"Honey Hush", written

Songwriter

A songwriter is an individual who writes both the lyrics and music to a song. Someone who solely writes lyrics may be called a lyricist, and someone who only writes music may be called a composer...

 by Big Joe Turner

Big Joe Turner

Big Joe Turner was an American blues shouter from Kansas City, Missouri. According to the songwriter Doc Pomus, "Rock and roll would have never happened without him." Although he came to his greatest fame in the 1950s with his pioneering rock and roll recordings, particularly "Shake, Rattle and...

 (although he assigned the rights

Copyright

Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...

 to his wife, Lou Willie Turner), was recorded

Sound recording and reproduction

Sound recording and reproduction is an electrical or mechanical inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording technology are analog recording and digital recording...

 in May 1953 in New Orleans

New Orleans, Louisiana

New Orleans is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana. The New Orleans metropolitan area has a population of 1,235,650 as of 2009, the 46th largest in the USA. The New Orleans – Metairie – Bogalusa combined statistical area has a population...

, Louisiana

Louisiana

Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...

 and released that August by Atlantic Records

Atlantic Records

Atlantic Records is an American record label best known for its many recordings of rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and jazz...

. It was a number-one

Record chart

A record chart is a ranking of recorded music according to popularity during a given period of time. Examples of music charts are the Hit parade, Hot 100 or Top 40....

 song

Song

In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing.A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs...

 on the U.S.

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 Rhythm and Blues chart for eight weeks, and number 23 on the pop chart

Billboard Hot 100

The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...

.

Recording

Turner, a big Kansas City

Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and is the anchor city of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties...

 blues shouter

Blues shouter

A blues shouter is a blues singer, often male, capable of singing with a band. The singer must project, or "shout", to be heard over the drums and musical instruments of the band. Blues shouting was a major pathway by which jazz music edged over into rock and roll...

, had been spending all his time out on the road, while Atlantic's Ahmet Ertegün

Ahmet Ertegun

Ahmet Ertegün was a Turkish American musician and businessman, best known as the founder and president of Atlantic Records. He also wrote classic blues and pop songs and served as Chairman of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and museum...

 was getting nervous that his backlog of Turner recordings was running low. When Turner was near New Orleans, Ertegün insisted he record. Atlantic's New Orleans recording studio

Recording studio

A recording studio is a facility for sound recording and mixing. Ideally both the recording and monitoring spaces are specially designed by an acoustician to achieve optimum acoustic properties...

 was booked up, so Turner recorded some sides in the studio of a radio station, WSDU. He did not have his own band but was able to round up the raucous trombonist

Trombone

The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...

 Pluma Davis and his band, The Rockers, as well as the wild boogie

Boogie-woogie

Boogie-woogie has the following meanings:*Boogie-woogie, a piano-based music style*Boogie-woogie , a swing dance or a dance that imitates the rock-n-roll dance of the 1950s*"Boogie Woogie" , a song by EuroGroove and Dannii Minogue...

 rhythm pianist

Pianist

A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...

, James Tolliver. Other musician

Musician

A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....

s on the recording were Lee Allen

Lee Allen (musician)

Lee Allen was an American tenor saxophone player born in Pittsburg, Kansas.A key figure in the New Orleans rock and roll scene of the 1950s, Allen recorded with many leading performers of the early rock and roll era...

 on tenor saxophone

Tenor saxophone

The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor, with the alto, are the two most common types of saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B, and written as a transposing instrument in the treble...

 and Alvin "Red" Tyler on baritone saxophone

Baritone saxophone

The baritone saxophone, often called "bari sax" , is one of the largest and lowest pitched members of the saxophone family. It was invented by Adolphe Sax. The baritone is distinguished from smaller sizes of saxophone by the extra loop near its mouthpiece...

.

Song

Like the session, the song is largely adlibbed with various incongruous lines thrown in, to a standard 12-bar blues. It opens with the bold statement, "Aw let 'em roll like a big wheel in a Georgia cotton field, Honey hush!" The title in this song Turner revealed his typical attitude toward a woman who will not do what he tells her to do, while the trombone

Trombone

The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...

 gives raucous yakety yak answers back. Although his songs talk about relationships as misery, his emotion in the song is upbeat. To quote Arnold Shaw in his book Honkers and Shouters

"Love ain't nothin' but a lot of misery," he would declare, exhibiting no emotion in his characterization of the female as demanding, unprediciable, and untrustworthy. But unlike his predecessors in the blues, he did not cry or get uptight over it."

The spirit of the song is the good-natured optimism that characterized his work. His lyrics

Lyrics

Lyrics are a set of words that make up a song. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist or lyrist. The meaning of lyrics can either be explicit or implicit. Some lyrics are abstract, almost unintelligible, and, in such cases, their explication emphasizes form, articulation, meter, and symmetry of...

 are sexually suggestive and aimed at an adult audience and his vocal

Human voice

The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal folds for talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, etc. Its frequency ranges from about 60 to 7000 Hz. The human voice is specifically that part of human sound production in which the vocal folds are the primary...

 style is that of an urban blues shouter

Blues shouter

A blues shouter is a blues singer, often male, capable of singing with a band. The singer must project, or "shout", to be heard over the drums and musical instruments of the band. Blues shouting was a major pathway by which jazz music edged over into rock and roll...

