Rivermont Records: 'Cile Turner - Makin' Glory (BSW-3135)

'CILE TURNER
Makin' Glory
Rivermont BSW-3135

For years, the name 'Cile Turner has been a curious mystery to rock 'n' roll record collectors around the globe. In the past three decades, her 1959 recording of "Crap Shootin' Sinner" has been reissued on several notable compilations of early rockabilly and rhythm 'n' blues records (one of them colorfully titled T-Bird Party: A Swangin' Slew O' Greasy R&B), leading some on the internet to speculate that she was an obscure African-American singer of "gritty blues" who lived hard and died young. Collectors as far away as Europe, South America, and Japan regularly snap up used copies of her records when they are offered for sale, occasionally at prices stretching into the triple digits. Many of them may not know much about the woman behind the records, but they recognize the quality and uniqueness of her music. One reviewer recently wrote of Turner's music: "I love listening to it and have never heard anything quite like it."

In a career that spanned from the 1920s to the 1970s, Turner established herself as versatile performer: she was a historian, storyteller, and consummate musician. She composed, sang, and played a number of instruments including piano, guitar, drums, pots, pans, and anything else she might find useful--and she did it all with exceptional skill. Throughout her life, she was particularly drawn to the folk music of African-Americans and for a time became nationally known as one of the music's foremost experts and performers, appearing on records, radio, television, and at the White House. As a white "Virginia lady" championing the music of African-Americans in the still-segregated South, Turner challenged conventional assumptions about women's roles in society in the early twentieth century to pursue her passion for black folk music. As a young woman, she frequently found herself at odds with her parents, who disapproved of her performing career, thinking that a woman's place was in the home. Still, Turner's passion for the music and love of performing drove her to continue her efforts.

Lucile ('Cile) Turner was born in Southside Virginia in 1895. As a child, she showed a strong affinity for music and the theater, so at the age of 13 her parents sent her north to study piano and voice at the New England Conservatory of Music. Within a short time, she attracted attention from outside the Conservatory for her singing of African-American folk songs and spirituals. In the 1920s, she began traveling, singing the songs she had learned as a child. By 1930, she was starring in her own popular coast-to-coast radio program on NBC (heard Friday evenings just after Amos 'n' Andy on the same network). She made regular tours of the country throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s. In 1947, she made her first commercial recordings, a set of three 78 rpm records called "Blue Jeans." Soon thereafter, she signed a contract with Colonial Records and cut a full length LP and a handful of 45 rpm records, many featuring Elvis Presley's back-up vocal group, The Jordanaires. Several of her records, including "Crap Shootin' Sinner" and "The Golden Rule" became minor hits in 1959 and 1960, reaching the Top 40 popular music charts in several major cities. Turner continued to travel and perform until the late 1960s. She died in 1979.

The first CD in this deluxe 2-CD set contains all of Turner's commercial recordings. The second disc contains 80 minutes of previously unreleased rarities, including alternate takes, radio broadcast excerpts, private recordings, and a live concert performance. The accompanying 32-page full-color booklet features over a dozen photographs and a comprehensive essay by Bryan S. Wright.

'Cile Turner's music is a blend of traditional African-American folk music and rockabilly with a hint of blues. A reporter for TIME Magazine once wrote "Smoky-eyed Lucile Barrow Turner is the poised, ingratiating, slightly helpless-seeming epitome of Southern ladyhood. But when she cuts loose on a blues or 'shoutin'' spiritual, she gives the effect of a New Orleans barrel-house contralto." A columnist for the North Carolina News and Observer went so far as to say "Mrs. Turner sings like Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and a Negro spiritual choir all rolled into one."

"Like Robert Burns, Lucile Turner shows how important and moving a simple art can become when it is in the hands of one who is deeply serious, deeply humorous, and a poet." -- James Boyd

"Mrs. Turner...brings to her art sympathy without bathos, sentiment without sentimentality. I was greatly moved by her roles. Mrs. Turner is a creative artist touched with genius." -- James Weldon Johnson

"Lucile Barrow Turner has an extraordinarily exciting voice, a perfect sense of rhythm, and a powerful instinct for the dramatic as well as a delicious humorous slant...She makes a decided contribution to folklore as well as to entertainment." -- John Mason Brown

158 minutes on two CDs. Recorded 1933-1962.

US $25.00
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Click on the buttons to hear full-quality audio samples of selected tracks.

	*Disc One: Blue Jeans* and the Complete Colonial Recordings**
1.	Prayer
2.	Hammerin'
3.	Full o' the Moon	78 rpm version
4.	Crap Shootin' Sinner	78 rpm version
5.	One-Arm Tom	78 rpm version
6.	Sat'day Night
7.	Drizzlin' Rain	45 rpm version
8.	Full o' the Moon	45 rpm version
9.	Full o' the Moon	LP version
10.	Midnight Train
11.	All Night Long
12.	A Thousand Years
13.	One-Arm Tom	LP version
14.	Sultry
15.	Drizzlin' Rain	LP version
16.	John Henry
17.	Didn't it Rain
18.	Crap Shootin' Sinner	LP version
19.	Old History's Walkin'
20.	Crap Shootin' Sinner	45 rpm version
21.	The Golden Rule
22.	Going Down to Town
23.	Don't Fool Around with the Blues
24.	Joe Sweeney
25.	In Virginia
26.	The Happy Song
27.	The Winds Call it Home
28.	I'm Walking That Lonesome Road
	Disc Two: Special and Previously Unreleased Recordings
1.	Introduction by 'Cile Turner
2.	In Virginia	Alternative version
3.	Songs of the South	09/14/1933 Radio broadcast
4.	Full o' the Moon	Private recording
5.	Mississippi Streamline	Version 1
6.	Mississippi Streamline	Version 2
7.	Prayer	Private recording
8.	Down by the Riverside
9.	Mary Don't You Weep
10.	Skunks
11.	Don't Fool Around with the Blues	Demo
12.	Going Down to Town	Demo
13.	Crap Shootin' Sinner	Live
14.	One-Arm Tom	Private recording
15.	Workin' on the Building
16.	Oh, Mammy! Look at Sam
17.	Lay This Body Down / I Want to Go Home
18.	Lo Cotton
19.	Drizzlin' Rain	Private recording
20.	Go Down Death
21.	Old History's Walkin'

Credits:
Transfers and remastering: Bryan S. Wright / Liner notes: Bryan S. Wright / Photographs: Bryan S. Wright and Jones Memorial Library, Lynchburg, Virginia