Midway through a conversation at a Daphne coffee shop, the phone rings. “Entertainment Management Services, this is Joy. How may I help you?” A moment later the caller’s question is answered and explained: someone needed a Santa. Booking Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus, an elf and the Dickens Carolers is simply part of the job description for Joy Turner, whose Daphne-based company has been matching entertainers with events across the Gulf Coast for four decades.
Turner estimates she once handled about 30 Christmas parties a year, along with one legendary stretch of 12 New Year’s Eve bookings that had her racing from event to event. A lot has changed in the event world since then, she said, but the phone has never stopped ringing.
From a Bank Teller’s Window to a Booking Agency
Turner’s entry into the entertainment business came by way of romance. She grew up in Prichard, attended Vigor High School, and was working at a Mobile bank when she met Fred Turner, another Vigor alum, a college music teacher and a working musician who played saxophone and clarinet. She offered to help book gigs for him. That favor became the seed of Entertainment Management Services, which she launched after leaving the bank.
She was a single mother of three, supporting her family by starting not one but two businesses in the same year. In 1984 she put an advertisement in the Yellow Pages, and calls began arriving from both entertainers looking for work and clients looking to book them. Her first wedding booking was Shannon Shepherd, wife of her attorney David Shepherd and a longtime pianist at First Baptist Church of Fairhope. Seven years after that first booking for Fred, the two were married.
That same year, 1984, she also started a personnel and records management business, visiting companies across Baldwin County to fill part-time, full-time and temporary positions. She ran both ventures for years before giving up the staffing business a quarter-century ago to focus entirely on entertainment, which had become the busier of the two.
A Database of 5,000 Entertainers
Today Turner’s database holds roughly 5,000 entertainers, and her client list runs from businesses nationwide to major accounts along the Gulf Coast. The roster covers nearly anything a host could imagine: fire dancers, balloon twisters, face painters, children’s characters, magicians, ventriloquists, mimes, jugglers and even a hypnotist. She plans themed corporate events, grand openings, private parties and weddings, and her services extend well beyond entertainment to floral design, rentals, transportation, catering, table decor and stage production.
Among her most memorable assignments was the 50th wedding anniversary of Peets and JD Buffett, which she planned with their daughter Lucy, with Jimmy Buffett himself present. The couple wanted the party at Julep Point at The Grand Hotel because it reminded Jimmy of Key West. A cold, windy day blew away the lighted lanterns, and, as Turner laughs, the women in sundresses were freezing, but a 12-piece big band playing swing music from the 1940s and 1950s carried the night anyway.
Kids, Conventions and Beach Weddings
Family entertainment has become a pillar of the business. Conventions want activities for children, so Turner can procure inflatables, rock climbing walls, carnival rides, tag games, theme parties and even a petting zoo with baby animals from the local zoo. Schools and teen events round out the calendar.
Weddings earned their own dedicated operation. About a decade ago she launched joyousweddings.com, a site focused specifically on Gulf Coast weddings, from white-sand beach ceremonies along the Alabama, Florida and Mississippi coastlines to celebrations in Daphne, Fairhope and Point Clear on Mobile Bay. The service can arrange everything or simply fill in the pieces a couple needs, so the day flows without the family managing a dozen vendors.
One Woman, a Home Office and a Phone
Perhaps the most striking fact about the enterprise is its scale of operations: Turner runs it herself from a home office, answering her own phone. She started in the era of notebooks and 4-by-6 index cards and adapted to computers and booking software along the way, and she still handles some of the floral design and decorating herself.
Her energy is deliberate. She says she has taken 60 food supplements a day for 30 years, and she rejects the idea of stepping away. “There is no mention of the word retirement in the Bible,” she said, explaining that her passion for the work and her loyalty to the talented people she books and the clients who keep calling back are what keep her going.
Forty years in, her motto remains the one printed alongside her name: “Booking the Best for All Occasions.” For event planners, brides, corporate clients and holiday party hosts across the Gulf Coast, that phone number has become one of the region’s most valuable contacts, answered personally, every time it rings.