Valerie Turner

Valerie Turner is an American blues guitarist-vocalist, educator, guitar teacher, and author. Valerie and her spouse Benedict Turner are an acoustic blues duo. They founded Piedmont Bluz, and specialize in the Piedmont blues style of blues, continuing in the tradition of Elizabeth Cotton, and Etta Baker. Turner plays finger style Country Blues guitar performing fiddle tunes, ballads, country, popular songs, ragtime, and gospels.^[1]She also plays a washboard, spoons, and banjo. Valerie is a native New Yorker with southern roots in Virginia and Georgia. She started learning and studying country traditional blues 30 years ago. Ben and Valerie perform historic blues music. They educate their audiences with history lessons about blues music. ^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]}

Early life

Valerie started playing the ukulele at the age of five. Four years later she started playing the guitar. Valerie grew up listening to classical music and jazz from her father. Her mother listened to African and calypso music.^[8] Before Turner became an accomplished blues artists, she was a software engineer.

Career

Turner's musical path to the blues started from a book that she purchased with photographs of scenery from the North American South. The imagery in the book connected her to her family's southern background on the east coast. While reading the book she learned about blues music. She says, “As I was reading, I was learning about this interesting [blues] music. And once I heard it, I really loved it, and I knew that I wanted to play it." As her interest in Piedmont blues grew she sought out and found mentors. She found guitarist John Cephas and Phil Wiggins. These mentors assisted Valerie in mastering finger picking based Piedmont blues. As Valerie's interest in blues grew so did her husband's interest. Ben is quoted as saying of how he got started, “I am an artist, and I had never played an instrument before I met Valerie,” he says. “One day, I picked up a washboard in an antique shop and brought it home as joke.^[9][10]

Two of Valerie's main influences, mentors are John Cephas, and Woody Mann.^[11] Ben plays bones, washboard, and harmonica. He designs his own Washboard (musical instrument). He studied bones with Jim Lande of the Archie Edwards Blues Heritage Foundation. Ben studied washboard with Washboard Chaz from Louisiana, and with Newman Taylor Baker with the Ebony Hillbillies. Ben is quoted as saying, “African Americans didn’t always have money for expensive store-bought instruments and, being ingenious, found ways to make music by using common household items like spoons, washtubs, bones, jugs, and washboards. I’m just doing my part to continue this tradition.”

As a duo "Piedmont Bluz" - Valerie & Ben have been featured in many festivals; the Newport Folk Festival, Chicago Blues Festival, Tel Aviv Blues Festival, Jacob's Ladder Festival, Harvest Time Blues Festival, Clearwater Revival, Sugar Maple Festival, and Brooklyn Folk Festival. They have performed for the Blues Heritage Foundation, Jalopy Theatre, Towne Crier Cae, Timbuctoo Blues Festival in Lake Placid, etc.^[12] Internationally they have performed in Monaghan, Berlin, Sea of Galilee, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ireland, Grand Cayman Island, and Madrid, Spain.^{[9][13][14][15][16]}

They also perform some Delta blues tunes.^[8]

2018 - Timbuctoo Blues Festival, Lake Placid, New York

2018 - Brooklyn Folk Fest, Brooklyn, NY^[17]

2018 - Downtown House Concerts in Charlottesville, Virginia

2018 - Chicago Blues Festival^[12]

2017 - Blues in the Gorge - Menucha Retreat & Conference Center, Columbia River Gorge, Oregon ^[18]

2016, 2017 - Augusta Georgia, Blues and Swing Week^[6]

2015, 2016 - Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Festival, Washington

2016 - Harvest Time Blues Festival at the Marquee in Monaghan, Ireland^[19]

2015 - Tel Aviv Blues Festival, Tel Aviv, Israel ^[20]

2015 - Jacob’s Ladder Festival; Jerusalem, Israel^[21]

2014 - Archie Edwards Blues Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC

2012 - Richmond Folk Festival in Richmond, Virginia

2017 - Valerie published - Piedmont Style Country Blues Guitar Basics, Mudbone Productions The book has Piedmont Blues style arranges with audio files and lyrics of 23 tunes. The book is a curriculum, a course in understanding blues, blues lyrics using various keys, tuning, timings, tuning string-by-string, understanding standard notation, reading tablature. and chord charts, tablature and standard notations. She has written an easy to follow and understand instruction guide. In regards to fingerpicking technique upstrokes, downstrokes, pinch, brush, slide, hammer-on, and pull-off are explained.^[15][15]

Musical style

Valerie's style is influenced by one of her mentors John Cephas. Who was a Country Blues musician in the Piedmont style. Her guitar playing is said to be in the traditional of Mississippi's John Hurt, Etta Baker, and Elizabeth Cotten.^[22]

Teaching

Valerie and Ben teach workshops in Piedmont-Style finger picking. They also teach rhythm workshops using washboards, bones, and spoons. They teach Early Blues History workshops, too. The early history of blues, the musicians and instruments. Valerie and Ben have taught blues workshops for the Archie Edwards Blues Heritage Foundation at Blues in the Gorge. She has taught blues workshops at Augusta's Blues & Swing Week, and at the Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Workshop in Washington

Instruments

• 1929 Stella parlor guitar
• Taylor 915-C guitar - that was once owned by John Cephas
• National Style N guitar made of nickel-plated brass
• 1897 - Fairbanks banjo^[14]
• Spoons
• Vocals

Discography

2017 - Published - Country Blues Selection

The album is a collection of some of the best blues tunes.^[23]

Honors and awards

2018 - NY Blues Hall of Fame

References

External links

• That's No Way to Get Along - the Piedmont Blūz Acoustic Duo
• Last Kind Words - Valerie and Ben Turner at Augusta Blues and Swing Week 2017
• Piedmont Medley - Phil Wiggins and Valerie Turner
• Augusta Heritage Center of Davis & Elkins College
• Piedmont Bluz - Black Rat Swing
• When the Levee Breaks - the Piedmont Blūz Acoustic Duo