Obituary - Session Drummer Earl Palmer

[Motorcity]

September 22, 2008
Earl Palmer: Drummer at the heart of rock ‘n’ roll



Being energetic is a prime requirement for a drummer, but few have possessed the drive of Earl Palmer, whose torrid drumming redefined New Orleans music in the mid-1950s. His pounding percussion is strongly featured on such rock'n' roll classics as Fats Domino's "I'm Walkin'", Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally", Eddie Cochran's "Somethin' Else" and Ritchie Valens' "La Bamba". He could play in a variety of styles and for 10 years his work was rarely off the charts. Little Richard described him as "a wonderful man and the greatest session drummer of all time."

Earl Palmer was born in New Orleans in 1924 and raised by his mother, Thelma, an entertainer who initially carried him around in a milk crate. His father might have been the bandleader, Walter "Fats" Pichon. As a child, he tap-danced with Thelma's vaudeville show and in the late 1930s he appeared in Ida Cox's revue, The Darktown Scandals. He had an acute sense of rhythm and although he could sing and play clarinet, drumming was his passion.

After wartime service, Palmer enrolled at the Grunewald School of Music in New Orleans. In 1947, he became the drummer with Dave Bartholomew's band. One night at the Dew Drop Inn while Bartholomew was conducting business, Palmer allowed a young Fats Domino to play with the band. Bartholomew was furious ("I told you not to let that fat dude up here"), but both realised that Domino had talent.

Bartholomew produced records at Cosimo Matassa's tiny J&M studio and Palmer played on Fats Domino's million-selling "The Fat Man" (1950). He was featured on most of Domino's recordings and he also supported Lloyd Price ("Lawdy Miss Clawdy", 1952), Smiley Lewis ("I Hear You Knockin'", 1955), James Booker, and Shirley and Lee. He did sessions during the day and club work at night, also maintaining a family life with a wife and four children.

In 1955, the Specialty label began recording Little Richard at Matassa's studio. Richard's flamboyant, camp appearance was outrageous, and the principal ingredients of his records were his screeching vocals and hammered piano, Lee Allen and Red Tyler's saxophones and Earl Palmer's drums. They perfected a sound, which, two years earlier would have sounded like something from another planet, but was now the battle cry of rock'n'roll. Palmer played on "Long Tall Sally", "Tutti Frutti", "Lucille" and "Good Golly Miss Molly". "He was wonderful," says Richard's biographer, Chas "Dr Rock" White. "Palmer was usually only playing a bass drum, a snare and a cymbal but he could sound like 10,000 drummers. His work on 'All Around The World' is faultless and it sounds like Richard backed by a tribe of Burundi drummers."

Palmer also worked with the Little Richard soundalike, Larry Williams, who recorded "Dizzy Miss Lizzy", and Bobby Day, who did "Rockin' Robin". Not all his records had quality, however, and the oddities included "King Kong" by Big T Tyler and "Alley Oop" by the Dyna-Sores. Palmer was known for his idiosyncrasies: if asked to play a song faster, he would pretend to wind up a clock on his ankle.

Around this time, Palmer was in trouble for dating a white woman and so he accepted a production role for Aladdin Records in California. He settled in Los Angeles, getting divorced, marrying his new partner and fathering two more children. His first job in California was to play drums on Ricky Nelson's cover version of "I'm Walkin'". Aladdin Records returned Palmer to New Orleans to record Thurston Harris and the Sharps' "Little Bitty Pretty One". He continued to work with Fats Domino, arranging his poignant 1959 recording, "Telling Lies", as well as working with the blues singers, Amos Milburn and Charles Brown. He is part of Ernie Fields and his Orchestra on their big-selling revival of "In The Mood".

In 1958, Palmer wrote and recorded "Drum Village (Parts 1 and 2)" for Capitol Records. The British session drummer, Bobby Graham, said, "Earl Palmer was great on the Little Richard records, but the focus was on Richard because he was such an explosive force. Earl had a fantastic feel and was a good technician and 'Drum Village' proved it."

Much of Palmer's work took place at the Goldstar Studio in Los Angeles. He played on Ritchie Valens' records, notably "La Bamba" (1958), on which he augmented his drum kit with wood blocks and conga drums. He worked with the producer Phil Spector and was one of the many musicians on the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" and Ike and Tina Turner's "River Deep – Mountain High".

In contrast, his quiet brushwork can be heard on Ketty Lester's glorious "Love Letters" (1962) and he also recorded standards with Sam Cooke and Sarah Vaughan. He played drums on the album, Sinatra And Swingin' Brass (1962). He was on the soundtracks for Judgement At Nuremberg (1961) and In The Heat Of The Night (1967), while his TV themes include Batman and Mission: Impossible. He worked with the Beach Boys, the Byrds, Neil Diamond, Jan and Dean, Tim Buckley, Marvin Gaye and Randy Newman. He was recruited for Fats Domino's comeback album, Fats Is Back (1968), at a time when he was earning around $100,000 a year as a leading drummer.

In later years Palmer was featured on soundtracks such as Top Gun (1986) and worked with Elvis Costello. His biography, Backbeat: Earl Palmer's Story, by Tony Scherman was published in 1999. He considered himself a jazz drummer who struck lucky. He said of his recordings, "I tried to play every session like it was my favourite."

