Eddie Palmieri

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!

i will! when i'm not at work

Revive just to say that Ellis is OTM and a half--that Harlem River Drive stuff is deathless. "Idle Hands" is my favorite song of all time, this week.

Revive just to say I am listening once again to Azucar Pa' Ti, and the original La Perfecta albums have gradually become my favorite part of EP's output, though initially I didn't like them much.

Barry Rogers, man.

Eddie Palmieri is playing this weekend (in Philadelphia) and I don't have tickets yet

Just saw him live again (this time at the Kennedy Center) and once again when someone yelled for something old with a clave beat he said he didn't have a singer, so he couldn't. It's pretty clear he doesn't really like playing with a singer anymore and is more comfortable with his current Latin jazz approach. ALthough he did let his timbales, bongos, and conga player get rhythmic at times with he accompanying them in a more straightforward manner. He's charismatic enough and such a good player that I genreally enjoy him live no matter what (although this 1 hour 15 minute gig that was being recorded for NPR could have used an encore and less of his explaining the history of salsa according to him)

Maybe he can make more money this way than he would having to pay a vocalist. Maybe he's spoiled from working with excellent vocalists over the years and is not interested in grooming a new young vocalist.

I don't think its a money thing; I think its a music style thing--he doesn't want to have a vocalist standing around doing nothing when he decides to do noisy forearms on the keys solos

Maybe. Maybe, but on plenty of his 70s/early 80s salsa recordings (with vocalist) he goes into dissonant solo passages, but maybe not as extended as he likes to do? I don't know. I think I only saw him perform one time, back in 1998 (or 99?), and I was practically brand new to Latin music at that point. Mostly he was promoting El Rumbero Del Piano.

I still suspect vocalists would take a bigger slice of profits than other band members, at least if they are vocalists with an established reputation.

This Chris Washburne book has me thinking of salsa in very economic terms. The more I think about both the social and economic context of salsa in the past, the less optimistic I am about a large-scale recovery of the genre. Not that I was optimistic anyway. As great a genre as it is, I don't see how the stars will ever align in the right way to bring about a revival.

Well, what happened to Hernan Olivera? I have seen him sing with Eddie before and once I saw him with Chris Washburne who had invited him to the gig after a few shows with Eddie- Chris plays the La Perfecta gigs when either Conrad or Jimmy, your favorite, can't make it.

Yeah, I have quite a few musicians complaining about the drying up of the lucrative Latin gigs.

I don't know, but Olivera is no longer so new and he's got a pretty solid reputation, so again I wonder if someone like that wants more money than he's worth to a bandleader like EP who can just go instrumental. Then again, what has Olivera been doing lately? I'm not in New York, but recording-wise I don't think there's been that much. Could be wrong because whatever it is would probably just be some uninspired cover/tribute project.

I think Herman still sings with him, I just think he doesn't have a vocalist every show.

He hasn't had a vocalist with him at a Washington D.C. show in forever. I don't think I ever remember seeing him with a singer here, and I've seen him here countless times over the years. We just get the Palmieri Latin-jazz presentation.

But I see that Olivera sang with Eddie out in Hollywood last year

http://irom.wordpress.com/2012/08/17/live-latin-jazz-the-eddie-palmieri-salsa-orchestra-and-ruben-blades-at-the-hollywood-bowl/

I checked with some DC folks in the know and they said that way back in the '70s Eddie used to have no-name singers with him regularly in DC; but more recently just twice over the last decade; with the last time being around 5 or so years ago.

Actually that reminds me that I recently came across this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEh1BGsqW3g&feature=youtube_gdata_player
One of the comments said the bass player looks like Oscar Stagnaro but I have since asked two people who would know who it was and they both immediately said: " Is it Oscar? No, that's not Oscar." I'm working up the nerve to ask his son if his dad has a doppelgänger.

So I was reading a reference to Palmieri's Unfinished Masterpiece (1974) where he allegedly(I haven't heard it) started out trying to add more African rhythms to his salsa and jazz but he gave up on the effort; and then his label, band and producer decided to add more and "finish" it. But I see on Amazon that the album is out of print, and my quick look on Spotify did not find it either.

I was reading a reference to it in the Will Hermes book on '70s NY music, but I see it was discussed way upthread here also.

