Album Notes

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). Although she was a white southern housewife with three children, she found time to make 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 unreleased goodies, including alternate takes, radio broadcast excerpts, private recordings, and a rare live concert performance. Total playing time is 158 minutes. The set also contains a 32-page full color booklet with detailed notes and over a dozen photographs.

‘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

To read more about this CD or ‘Cile Turner, please visit the Rivermont Records web page: www.rivermontrecords.com