Earl Palmer


Earl Cyril Palmer was an American rock and roll and rhythm-and-blues drummer. He is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Palmer played on many recordings, including Little Richard's first few albums and many other well-known rock and roll records. According to one obituary, "his list of credits read like a Who's Who of American popular music of the last 60 years."

Biography

Born into a show-business family in New Orleans and raised in the Tremé district, Palmer started his career at five as a tap dancer, joining his mother and aunt on the black vaudeville circuit in its twilight and touring the country extensively with Ida Cox's Darktown Scandals Review. His father is thought to have been the local pianist and bandleader Walter "Fats" Pichon.
Palmer was 12 when he headlined a floor show at the Rhythm Club in New Orleans, "a very beautiful spot where one can enjoy a floor show, headed by Alvin Howey and Little Earl Palmer."
Palmer served in the United States Army during World War II and was posted in the European theatre. His biographer wrote,
After the war ended Palmer studied piano and percussion at the Gruenwald School of Music in New Orleans, where he also learned to read music. He started drumming with the Dave Bartholomew Band in the late 1940s. Palmer was known for playing on New Orleans recording sessions, including Fats Domino's "The Fat Man" and "I'm Walkin" , "Tipitina" by Professor Longhair, "Tutti Frutti" by Little Richard, "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" by Lloyd Price, and "I Hear You Knockin'" by Smiley Lewis.
His playing on "The Fat Man" featured the backbeat that has come to be the most important element in rock and roll. Palmer said, "That song required a strong afterbeat throughout the whole piece. With Dixieland you had a strong afterbeat only after you got to the shout last chorus…It was sort of a new approach to rhythm music." Reportedly, he was the first to use the word funky, to explain to other musicians that their music should be made more syncopated and danceable.
Palmer left New Orleans for Hollywood in 1957, initially working for Aladdin Records. He soon started working with the Wrecking Crew, a loose-knit group of session musicians who recorded nonstop during their heyday from 1962 to 1968.
The musicians union tracked Palmer playing on 450 dates in 1967 alone.
For more than 30 years he played drums on the soundtracks of many movies and television shows. Amongst the many artists he worked with were Frank Sinatra, Phil Spector, Ricky Nelson, Bobby Vee, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Eddie Cochran, Ritchie Valens, Bobby Day, Don and Dewey, Jan and Dean, the Beach Boys, Larry Williams, Gene McDaniels, Bobby Darin, Neil Young, the Pets, The Byrds when they were still known as The Beefeaters and B. Bumble and the Stingers. He also played in jazz sessions with David Axelrod, Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Bostic, Onzy Matthews, and Count Basie, and he contributed to blues recordings by B. B. King.
Palmer played drums in a recording session with the West Coast folk singer-songwriter Jim Sullivan around 1969 or 1970. The album was released twice with different audio mixes. On the Monnie Records album, U.F.O., Palmer's drumming can be clearly heard, but on the Century City Record, Jim Sullivan, the drums, percussion and bass were moved back in the mix.
He remained in demand as a drummer throughout the 1970s and 1980s, playing on recordings for albums by Randy Newman, Tom Waits, Bonnie Raitt, Tim Buckley, Little Feat and Elvis Costello.
In 1982, Palmer was elected treasurer of the Local 47 of the American Federation of Musicians. He served until he was defeated in 1984. He was re-elected in 1990.
A biography, Backbeat: Earl Palmer's Story, by Tony Scherman, was published in 1999.
In later years, Palmer played with a jazz trio in Los Angeles.
Palmer died in September 2008, in Banning, California, after a long illness. He is buried at Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside, California.

Personal life

Palmer married four times and had seven children. He is survived by Earl Cyril Palmer Jr., Donald Alfred Palmer, Ronald Raymond Palmer and Patricia Ann Palmer from his marriage to Catherine Palmer; Shelly Margaret Palmer and Pamela Teresa Palmer from his marriage to Susan Joy Weidenpesch; and Penny Yasuko Palmer from his marriage to Yumiko Makino.

Quotations

In 2000, Palmer became one of the first session musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Discography

As leader

;Albums
;Singles
Palmer was the session drummer for a number of film scores, including:
1961
1963
1964
1965
1967
1968

Television scores

Palmer was also the session drummer for a number of television show themes and soundtracks, including:

1955

1956

1957

1958

1959

1960

1961

1962

1963