Kansas City blues singer Big Joe Turner spanned musical eras and genres in a way that defined the essence of American popular music. His earliest recordings were made with boogie-woogie pianist Pete Johnson, but he found fame as a brash, hefty-lunged R&B singer during the ‘40s, and he also worked with jazz greats like Art Tatum and Count Basie. In the ‘50s he signed with Atlantic Records, where he made iconic records like “Shake Rattle and Roll” and “Flip Flop and Fly” that cemented him as a progenitor of rock ‘n’ roll. In the final decades of his career he worked with jazz musicians, but regardless of the setting, his muscular shout was always front and centre.