AP
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Eddie Palmieri, the avant-garde musician who was one of the revolutionary artists of rumba and Latin jazz, has died. He was 88.
Fania Records introduced Palmieri’s dying Wednesday night. Palmieri’s daughter Gabriela told The New York Times that her father died earlier that day at his dwelling in New Jersey after “an extended illness.”
The pianist, composer and bandleader was the first Latino to win a Grammy Award and would win seven extra over a profession that spanned almost 40 albums.
Palmieri was born in New York’s Spanish Harlem on December 15, 1936, at a time when music was seen as a means out of the ghetto. He started finding out the piano at an early age, like his well-known brother Charlie Palmieri, however at age 13, he started taking part in timbales in his uncle’s orchestra, overcome with a want for the drums.
He finally deserted the instrument and went again to the taking part in 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 kept releasing music into his 80s, performing by the coronavirus pandemic by way of livestreams.
In a 2011 interview with The Associated Press, when requested if he had something necessary left to do, he responded together with his standard 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 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 first 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 Records 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 method would shock critics and followers once more that 12 months with the discharge of “Harlem River Drive,” wherein he fused Black and Latin kinds to produce 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 grew to become the first Latin manufacturing to win a Grammy.
The following 12 months 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.
In 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 a success with critics and received two Grammy Awards. The album was additionally chosen as probably the most excellent manufacturing of the 12 months by the National Foundation for Popular Culture of Puerto Rico.
During 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 National Museum of American History in Washington.
Yale University in 2002 awarded him the Chubb Fellowship Award, an award often reserved for worldwide heads of state, in recognition of his work in constructing communities by music.
In 2005, he made his debut on National 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 stated he felt a bit lonely musically due to the deaths of most of the rumberos with whom he loved taking part in 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.