From:  "Dik de Heer" 
Date:  Fri Jun 4, 2004  1:29 am 
Subject:  This Is My Story : Jesse Lee Turner
 
JESSE LEE TURNER

Born 1934*, Bowling, Texas

Jesse Lee Turner had a strong rock 'n' roll voice, with an Elvis-like quiver.
Unfortunately, this side of Turner can be heard on only a few of his discs.
He had the misfortune that his only hit was a novelty number and that
fact kept haunting him for the rest of his recording career.

Jesse Lee was hired as Jerry Lee Lewis' driver in 1957. He recorded "Put
Me Down" as a demo for Sun (now available on at least six different CD
compilations) and Jerry Lee was sufficiently impressed to record the song
himself, for his first album. Turner's career as a recording artist zoomed
into orbit with his first real release. At a time when witch doctors, purple
people eaters and chipmunks were all over the charts, a song about another
alien from outer space, "The Little Space Girl" looked like a good commercial
bet. The record was produced in Texas by Dewey Groom (a veteran country
singer who set himself up as a music entrepreneur after coming off the road
in 1958) and leased to Carlton Records. "The Little Space Girl", featuring the
Chipmunk-like voice of Paul Belin, a Texas deejay, was written by Jesse Lee's
cousin Floyd Robinson, though Turner was inadvertently credited as the writer.
It came out in December 1958 and was picked by Billboard as a "Spotlight
winner of the week". By February 1959, it had reached # 20 on the Billboard
charts. However, those who flipped the record over and played "Shake Baby
Shake" (based on Hank Ballard's "Sexy Ways") knew immediately where
Turner's musical loyalty lay. It is his best rocker. Fortunately, Jesse Lee had
the good taste to record the follow-up, "Baby Please Don't Tease" in the
same style as "Shake Baby Shake". It failed to sell, though, and Carlton let
him go. Turner then started label-hopping, cutting mostly one-off singles for
Fraternity, Imperial, Top Rank ("Do I Worry", one of his finest), Jaro (as Jesse
and the Road Runners), Sudden and GNP Crescendo between 1959 and 1962.
Most of these were novelties and many of the songs were written by or with
Floyd Robinson, who had his own Top 20 hit in the summer of 1959 with
"Makin' Love" on RCA. Quite acceptable was Turner's version of "Shotgun
Boogie", but it was stacked away on the B-side of "The Ballad of Billie Sol
Estes" (1962) and got lost in the shuffle. A further 45 appeared on the obscure
Hollywood-based DeVille label in 1965.

Turner refused to give up. He recorded duets with his cousin Floyd Robinson
for MCA and Music Man and then, with his good looks, began an acting career,
starring in several TV series and B-movies. He was last heard of (in 2002) as
an evangelist in Galveston, Texas.

In the R&R history books, Jesse Lee Turner is no more than a one-hit wonder.
He definitely had innate rockabilly ability. Unfortunately, his novelty
recordings sold better than his attempts at unadulterated rock 'n' roll.

CD: Shake Baby Shake (TCD 8011). 22 tracks. Released in 1990.
A bootleg with unreliable liner notes (which claim that Jesse Lee Turner and
Floyd Robinson were one and the same person), this is the only CD overview
of his recorded work. Strangely enough, "The Little Space Girl" is missing, as
is "Do I Worry".

* The year of birth (1934) comes on the authority of the generally reliable Rob
Finnis (liner notes for the novelty edition of "Golden Age of American Rock 'n'
Roll", Ace 980), though 1938 or 1939 seems more likely to me.