His partnership with Johnson proved fruitful. Together they went to New York City in 1936, where they appeared on a playbill with Benny Goodman, but as Turner recounted, “After our show with Goodman, we auditioned at several places, but New York wasn’t ready for us yet, so we headed back to K.C.” Eventually they were seen by the talent scout John Hammond in 1938, who invited them back to New York to appear in one of his From Spirituals to Swing concerts at Carnegie Hall, which were instrumental in introducing jazz and blues to a wider American audience.

In 1939, along with the boogie-woogie pianists Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis, they began a residency at Café Society, a nightclub in New York City, where they appeared on the same playbill as Billie Holiday and Frankie Newton’s band. Besides “Roll ‘Em, Pete”, Turner’s best-known recordings from this period are probably “Cherry Red”, “I Want a Little Girl” and “Wee Baby Blues”. “Cherry Red” was recorded in 1939 for the Vocalion label, with Hot Lips Page on trumpet and a full band in attendance. During the next year Turner contracted with Decca and recorded “Piney Brown Blues” with Johnson on piano.

In 1941, he went to Los Angeles and performed in Duke Ellington’s revue Jump for Joy in Hollywood. He appeared as a singing policeman in a comedy sketch, “He’s on the Beat”. Los Angeles was his home for a time, and during 1944 he worked in Meade Lux Lewis’s Soundies musical movies. He sang on the soundtrack recordings but was not present for filming, and his vocals were mouthed by the comedian Dudley Dickerson for the camera. In 1945 Turner and Pete Johnson established the Blue Moon Club, a bar in Los Angeles.

In 1945, he also signed a recording contract with National Records, for which he recorded under the supervision of Herb Abramson. His first hit single was a cover of Saunders King’s “S.K. Blues” (1945). He recorded the songs “My Gal’s a Jockey” and the risqué “Around the Clock” the same year, and Aladdin Records released “Battle of the Blues”, a duet with Wynonie Harris. Turner stayed with National until 1947, but none of his recordings were big sellers. In 1950, he recorded the song “Still in the Dark”, released by Freedom Records. Joe Turner also played at the Cavalcades of Jazz concert held at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles which was produced by Leon Hefflin Sr. on September 23, 1945 to a crowd of 15,000. Count Basie, the Honeydrippers, The Peters Sisters, Slim and Bam and Valaida Snow were also featured artists. Turner also performed in 1948 alongside Dizzy Gillespie at the fourth famed annual Cavalcade of Jazz concert held at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles which on September 12. Also on the program that day were Frankie Laine, The Sweethearts of Rhythm, The Honeydrippers, Little Miss Cornshucks, Jimmy Witherspoon, The Blenders, and The Sensations.

He won the Esquire magazine award for male vocalist in 1945, the Melody Maker award for best “new” vocalist of 1956, and the British Jazz Journal award as top male singer of 1965. In 1977, Turner recorded “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter” for Spivey Records, with Lloyd Glenn on piano. Turner’s career endured from the barrooms of Kansas City in the 1920s (when at the age of twelve he performed with a pencilled moustache and his father’s hat) to European jazz festivals of the 1980s.

In 1951, while performing with the Count Basie Orchestra at Harlem’s Apollo Theater as a replacement for Jimmy Rushing, he was spotted by Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun, who contracted him to their new recording company, Atlantic Records. Turner recorded a number of successes for them, including the blues standards, “Chains of Love” and “Sweet Sixteen”. Many of his vocals are punctuated with shouts to the band members, as in “Boogie Woogie Country Girl” (“That’s a good rockin’ band!”, “Go ahead, man! Ow! That’s just what I need!” ) and “Honey Hush” (he repeatedly sings, “Hi-yo, Silver!”, probably with reference to the phrase sung by the Treniers in their Lone Ranger parody, “Ride, Red, Ride”). Turner’s records reached the top of the rhythm-and-blues charts. Some of his songs were so risqué that some radio stations refused to play them, but they received much play on jukeboxes and records.

The song “Corrine, Corrina” was another great seller during 1956. In addition to the rock music songs, he released Boss of the Blues album in 1956. “(I’m Gonna) Jump for Joy”, his last hit, reached the US R&B record chart on May 26, 1958.

He toured Australia in 1957 with Lee Gordon’s Big Show sharing the bill with Bill Haley and the Comets, LaVern Baker and Freddie Bell and the Bellboys.

In 1965, he toured in England with the trumpeter Buck Clayton and the trombonist Vic Dickenson, accompanied by Humphrey Lyttelton and his band. Part of a studio concert was televised by the BBC and later issued on DVD. A sound recording of a club appearance made during this tour is not thought of sufficient sound quality to justify commercial issue. He also toured Europe with Count Basie and his orchestra.

After a number of successes in this vein, Turner quit popular music and resumed singing with small jazz combos, recording numerous albums in that style during the 1960s and 1970s. in 1966, Bill Haley helped revive Turner’s career by lending him the Comets for a series of popular recordings for the Orfeón label in Mexico. In 1977 he recorded a cover version of Guitar Slim’s song, “The Things That I Used to Do”.

In 1983, two years before his death, Turner was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. That same year, the album Blues Train was released by Mute Records; the album featured Turner with the band Roomful of Blues. Turner received top billing with Count Basie in the Kansas City jazz reunion movie The Last of the Blue Devils (1979), featuring Jay McShann, Jimmy Forrest, and other players from the city.

Turner died of heart failure in November 1985, at the age of 74, in Inglewood, California, having suffered from effects of arthritis, a stroke and diabetes. He was buried at Roosevelt Memorial Park in Gardena, California.

He was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.

Dave Alvin later collaborated with his brother and former Blaster Phil Alvin on a second reunion album, Lost Time, released in 2015, containing four covers of songs by Turner, including “Cherry Red”, “Wee Baby Blues” and “Hide and Seek”. The brothers met Turner in Los Angeles, where he was playing in clubs on Central Avenue and living in the Adams district between tours in the 1960s. Phil Alvin opened for Turner a few times with his first band, Delta Pacific. Turner continued mentoring the Alvin brothers until his death in 1985. He is pictured on the back cover of Lost Time.