Turner passed away on the morning of February 27 after a short illness. That evening, Turner's daughter, and fellow Rising Star and Fife and Drum Corps member Bernice Pratcher, passed away as well.
According to his friend Bill Ramsey, Turner was born in 1907 in Rankin County, Miss. to Hollis and Betty Turner. His father left shortly after he was born, and he grew up in a sharecropper's family, helping his mother in the fields. He learned to play the fife at about age 16. Turner heard a man named R.E. Williams, playing one day when the weather kept him out of the fields. He asked Williams to make him a fife, and then later taught himself to play it and the drums.
Turner began playing his fife and drums at local picnics. With the money he raised, he bought his farm in Gravel Springs where he and his wife Ada raised four daughters.
Throughout the years, Turner's legendary Labor Day picnics at his Gravel Springs home brought visitors from all over the world to try out his music and his barbecue goat sandwiches.
Turner and his band have appeared at blues festivals all over the country. He has appeared on Beale Street, and been featured on Good Morning America, and in several national newspapers and magazines.
He also appeared on many recordings, but finally recorded his first album "Everybody Hollerin' Goat" in 1998, which was named one of the essential blues records of the decade by Rolling Stone magazine in 1999. In 2000, he recorded "Senegal to Senatobia." Turner's band is recognized as the only Mississippi fife and drum corp in America. Turner has been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Award, the Smithsonian Lifetime Achievement Award and the Charlie Patton Lifetime Achievement Award.
Felix Cauthen Funeral Home in Senatobia is handling both Turner's and Pratcher's arrangements. Visitation was held at Cistern Hill Baptist Church in Como on March 4. Their funerals will be held at 1 p.m. Wednesday, March 5, at Cistern Hill with interment in the church's cemetery.
Email News Editor LaJuan Tallo
Read more about Turner's life and accomplishments at Bill Ramsey's Bill and Otha Web site.
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