Josh Turner - The Singer

Some of you out there in the big wide world may know that I desperately love country music. If you didn't know it well then, here you go: I desperately love country music. I place it just below soundtrack music and then you don't get any other categories until...


(...Josh Groban, a recent addiction...)



...This far down. (Why I love country and disdain classical is another post. You can get dizzy rolling your eyes until then.) Since I have made it my mission to get as many people to like country music as possible, it is understandable then that I have come up with the idea of posting about one country music artist every month or so. So, here it goes!

I decided to do Josh Turner as my first star for the all important reason that he is the reason I fell in love with country music. So I feel he deserves the place of honor as #1.
When I was a kid, my dad used to listen to country music a lot, but then from about oh 10 to 13/14 I didn't hear much other than classical music at home and talk radio in the car. (My mom doesn't like 90's country). My musical tastes changed one day while riding home in the car from a friend's house. My dad had just happened to have the radio on and the current hit from Josh Turner just happened to be the song playing. Josh Turner has an amazing voice and the song was great so I listened with thoughts something like, "I really like this song!" Original? Since I said the story of how I fell in love with country was a different post we'll leave it as this; after hearing that song I've loved country and Josh Turner's music ever since.

The bio on his website classifies him as a baritone, and he has a pretty wide vocal range which is what caught my interest in the first place. He can go really low and then back up high in the next line, and he does this pretty often in his songs. I guess you could say it's his trademark.

I enjoy the style of Josh's music as well. It's more of a traditional country feel - as opposed to the "pop country" style of people like Rascal Flatts - with a ballad type here and, well, traditional. No electric guitars anywhere that I can recall, but more natural sounding instruments. The topics of his songs are nice too, really nothing problamatic at all, and as a self-professed devout Christian, that shows up in a few of his songs.

A bit about how he went from un-known to a hit from his web bio:

"Nashville's first taste of that style came with his debut at the Grand Ole Opry in December 2001. The moment has become somewhat legendary in Opry storytelling circles. "When the curtain opened that night," the proverbial storyteller would begin, "no one holding a ticket to the show had ever heard of Josh Turner. But by the end of that chilly Nashville evening, the young singer was all anyone in the audience could talk about." Turner wowed the crowd with his self-penned "Long Black Train", the song that would eventually become his first hit. During this performance, the unknown baritone was showered with several standing ovations...
Fast forward nearly six years: Turner has become a husband to wife Jennifer and a father to a one-year-old son Hampton, all while quietly ascending the path to country music superstardom."

Well I guess that about says it all! I only hope he makes it out to our local county fair before he becomes too famous!
Here are his CD's with the tracks listed; my favorites are the ones in bold. I'll do another post, focused on his music.
1. Long Black Train
2. In My Dreams
3. What it Ain't
4. I Had One Onetime
5. Jacksonville
6. Backwoods Boy
7. Unburn All Our Bridges
8. Don't Mess Around With Jim
9. She'll Go On You
10. Good Woman Bad
11. The Difference Between a Woman and a Man



1. Would You Go With Me
2. Baby's Gone Home to Mamma
3. No Rush
4. Your Man
5. Loretta Lynn's Lincoln
6. White Noise
7. Angels Fall Sometimes
8. Lord Have Mercy on a Country Boy
9. Me and God
10. Gravity
11. Way Down South


1. Everything is Fine
2. Firecracker
3. Another Try (featuring Trisha Yearwood)
4. So Not My Baby
5. Trailerhood
6. Baby I Go Grazy
7. Nowhere Fast (with Anthony Hamilton)
8. The Longer the Waiting
9. One Woman Man
10. Soulmate
11. The Way He Was Raised
12. South Carolina Low Country

You can visit Josh Turner's Official Site Here
Official YouTube Profile where you can watch music videos Here