I bet the whole thing is up on youtube, and you might as well listen to it that way considering how lo-fi the sound of the CD is. Here's "Cobarde":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeCR0es4Je8

Of course. will do

Found only one other song from the album so far, but need to look more. Wow, that one u posted is noisy and polyrhythmic.

It's not actually all that different, just maybe an extreme point in the 70s Palmieri sound. Also, as I said above, I hear Lucumi Macumba Voodoo as being pretty close. Not as raw, but also much better recorded.

I was just thinking lately about this funny post about that album:

Lucumi, Macumba Voodoo. Definitely one of his weirdest. To this day I never understood why? Why out of tune Cello's after that Brazilian rythm that starts off that weird modal piano solo, only to go into the son MI CONGO? Other than the heart of thsi song and Colombia Te Canto, I don't know what he was thinking with those other three tunes....

rec.music.afro-latin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5z4gIg9wlQ

I still say rec.music.afro-latin was the best online discussion of Afro-Latin music I ever came across (as someone who only reads English, of course). It technically still exists but it's been essentially dead for many years. (Appropriate? Haha.) It was an education, and I assume I'll never be on the same level as most of the people who used to post to it. Also, for me personally, the timing was really good. I took my first salsa dance class in very late 1997. I started fooling around with newsgroups at around the same time, probably closer to 1998. (I was somewhat of a late adapter I guess.) The rise of the web happened to coincide with my entree into the world of Latin music and dance, and I think it helped speed up my learning curve (especially w/r/t the music).

I missed out on that.

Unrelated-

Fania/Codigo keeps renaming a 2 cd Eddie Palmieri compilation. First they confusingly named it "The Sun of Latin Music" which is the name of an actual earlier Palmieri album, then they renamed it "A Man & his Music" and now its called "El Virtuoso"

Lol. Trying to be (Japanese band) Boris. Maybe they should call it Heavy Rocks.

I have that comp. A Man & His Music is the name of the whole series (the Celia Cruz & La Lupe ones are called A Woman & Her Music, the Sonora Ponceña and Fania All-Stars ones are called A Band & Their Music, obviously), and each one has an individual title as well. The Sun of Latin Music is (or was) the official title, and I guess now they've re-named it El Virtuoso.

I bought the cd as a gift and it showed up as "El Virtuoso" although Amazon does not list it by that title (the songs and photo matches us with the older titles)

http://lehmancenter.org/th_event/eddie-palimieri/

You New Yorkers should go up the Lehman College in the Bronx for this:

The maestro will be joined by Special Invited Guests Ronnie Cuber (Baritone Saxophone), Alfredo de la Fe (Violin), Donald Harrison (Alto Saxophone & Vocals), and Joe Locke (Vibes). Also joined by Invited Guests, Anthony Carrillo (Bongo, Bata), Luques Curtis (Bass), Vicente “Little Johnny” Rivero (Congas, Bata), and Camilo Molina (Timbales, Bata).

opening act:
The Mambo Legends Orchestra is comprised of former members of the Tito Puente Orchestra. Led by famed bongocero Johnny “Dandy” Rodriguez and musically directed by timbalero and arranger José Madera, the band is dedicated to keeping the ‘50s and ‘60s Palladium-era sound alive as it explores new musical concepts

Would love to but don't think I can. Never seen Alfredo de la Fe in person.

A local promoter brought de La Fe down to the DC area once and booked him in a tiny narrow little upscale lounge. Plus the promoter showed Fania era footage on a small screen beforehand. It was a great show.

Here's part of my 2008 review:

De La Fe waited until the third song, "La Negra Tomasa," to join the 10-piece combo. Juste Lounge does not have a stage, so the group positioned itself along a wall right in front of the salsa-dancing couples. Using his trademark electric violin that has six strings on a skeletal plastic frame, the dreadlocked De La Fe quickly made his presence felt, heading out among the dancers and passionately slashing at the strings with his bow. Keeping the interests of the rug-cutters in mind, De La Fe did not solo too long and was accompanied by the band's insistent clave beat via the timbales, congas, keyboard and bass. Although De La Fe has, rock-style, used a wah-wah petal, this evening he kept his technique within the bounds of the Afro-Caribbean tradition.

