Eddie Palmieri

WXPN used to use part of the title track on one of their station IDs, although I didn't figure out until the past few years that this was the album it came from. I was walking around today in sunny, warm (but not too humid, amazingly), Philadelphia singing "Lucumi Lucumi Macumba" to myself (with that little "salt PEA-nuts salt PEA-nuts" like sudden jump at the end of "Lu-cu-MI Lu-cu-MI")--very catchy. The second track is a discoesque (what's the correct adjectival form?) number, probably my least favorite on the album, but okay.

I think this album deserves a better reputation than it seems to have. (I'll take it over boring Palmas any day, but I also think it's better than the 90s-on Palmieri albums I've heard, not that there aren't good individual tracks here and there on those recordings.)

He's got a new one but it's going to be very jazzy, not really aimed at a salsero audience but rather at a very mainstream jazz audience, with guests like Regina Carter and Michael Brecker.

(I'm sad that gareth has lost interest and moved on to flea market 70s Christian rock vinyl.)

HARLEM RIVER DRIVE

HEY !

My favorite albums so far are:

Azucar Pa'ti (Sugar for You) (1965)
Lo Que Traigo es Sabroso (1964)

[Those are both very early and the sound is especially bad, but the energy is good.]

Palo Pa' Rumba (1984)
Unfinished Masterpiece (the last half of which is somewhat ruined by bad recording)
Lucumi, Macumba, Voodoo (1978)

Vamonos Pa'l Monte (1976)
La Verdad - The Truth (1987)

[I need to listen to these two again though. I've just heard a bunch of these for the first time recently and it's all a blur.]

And somewhat grudgingly:

Eddie Palmieri (1981) which I should love because it has three tracks featuring Cheo Feliciano, one of my favorite soneros, but I'm not totally bowled over by it. A lot of the songs have lengthy semi-classical danzon (recently mentioned on the genres that don't get discussed thread) type intros which isn't my favorite sound.

Justicia has some good stuff on it, but the political spoken word bag is a little passe.

http://s39.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1RP1IBE3OSBVI2UGCIQCHAHAOB

http://s38.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0HMGDZ0AWXWKY0F693ORI12PS9

http://s38.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1GBBZ4JDRNYU70L5E9D9VS4RFZ

People asked about Charlie Palmieri earlier on this thread. On one listen, I'm pretty sure I like Charlie Palmieri Y Meñique: Con Salsa y Sabor (1977) and Charlie Palmieri Y Vitin Aviles: Con Mucha Salsa (1977) sounds good so far. Charanga Palmieri y la Duboney: Charanga! is not so much fun, but as I've repeatedly said, charanga usually rubs me the wrong way, especially relatively traditional charanga.

So he goes back a ways. (He might even have been a source for Cheo Feliciano's style.)

1. Unfinished Masterpiece
2. Azucar Pa' Ti (early material with La Perfecta)
3. Palo Pa' Rumba (which includes a lot of covers of his earlier material, but all well done)

Unfortunately, all of these, except the third, suffer from very poor audio quality.

(Hey FW, you should post comments about Palmieri to this thread.)

Sat., May 6, Allison Miner Music Heritage/Lagniappe Stage, 4 p.m. (interview w/ Palmieri); BellSouth/WWOZ Jazz Tent, 5:45 p.m. performance

Then he's touring the US again (I think). I know he's doing a bunch of nights in June at tiny Georgetown DC club Blues Alley

I think he's fun to watch live even if you don't like his noisy jazzy side. He is just quite a character...

How is he a character? Those groaning noises?

I am surprised that gareth picked him, but I guess I shouldn't be!

I will send some helpful links as well.

There are some fantastic passages and moments on this album, perhaps as intense as anything else in his catalog. I think it tends to be a bit overlooked because it's so oddball (for salsa, anyway): the Palmieri album with the most overt references to African-based religions also has the most overt disco moments, along with the occasional sudden appearance of European classical instruments seldom heard in Latin music.

Hm, is The sun Of Latin Music an entirely different album from El Sol... , then?

http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/B00005RYD2.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

(That's not exactly what the reissue will look like, but presumably close.)

Eddie Palmieri's Lucumi Macumba Voodoo is linked to here:

http://revolucionno.wordpress.com/

A must-hear album if you are interested in 70s Palmieri (and maybe if you are interested in weird late 70s Latin/disco fusions, not that that describes more than two or three tracks). I think I already gave my reasons above, and possibly on some other threads.

HARLEM RIVER DRIVE

HARLEM RIVER DRIVE

HEY !

-- Ellis From Die Hard, Saturday, June 18, 2005 11:33 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Link

this

Go download Lucumi Macumba Voodoo!

Oh wait I missed it, it's totally there

Never mind, nothing to see here

I just finished Will Hermes's "Love Goes to Buildings on Fire" and Palmieri was one of my biggest discoveries from there. Wish I'd read it sooner so I could see him live; sounds like it was an experience.

Saw that there would be a fan viewing at the funeral home on Tuesday

It's kind of weird for karaoke, but I've been meaning to do "Vàmanos pa'l monte."

Aargh, wrong keyboard accent mark

What's your story about when you saw him that you hinted at above?

It must have been 2009, June 2009 at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola off of Columbus Circle. Eddie sounded great, played great, the band was awesome. I loved hearing him talk, the way he introduced the tunes and the band, although now I only remember him naming Ivan Renta, Luques Curtis, and "someone who has done so much for our music" or whatever he was said, when he brought up special guest Steve Turre, who played some cool stuff on a conch shell. After he was done I stayed for the aftershow, which is often a bit hipper hang.

