presence, his magisterial baritone, and the passion of the blues. The band might have been Count Basie’s in the ballroom of a great hotel or a pickup group in a crummy bar. It didn’t matter; Big Joe gave any evening full voice and the accumulated wisdom of a life at the center of the blues. In this 1975 recording, Turner applies his incomparable blues story-tel… MORE