Earl Palmer Rest In Peace

Beatnicholas

The legend, the back beat behind so many of my favourite records, from soul to hip hop and beyond.b,121b,121rest in peace.

Beatnicholas

Earl Palmer, a New Orleans drummer who provided the distinctive backbeat for seminal rock 'n' roll songs by Fats Domino and Little Richard, then traveled west to become one of Hollywood's busiest session musicians, has died. He was 83.b,121b,121Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, Palmer died Friday at his home in Banning after a long illness, his family announced.b,121b,121Often called the most recorded drummer in music history, Palmer played in thousands of rock 'n' roll, jazz and pop music sessions, as well as on countless movie, television and commercial scores.b,121b,121He set the rhythm for Fats Domino???s ???I???m Walkin??? ,??? Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti" and "Long Tall Sally," Ritchie Valens' "La Bamba" and Sam Cooke's "You Send Me" in the 1950s. Producer Phil Spector used him to build his legendary Wall of Sound in the 1960s on such songs as "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' " by the Righteous Brothers and "River Deep, Mountain High" by Ike and Tina Turner. In more recent years he played with Randy Newman, Elvis Costello, Bonnie Raitt and B.B. King, among others.b,121b,121In the "Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll" from 1976, Langdon Winner called Palmer a "master of bass-drum syncopation and possibly the most inventive drummer rock and roll has ever had."b,121b,121Born in New Orleans on Oct. 25, 1924, Earl Cyril Palmer was tap-dancing by age 5 on the black vaudeville circuit, touring with his mother, a singer, in Ida Cox's jazz and blues revue. He didn't learn to play drums until after serving in Europe with the Army in World War II. He returned to New Orleans and attended the Gruenwald School of Music on the GI Bill. He studied piano and percussion and learned to read, compose and arrange music.

Beatnicholas

In the 1990s, an eager Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame researcher tele- phoned drummer Earl Palmer, who has died in Los Angeles aged 83, to ask if he had anything he could donate to the museum in Cleveland, Ohio. "Me," deadpanned the session musician. Palmer was only half joking, since his list of credits read like a Who's Who of American popular music of the last 60 years. b,121b,121Between 1949 and 1956, he played on classic rhythm'n'blues and rock'n'roll records by Fats Domino (The Fat Man), Lloyd Price (Lawdy Miss Clawdy), Smiley Lewis (I Hear You Knocking) and Little Richard (Tutti Frutti, Long Tall Sally) in his native New Orleans before moving to Los Angeles and putting his distinctive backbeat behind Eddie Cochran (Summertime Blues, Something Else), Ritchie Valens (La Bamba) and B Bumble and the Stingers. Their Nut Rocker, the instrumental, based on Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, which topped the British charts in 1962, showcases Palmer's drumming to great effect. b,121b,121Palmer became a mainstay of the Wrecking Crew, the group of Los Angeles session musicians favoured by the producer Phil Spector and arranger Jack Nitzsche, and, in the 1960s, he played on records by the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, the Mamas and the Papas, Frank Sinatra and the Supremes, as well as two wall of sound classics: the Righteous Brothers' Transatlantic chart-topper You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin, and Ike & Tina Turner's River Deep, Mountain High. b,121b,121By turns powerful and subtle, the inventive and versatile Palmer was also in great demand for TV and film scores, notably drumming on the Mission Impossible theme, driving the punchy intro to The Flintstones and playing on the opening credits for I Dream of Jeanie, Ironside, The Odd Couple and Mash. His film work included playing on the soundtracks to In the Heat of the Night (1967), Lady Sings the Blues (1972) and The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989).b,121b,121In 2000, Palmer became one of the first session musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame alongside fellow Wrecking Crew member Hal Blaine, the drummer he had mentored in the late 50s and with whom he occasionally doubled up on sessions. Blaine, Palmer and the Nashville-based Buddy Harman (who died last month) remain the three most recorded drummers of all time, with tens of thousands of tracks to their name. Palmer owed his uncanny sense of rhythm to a childhood spent tap-dancing for dimes in New Orleans, as Baby Earl Palmer, and then touring alongside his mother and his aunt, who were part of Ida Cox's Darktown Scandals Revue on the vaudeville circuit. His father was thought to be local pianist and bandleader Walter "Fats" Pichon. b,121b,121After serving with the US army in Europe during the second world war, he studied piano and percussion at the Gruenwald School of Music in New Orleans, where he also learned to read music. This combination of natural rhythmic ability and formal training would stand Palmer in good stead as he started drumming with the Dave Bartholomew Band in the late 1940s.b,121b,121At Cosimo Matassa's J&M studio, the ensemble played on a succession of records that turned jazz, blues, rhythm'n'blues and country into rock'n'roll. Palmer provided the pulse helping the different styles coalesce, and was the first musician to use the expression "funky" to explain to his fellow musicians that they could make the result more syncopated and therefore danceable. b,121b,121Domino's The Fat Man, cut for Lew Chudd's Imperial Records in 1949, was the first record to feature Palmer's continuous trademark backbeat, which became a rock'n'roll constant. "That song required a strong afterbeat throughout the whole piece," said the drummer. "With Dixieland, you had a strong afterbeat only after you got to the last chorus. It was sort of a new approach to rhythm music." b,121b,121By the mid-1950s, Palmer was growing tired of segregation laws in the south and decided to move to California. "The best thing I ever did," he later reflected, despite the fact that he left his first wife and four children behind, taking with him the girlfriend whom he subsequently married. In 1957, he settled in Los Angeles, ostensibly as A&R man for the independent Aladdin Records, but soon found himself in demand as a first-call drummer at places like Gold Star Recording Studios. In the 1960s, he recorded with Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Glen Campbell, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Paul Anka, Ray Charles, Nat King Cole, the Ronettes, the Everly Brothers, Willie Nelson, Sonny & Cher and Neil Young. b,121b,121Nicknamed "the metronome" because of the steady beat he kept, Palmer stressed that "the drums is an accompanying instrument, really. If you don't know how to accompany then you're not a good drummer, you're just a soloist." Still, he found time to make a few records under his own name, the instrumental Johnny's House Party, and a couple of albums - Drumsville and Percolator Twist - for the Liberty label in the early 1960s being the most notable.b,121b,121Always immaculately turned out, Palmer remained in demand throughout the 1970s and into the 80s, playing on albums by Randy Newman, Tom Waits, Bonnie Raitt, Tim Buckley, Little Feat and Elvis Costello. He also spent time running the local branch of the American Federation of Musicians. His biography, Backbeat: the Earl Palmer Story, written by Tony Scherman, was published in 1999, along with a CD of 30 tracks he had played on. In recent years, he played with a jazz trio in Los Angeles.b,121b,121Acknowledged as an influence by Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts and Max Weinberg of the E Street Band, Palmer was, according to Little Richard "probably the greatest session drummer of all time". He is survived by his fourth wife, Jeline, and seven children from earlier marriages. b,121b,121?? Earl Cyril Palmer, drummer, born October 25 1924; died September 19 2008

Beatnicholas

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holmes

You only missed it by 4 days: a href="http://www.soulstrut.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=crates&Number=1192817&Searchpage=4&Main=1192464&Words=earl+palmer&topic=&Search=true#Post1192817" target="_blank"1Earl Palmer RIP Thread from the 20th/a1

Beatnicholas

sorry completely missed that.