WHEN EARL TURNER opened at his own theater at Harrah’s in New Orleans—a theater the hotel had spent $5 million to renovate and name The Earl Turner Theater—he was on top of the world and life was good. Hurricane Katrina turned hi world upside down. Now, months after the hurricane forced him and his family to settle again in Las Vegas, Earl Turner came back to a local stage and is better than ever.

As he says at each of his shows at Palace Station, “I knew if they put up a sign telling people I am back in Las Vegas, they’d come to see me.”

As he explains later, “That’s because Las Vegas is my home. For 16 years our family lived here and it was really the only home our children knew.”

Earl Turner first came to Las Vegas to play the Dunes in Las Vegas in 1989 after years on the road. He had found his stage in this city that values entertainers more than any other. He played the Excalibur and the Luxor and, ultimately, RioBamba, the lounge at the Rio All-Suites Hotel and Casino. He was a smash. In 2001, the hotel took the almost-unprecedented step of successfully converting Earl's lounge show into a ticketed show.
 

From the start, audiences and critics loved his act; an act made up, he says, “of songs that people can relate to, songs of any genre. I really like music that's fun.”

One critic here wrote, “Earl Turner Live is an evening that you should not miss.” Another noted, “For the hour and 15 or so minutes of the show, Turner runs, dances, sings, jokes, mugs, high-fives and does whatever necessary to move the audience.”