Though endlessly confused with the singer Big Joe Turner, pianist Joe Turner came from a completely different direction, following the James P. Johnson/Fats Waller stride tradition, armed with a superb technique and a fine sense of swing. He started to learn the piano from his mother at age five and began to make a name for himself in Harlem as a teenager shortly after his move to New York in 1925. He was an accompanist to Adelaide Hall in a duo with first Alex Hill and then Francis Carter, the latter with whom he and Hall toured Europe in 1931. He remained in Europe through 1939 when war broke out, upon which he returned to the U.S. to work as a singer.
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