Spencer Leigh


Earl Palmer, drummer: born New Orleans 25 October 1924; married four times (seven children); died Los Angeles 19 September 2008.

[Motorcity]

Earl Palmer



Session drummer whose distinctive style was a feature of many of the great classics of rock ' n' roll.

Last Updated: 8:14PM BST 21 Sep 2008

Earl Palmer, who died on Friday aged 84, was a session drummer whose subtle pioneering backbeats featured on many of the R&B classics of his day.

An ever-adaptable, jazz-rooted drummer esteemed by Shelly Manne and Charlie Watts, Palmer made a distinctive contribution to innumerable records, among them Nat Cole's Ramblin' Rose, Little Richard's Tutti Frutti, Elvis Costello's King of America, the Righteous Brothers' You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' and Ike and Tina Turner's River Deep, Mountain High.

Other artists who used him were the Beach Boys, Neil Young, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, Tom Waits, Randy Newman, and Barbra Streisand. He also contributed to a number of film soundtracks, such as In the Heat of the Night (1967) and Bullitt (1968).

Palmer was respected not just for his skills as a drummer but also for the fact that he was never fazed by the exalted company in which he found himself. After all, he had a fair claim to be among the inventors of rock 'n' roll.

Earl Palmer was born on October 25 1924 in the Tremé district of New Orleans. His mother, a touring singer, had apparently become pregnant in Manhattan by a whaling ship's cook who then died in an accident at sea; another theory had it that his father was the pianist and bandleader Fats Pichon.

As a boy Earl relished the marching bands that accompanied the funerals in New Orleans. From the age of five he had a tap dancing act – accompanied by his mother on the road in Ida Cox's Darktown Scandals Revue, he came to realise that a sudden influx of "aunts" consisted of his mother's lesbian lovers. New Orleans was tough, and Palmer remembered seeing two women take knives to one another; meanwhile, "a top pimp wasn't an outcast, he was a big shot".

Brought up a Roman Catholic, Earl served as an altar boy. "That's where I learned to drink. The father turned me on to wine, man." No wonder that he could say of sitting on Bessie Smith's lap: "I smelled booze all over her but I was used to it".

During the Second World War Palmer set aside his ambition to play saxophone and clarinet to serve his country in the US Army, where he claimed that racism was rife. After supplying his men with live ammunition for the purpose of self-defence, he was demoted from sergeant. He was sent to England, and by Christmas 1944 he was under fire in a foxhole at Malmédy.

After the war Palmer returned to New Orleans, where he whiled away some time boxing, playing pool and working in a tailoring business. He also took up drumming, and soon came to the conclusion that by making music he might be in a position to buy fine suits rather than being the one who made them. He enrolled at Grunewald's Music School, and this led to his joining Dave Bartholomew's band, with which he worked on Fats Domino's early recordings.

Palmer later recalled, however: "The first time I felt like a page was being turned was Little Richard. It wasn't quality music. It wasn't no chords, it was just blues. Slippin' and Slidin' sounded like Good Golly Miss Molly, and they both sounded like Lucille. It was exciting because he was exciting."

On one occasion Palmer went backstage to see Shelly Manne, to find his way barred by a doorman who kept telling him: "Nigger, didn't I tell you to get back?" When the white drummer emerged, he immediately took in what was happening. Although he had never set eyes on Palmer, Manne said: "I was waiting for you. When you get to California, get in touch." (Palmer never forgot that moment and later named one of his daughters Shelly.)

In 1957 Palmer went to Los Angeles, where he reworked Fats Domino numbers with Ricky Nelson as part of an elite array of session musicians which included Leon Russell, Barney Kessel and Glen Campbell, who became best known playing on all of Phil Spector's hits as the "wrecking crew". At one stage Palmer was making an album a day and earning $100,000 a year; for him, You've Lost That Loving' Feelin' was one session among thousands – and it was a session that would have been shorter, he reflected, had Phil Spector been able to notate music. As for Tina Turner, Palmer's abiding memory was: "I've always been a leg man, and this woman had legs."

By the early 1970s work was harder to come by. Bands tended to be more sufficient unto themselves, and his life – and finances – crumbled when his second wife, Susan Weidenpesch, died from breast cancer. Palmer kept the spirit, however, returning to small-club jazz, and he was sought out by artists such as Elvis Costello.

Palmer published a memoir, Backbeat, in 1999. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. According to the institution's website, Little Richard described him in his autobiography as "probably the greatest session drummer of all time".

Earl Palmer had three sons and four daughters by his first three marriages. He married his fourth wife, Jeline, in 2004.

[Motorcity]

Earl PalmerMusician praised by Little Richard as 'the greatest session drummer of all time'



Pierre Perrone The Guardian, Tuesday September 23 2008

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.

Between 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.

Palmer 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.

By 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).

In 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.

After 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.

At 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.

Domino'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."

By 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.

Nicknamed "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.

Always 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.

Acknowledged 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.

Earl Cyril Palmer, drummer, born October 25 1924; died September 19 2008