Eddie Palmieri, the avant-garde musician who was one of the modern artists of rumba and Latin jazz, has died. He was 88.
Fania Data introduced Palmieri’s loss of life Wednesday night. Palmieri’s daughter Gabriela instructed The New York Instances that her father died earlier that day at his residence in New Jersey after “an extended illness.”
The pianist, composer and bandleader was the primary Latino to win a Grammy Award and would win seven extra over a profession that spanned practically 40 albums.
Palmieri was born in New York’s Spanish Harlem on December 15, 1936, at a time when music was seen as a method out of the ghetto. He started learning the piano at an early age, like his well-known brother Charlie Palmieri, however at age 13, he started enjoying timbales in his uncle’s orchestra, overcome with a want for the drums.
He ultimately deserted the instrument and went again to the enjoying piano. “I’m a frustrated percussionist, so I take it out on the piano,” the musician as soon as mentioned in his web site biography.
His first Grammy win got here in 1975 for the album “The Sun of Latin Music,” and he saved releasing music into his 80s, performing by the coronavirus pandemic by way of livestreams.
In a 2011 interview with The Related Press, when requested if he had something essential left to do, he responded along with his typical humility and good humor: “Learning to play the piano well. … Being a piano player is one thing. Being a pianist is another.”
Palmieri’s early profession and Grammy triumph
Palmieri dabbled in tropical music as a pianist throughout the Nineteen Fifties with the Eddie Forrester Orchestra. He later joined Johnny Seguí’s band and Tito Rodríguez’s earlier than forming his personal band in 1961, La Perfecta, alongside trombonist Barry Rogers and singer Ismael Quintana.
La Perfecta was the primary to function a trombone part as an alternative of trumpets, one thing not often seen in Latin music. With its distinctive sound, the band rapidly joined the ranks of Machito, Tito Rodríguez, and different Latin orchestras of the time.
Palmieri produced a number of albums on the Alegre and Tico Data labels, together with the 1971 basic “Vámonos pa’l monte,” along with his brother Charlie as visitor organist. Charlie Palmieri died in 1988.
Eddie’s unconventional strategy would shock critics and followers once more that yr with the discharge of “Harlem River Drive,” through which he fused Black and Latin types to provide a sound that encompassed parts of salsa, funk, soul and jazz.
Later, in 1974, he recorded “The Sun of Latin Music” with a younger Lalo Rodríguez. The album turned the primary Latin manufacturing to win a Grammy.
The next yr he recorded the album “Eddie Palmieri & Friends in Concert, Live at the University of Puerto Rico,” thought of by many followers to be a salsa gem.
A worldwide ambassador for Latin Jazz
Within the Eighties, he received two extra Grammy Awards, for the albums “Palo pa’ rumba” (1984) and “Solito” (1985). A couple of years later, he launched the vocalist La India to the salsa world with the manufacturing “Llegó La India vía Eddie Palmieri.”
Palmieri launched the album “Masterpiece” in 2000, which teamed him with the legendary Tito Puente, who died that yr. It was a success with critics and received two Grammy Awards. The album was additionally chosen as essentially the most excellent manufacturing of the yr by the Nationwide Basis for Standard Tradition of Puerto Rico.
Throughout his lengthy profession, he participated in live shows and recordings with the Fania All-Stars and Tico All-Stars, standing out as a composer, arranger, producer, and orchestra director.
In 1988, the Smithsonian Institute recorded two of Palmieri’s live shows for the catalog of the Nationwide Museum of American Historical past in Washington.
Yale College in 2002 awarded him the Chubb Fellowship Award, an award normally reserved for worldwide heads of state, in recognition of his work in constructing communities by music.
In 2005, he made his debut on Nationwide Public Radio because the host of this system “Caliente,” which was carried by greater than 160 radio stations nationwide.
He labored with famend musicians equivalent to timbalero Nicky Marrero, bassist Israel “Cachao” López, trumpeter Alfredo “Chocolate” Armenteros, trombonist Lewis Khan, and Puerto Rican bassist Bobby Valentín.
In 2010, Palmieri mentioned he felt a bit lonely musically as a result of deaths of most of the rumberos with whom he loved enjoying with.
As a musical ambassador, he introduced salsa and Latin jazz to locations as far afield as North Africa, Australia, Asia and Europe, amongst others.
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Former Related Press Author Sigal Ratner-Arias is the first writer of this obituary.
