Eddie Palmieri dies at 88; Grammy-winning musician was a pioneer of Latin jazz

By Sigal Ratner-Arias | Related Press

Eddie Palmieri, the avant-garde musician who was one of the crucial progressive artists of rumba and Latin jazz, has died. He was 88.

Fania Information introduced Palmieri’s dying Wednesday night. Palmieri’s daughter Gabriela informed The New York Instances that her father died earlier that day at his house 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 Dec. 15, 1936, at a time when music was seen as a means 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 need for the drums.

He finally 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 stated in his web site biography.

His first Grammy win got here in 1975 for the album “The Sun of Latin Music,” and he stored 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 necessary left to do, he responded together with his normal 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 through the 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 characteristic a trombone part as an alternative of trumpets, one thing hardly ever 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 Information labels, together with the 1971 basic “Vámonos pa’l monte,” together with his brother Charlie as visitor organist. Charlie Palmieri died in 1988.

Eddie’s unconventional strategy would shock critics and followers once more that 12 months with the discharge of “Harlem River Drive,” through which he fused Black and Latin types to supply a sound that encompassed components 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 12 months he recorded the album “Eddie Palmieri & Friends in Concert, Live at the University of Puerto Rico,” thought-about 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 12 months. It was successful with critics and received two Grammy Awards. The album was additionally chosen as essentially the most excellent manufacturing of the 12 months by the Nationwide Basis for Fashionable Tradition of Puerto Rico.

Throughout his lengthy profession, he participated in concert events 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 concert events 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 akin to timbalero Nicky Marrero, bassist Israel “Cachao” López, trumpeter Alfredo “Chocolate” Armenteros, trombonist Lewis Khan, and Puerto Rican bassist Bobby Valentín.

In 2010, Palmieri stated 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.

Former Related Press Author Sigal Ratner-Arias is the first writer of this obituary.