That is awesome, thanks for posting.

Ben ratliff liked the show where Palmieri and an expanded group re-did his 1971 Harlem River Drive album, plus some other songs

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/23/arts/music/review-eddie-palmieri-reprises-a-tantalizing-harlem-river-drive.html?mabReward=CTM&moduleDetail=recommendations-0&action=click&contentCollection=Europe®ion=Footer&module=WhatsNext&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&src=recg&pgtype=article

On the record, he used a mixture of his own musicians with others who were working with Aretha Franklin. One of his own was the timbalero Nicky Marrero; one of Ms. Franklin’s was the drummer Bernard Purdie. Luckily, both were present for Saturday’s show, and important parts of it

Lucumi, Macumba, Voodoo is available on Spotify now. It's flawed (in crazy ways) but has some great material on it:

https://play.spotify.com/album/6rkKQA8OiqgdIiT0DrUWWE?play=true&utm_source=open.spotify.com&utm_medium=open

Not 100% sure that link will work.

It's a very well-recorded album compared to some of EP's albums from roughly the same time period, notably Unfinished Masterpiece, which was a bit of an audio botch.

I can do without the disco/fusion track or tracks, but the exploratory piano duel with his brother Charlie, and the other expansive stretches are good, as is the title cut (which I first heard as part of a station ID for WXPN in the 80s, without knowing who it was, many years before I ever got into salsa).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=i1huT6eX6bw

I just repeated my earlier post even more than I realized. This is why I am a semi-retired poster.

As far as Palmieri goes, in general, my favorite material now is most of the La Perfecta era (not so much the first album) and large stretches of what he put out in the 70s through very early 80s. After that it's a lot more hit and miss, but I don't generally care for purely jazz-focused EP, which tended to become more dominant at some point in the early 90s if not sooner. Not going to check to see to what extent I am repeating myself again.

Watched some of his solo NPR Tiny Desk appearance. No obvious dance rhythms till the third tune. The first two are nice and only occasionally get into the discordant banging he sometimes does solo.

http://www.npr.org/2016/08/18/490480164/eddie-palmieri-tiny-desk-concert

http://www.villagevoice.com/2017/05/16/palmieris-wisdom/

Palmieri's been doing a bunch of Monday gigs in NYC at Subrosa-- some noisy, some slightly more rhythmic.

i saw him last year in a big outdoor amphitheater and it was SO FUN
so much dancing, lots of energy, awesome show

He's got an app for music students to use now too---

Palmieri Salsa Jams is billed as “the world’s first interactive salsa music app.”

Available through noted jazz trumpeter Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah’s Stretch Music App platform, Salsa Jams enables students to read sheet music or play along by ear for every song on Palmieri’s “Full Circle” album. They can also mute or fade out altogether any instrument, so that they can play that instrumental part, as well as control the tempo, loop rhythms and melodies, and more.

‘I put salsa on my spaghetti, baby!’
“If students mean anything to you, you want to set them on the right track,” said Palmieri, who — at 81 — is likely the most senior Latin music legend to release an app of any kind, let alone a salsa app.

Never mind that this bearded composer and band leader snorts with derision at the mere mention of the word salsa, which came to the fore in New York in the 1960s. He regards the commercial tag placed on this Cuban-inspired Latin dance music hybrid as simplistic and misleading.

“Fania Records came up with name ‘salsa’ and it’s a complete misnomer,” charged Palmieri, who in 1962 released his debut solo album, “La Perfecta,” on Fania and was later featured on the first Fania All-Stars album.

“Like my great friend, Tito Puente, used to say: ‘I put salsa on my spaghetti, baby!’ It (salsa) comes from rumba, guaracha, danzón, cha-cha, mambo, guaguancó, changüí. They all have their proper names, but we lump it under one name: ‘salsa’.”

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/entertainment/music/sd-et-music-eddie-palmieri-interview-20181118-story.html

wow, a salsa app
will have to report this to my students

Interesting

Think I prefer the classic recordings of some of those tunes

Haven’t heard it yet, but guessing I will end up agreeing with you.

of his 2018 releases I like Full Circle the most so far.

.. it's so good!

https://youtu.be/MFQHW6yGBV4

Online Eddie Palmieri & La Perfecta II gig via NYC Summerstage