Joseph Vernon Turner was born on May 18, 1911, in Kansas City, Missouri. He dropped out of school after sixth grade and worked with blind singers on the streets. The blues genre was prevalent in Kansas City when Turner joined street performers, and he would create blues lyrics on the spot. Turner was functionally illiterate and never learned to read or write properly.
He studied records in his late teens to learn songs and cited Leroy Carr, Lonnie Johnson, Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters as favourites. By the time he was 17, he had teamed up with Pete Johnson at the Backbiter's Club. There were no microphones at the time and Turner's voice became the stuff of legend as locals told stories of hearing him 10 blocks away. He became the first of a new breed of performer: the blues shouter.
A Fruitful Partnership In the early 1930s, Turner and Johnson moved to the Black and Tan club, where Turner learned to tend bar. After Prohibition ended in 1933 the pair moved to the Cherry Blossom, a larger spot which had a floor show, including the orchestra of George E. Lee. It was during this time that Johnson and Turner travelled to out-of-town locations such as Omaha, Chicago and St. Louis. In early 1935 the pair moved to the Sunset Cafe, where they were heard by John Hammond and invited to appear at the Spirituals To Swing concert in New York. A big hit at the concert, Johnson and Turner soon joined forces with Albert Ammons and Meade 'Lux' Lewis, and began a four-year run at a New York nightclub, Cafe Society,