Jim Turner

Pianist, composer, arranger, and producer Jim Turner was born and raised in LA, the son of classical pianist and teacher Robert E. Turner, which meant training on the piano began early in Turner's childhood. He went on to study jazz piano with both Johnny Guarnieri and Dick Cary, eventually graduating from the University of California at Santa Barbara with a degree in music composition and arranging. He stepped into a highly successful career as a producer of piano recordings, working with his mentor Guarnieri, Robert Silverman, Roger Williams, Peter Nero, Floyd Cramer, Steve Allen, Teddy Wilson, George Shearing, Chick Corea, Oscar Peterson, Liberace, Dick Hyman, and a host of other pianists with a wide variety of styles and approaches. Turner continued to play solo, as well, a master of stride and other jazz styles on the piano, and his first solo album, Old Fashioned Love: A Tribute to James P. Johnson, appeared from Euphonic Sounds in 1981. Poet and Peasant followed in 1986 from Sacramento Jazz, with The Dazzler arriving from Klavier Records in 1995, and Old Fashioned Love from Box Office Records in 1999. Turner joined Bob Ringwald's Great Pacific Jazz Band as a pianist and arranger in 1983, spending eight years with the group before joining the Jim Cullum Jazz Band in a similar capacity. He kept up his solo work, releasing Jelly Roll Blues: A Tribute to Jelly Roll Morton in 2009 on Arbors Records.