The late show was a trio led by Bill O'Connell and he had Steve Berrios on drums. I know the date pretty exactly since Michael Jackson had just died and when the bands weren't playing the sound system was mostly playing each and every MJ hit. Steve was incensed,. He was in full-on Grumpy Old Jazzman mode, pointing his finger up in the air and saying "This is not jazz!"

But at one point he suddently froze and his body language changed. His finger still pointed in the air but now his face showed he was intensely listening. After a few seconds he said "What is THIS? Good is good!".

The song in question was "Stuck in the Middle With You," by Stealers Wheel.

So you see it is not much of a story and it is not really about Eddie.

I didn't know where to post it so I posted it here.

Ah, now I see.

Saw many musicians reminiscing about Palmieri in IG stories and elsewhere. The author of that New Yorker article on Palmieri posted a few

https://memorialstream.online/eddie-palmieri/?fbclid=IwY2xjawMKQ_BleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHr47-JxoOBydW-zOmfvwbsgai80fzRw_w0YOnxo8trMN07amoMsdJqCOZXNU_aem_2KrXCZAtmnNSupWA8puj5g

Palmieri celebration of life service with speakers Father Henry Torres, Felipe Luciano, Rene Lopez, Conrad Herwig, Brian Lynch, Mr. Palmieri's grandchildren and his daughter Gabriela.

Read just now he has a cameo role in the new Spike Lee film out in a couple of days.

La Times excerpt from their review of new Spike Lee movie-Highest 2 Lowest

But then, liberation: The film hits the streets and Lee unfolds an absolutely sublime piece of kinetic New York City filmmaking, a chase scene with a subway car full of Yankees fans chanting their anti-Boston sentiments intercut with a Puerto Rican Day Parade performance by the Eddie Palmieri Salsa Orchestra. Finally, we’re cooking with gas. It’s one of the best sequences of the year.

Just saw it and would agree, it's a treat of a sequence and Palmieri and crew were killing it. It was *especially* welcome because Howard Drossin's own piano-led score for the film up to that point was utter fucking overbearing gloop, it was like flicking the energy switch from off to on.

He didn't use Blanchard?

Not this time out. Drossin's been a regular but not constant standby for a while now since 25th Hour; Blanchard's only done one or two in that stretch:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Drossin

(I was distinctly surprised to realize that Bruce Hornsby's done a score for him along the way too!)

yeah the Drossin score was unbearable. Palmieri was a welcome change of pace.

Jon Batiste just performed with Eddie Palmieri’s and to pay tribute

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNjy3jINg2m/?igsh=bDJjamR6NTc4anQ=

Palmieri’s band

New trombonist Conrad Herwig album, Reflections-Facing South, is out and features Eddie Palmieri and bassist Luques Curtis but no drummer

Robby Ameen wasn't available?

Oh it's a trio record!

I know that Eddie's first call trombonists were Conrad and Jimmy Bosch.

Which I was told by the third guy he would call when he couldn't get one of them.

It's Herwig's record and he decided to do it just as a trio record it appears.

Sounds intriguing

Wild, didn't know about this---on first listen, I didn't quite get relationship of congas and traps at times, but piano and insistent vox yeah---great commentary from EP duh:
Harlem River Drive Revisited With Eddie Palmieri
https://www.npr.org/2016/12/09/504712369/harlem-river-drive-revisited-with-eddie-palmieri

A trombonist friend got me into Barry Rogers, so I'm going back to Mozambique, Molasses, some of the other early records. Had no idea a Polish Jew was one of Willie Colon's primary inspirations, and he's a beast, you love to see it. The records sound incredible too.

Barry Rogers is the coolest.

I've seen his son play a few times

There was a great profile of Barry Rogers on Descarga, maybe it can still be found on the Internet Archive.

Random details I seemed to recall: he was good at fixing cars and he really liked being in the coro, just being one of the guys and singing backing vocals and sounding like some old dude who had just come down from the mountains in the jungle on one of the islands.

Here's something about him:
https://latinomusiccafe.com/2017/05/22/barry-rogers-remembering-his-legacy-to-latin-music/

Lots of broken links until I found one that worked!
https://web.archive.org/web/20150525231313/http://www.descarga.com/cgi-bin/db/archives/Profile42

^Really one of my favorite pieces of music writing ever.

His son Chris Rogers did some public facebook posts I see about his Dad

Yeah. He plays trumpet himself.

First time I saw him play was with the Diane Moser Big Band in the John Birks Gillespie Auditorium at the Baha'i Center in the West Village. Mike Longo was out front handing the tickets and telling bad jokes as he always did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3iQTFwKdCY

Thanks, that's an incredible article, I passed it on to my friend (who's a Rogers devotee and an incredible trombonist himself).

:)

There's also really long live version of "Muñeca" from the early seventies which I haven't listened to yet and it doesn’t say whether Barry is playing on it.

So I will just listen to the studio version on repeat for now.

Thanks for that descarga website bio of Barry Rogers . Wow . Love those details

You don't recall reading it when I posted it before? Guess it's been a while.

Heh, Luques Curtis just started following me on Instagram.

I never post anything there. It's really just another case of a musician following back their fans. Or sometimes even following forward.

Listening some awesome Barry Rogers playing on the radio, couldn't tell you what right now though

This: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pXWFRrm91M