 - intimate and relaxed.

Come in this house, stop all that yakkety yak. (twice)

Come fix my supper, don't want no talkin' back.

Well you keep on jabberin', talk about this and that, (twice)

I got news for you, baby, you ain't nothin' but an alley cat.

At the end of the song he is reduced to threats:

Well you keep on jabberin', talk about this and that, {twice}

Don't make me nervous, 'cause I'm holding a baseball bat

and as he fades out, he turns to the war cry of the Lone Ranger:

Hi-yo, hi-yo, Silver

Legacy

The advent of rock and roll

Rock and roll

Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...

 narrowed the content of songs to adolescent

Adolescence

Adolescence is a transitional stage of physical and mental human development generally occurring between puberty and legal adulthood , but largely characterized as beginning and ending with the teenage stage...

 preoccupations and made simple the complicated rhythms of rhythm and blues

Rhythm and blues

Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...

. The explicitly sexual content was too adult, as was the singer's strong voice tone as well as his raw assumptions about life. A year later, in 1954, a Turner song very similar to this one, "Shake, Rattle and Roll

Shake, Rattle and Roll

"Shake, Rattle and Roll" is a prototypical twelve bar blues-form rock and roll song, written in 1954 by Jesse Stone under his assumed songwriting name Charles E. Calhoun. It was originally recorded by Big Joe Turner, and most successfully by Bill Haley & His Comets...

," with its boogie-woogie rhythm and squawking saxophone

Saxophone

The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...

 was cleaned up by Bill Haley

Bill Haley

Bill Haley was one of the first American rock and roll musicians. He is credited by many with first popularizing this form of music in the early 1950s with his group Bill Haley & His Comets and their hit song "Rock Around the Clock".-Early life and career:...

 to become a huge hit as rock and roll changed the face of music. Turner turned to recording songs by rock and roll writers, but his blues shouter voice betrayed him and his career faded.

However, not long after the rock and roll craze hit, a new audience of intellectuals, college students, and eventually beatniks, and then another with European blues fans joining in, gave singers in partial retirement or obscurity new opportunities although they had to clean up some to fit the new role of authenticity, fueled by the writings of Samuel Charters, demanded by these new audiences. For urban blues singers, having grown up in cities, it was convenient to be labelled as country singers to fit the criteria of purity.

In 1959, Turner re-recorded "a much tamer, lamer, teenage rock'n'roll version" of "Honey Hush" for Atlantic which was a mild hit and his last one. Turner was now in the category of a "scuffed up leftover" as the rock and roll founders settled in to please the suddenly important teenage market.

Covers

Early covers include the 1956 version by Johnny Burnette

Johnny Burnette

John Joseph "Johnny" Burnette was an American rockabilly musician. Along with his older brother Dorsey Burnette, and also a friend named Paul Burlison, Burnette was a founding member of The Rock and Roll Trio. He was the father of 1980s rockabilly singer Rocky Burnette.-Early life:Johnny Burnette...

's The Rock and Roll Trio

The Rock and Roll Trio

The Rock and Roll Trio was the name of a rockabilly group which was formed in Memphis, Tennessee during the 1950s. They were also known as "Johnny Burnette and the Rock and Roll Trio" and the "Johnny Burnette Trio". The members of the Trio were Dorsey Burnette, his younger brother Johnny, and a...

. The song has since been covered by - among many others - Jerry Lee Lewis

Jerry Lee Lewis

Jerry Lee Lewis is an American rock and roll and country music singer-songwriter and pianist. An early pioneer of rock and roll music, Lewis's career faltered after he married his young cousin, and he afterwards made a career extension to country and western music. He is known by the nickname 'The...

, Foghat

Foghat

Foghat are a British rock band that had their peak success in the mid- to late-1970s. Their style can be described as "blues-rock," or boogie-rock dominated by electric and electric slide guitar. The band has achieved five gold records...

, Paul McCartney

Paul McCartney

Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...

, Coco Montoya

Coco Montoya

Coco Montoya is an American blues guitarist and former member of John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers.-Musical career:...

, Fleetwood Mac

Fleetwood Mac

Fleetwood Mac are a British–American rock band formed in 1967 in London.The only original member present in the band is its eponymous drummer, Mick Fleetwood...

, George Jones

George Jones

George Glenn Jones is an American country music singer known for his long list of hit records, his distinctive voice and phrasing, and his marriage to Tammy Wynette....

, Elvis Costello

Elvis Costello

Elvis Costello , born Declan Patrick MacManus, is an English singer-songwriter. He came to prominence as an early participant in London's pub rock scene in the mid-1970s and later became associated with the punk/New Wave genre. Steeped in word play, the vocabulary of Costello's lyrics is broader...

 and NRBQ

NRBQ

NRBQ is an American rock band founded in 1967. It is known for its live performances, containing a high degree of spontaneity and levity, and blending rock, pop, jazz, blues and Tin Pan Alley styles. Its best known line-up is the 1974–1994 quartet of pianist Terry Adams, bassist Joey Spampinato,...

.