Big Joe Turner is a somewhat obscure figure today but a towering giant musically. A native of Kansas City, he began to sing early and was known as the Singing Bartender. It may have been that making himself heard over the din of a bar helped him to develop such a powerful voice.
When he teamed up with brilliant pianist Pete Johnson, the two began to develop an iconic sound: a driving piano paired with a ridiculously powerful voice. They did a lot of slow blues numbers of course but their greatest influence came from songs like Shake, Rattle and Roll which was covered by Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, Bill Haley and Bob Dylan, among many others.