Eddie Palmieri, 1936-2025
Whether it was through his fiery, percussive piano playing or his contagious enthusiasm, Eddie Palmieri expanded the breadth and depth of Latin music.
The pianist and bandleader died on Aug. 6 at the age of 88 in his home in Hackensack, sparking bittersweet tributes from around the world as musicians and fans remembered his innovations and his legacy across 45 albums and hundreds of electrifying performances.
Born in Spanish Harlem and raised in The Bronx with his older brother Charlie, who was also a noted pianist, Palmieri lived the last 10 years of his life in New Jersey, teaching and performing regularly in the Garden State.
On Facebook, jazz bassist and Montclair resident Christian McBride remembered collaborating with Palmieri. Although McBride is widely esteemed and successful in the jazz world, he recalled being nervous to play with the Latin legend. At the end of their first session together, Palmieri declared the bassist “an honorary Latin soul brother.”
“Not a single word will ever be able to express the gratitude I have for being able to be around and play with this superhero so often,” McBride wrote. “Mr. Palmieri, you blessed the world by teaching us the history between Africa, South America, Central America and North America, and it all came through your piano. We were lucky.”
At his Aug. 19 concert at Central Park SummerStage, Jon Batiste performed several songs with members of Palmieri’s band.
“We need to set the example here tonight,” Batiste reportedly told the crowd. “The way that Eddie brought all the music together, all of the styles. Let the music be our teacher for how we can be together in the world.”
Along with Charlie, Eddie Palmieri took private piano lessons as a child, initially focusing on classical technique. In addition to studying with a teacher in Carnegie Hall, he studied music in the New York public school system. He increasingly learned about jazz and the Latin big bands that were becoming popular in the post-war years.
The cover of Eddie Palmieri’s 1965 album “Azucar pa’ Ti.”
While he performed publicly before he turned 10 years old and co-led a band at the age of 14, he stepped onto the stage of the legendary Palladium ballroom with the band of Vicentico Valdés at the age of 19, in 1956.
While the music was aimed at dancers, Palmieri was conscious that an important cultural history was ingrained in the music. “It’s one of those incredible beautiful stories about how the powerful rhythm that comes from Africa was stylized and modernized coming out of Cuba to feed the world,” he said in a 2021 interview.
He was always quick to point out the contributions of musicians who came before him — such as Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo, who played with Dizzy Gillespie’s band — but also took Latin music to new places, musically and geographically. “I’ve gone to five continents with my orchestras, and not one country does not find those instruments exciting,” he said. “What makes my heart swell with happiness is that I see how our music has gone all over the world.”
One of his earliest successes was the creation of his Conjunto la Perfecta in 1961. Unusual for that era, the band used two trombones for a more powerful impact, which he deemed “the perfect sound.” In 1976, he won the first Grammy for Latin Music, one of his eight Grammys.
His 1965 song “Azúcar pa’ Ti” broke convention with its nine-minute length. It became a dancefloor favorite as well as a successful recording. To Palmieri’s delight, it was inducted into the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry in 2009 for its cultural significance.
Palmieri also became more political over the years. His reading of the progressive economist Henry George led him to oppose some forms of taxation. As a result, he was eventually arrested onstage for tax avoidance, but was able to avoid going to prison.
The cover of Eddie Palmieri’s 1971 “Harlem River Drive” album.
His 1971 album Harlem River Drive is considered a landmark for its synthesis of Latin, jazz and soul sounds as well as its socially relevant lyrics. He followed that up with a live recording at Sing Sing prison. He noted that he had friends in prison and so wanted to play for them, there.
In 1992, Palmieri gained renewed attention when he produced and arranged the enormously successful debut album of singer La India, which was titled Llegó La India via Eddie Palmieri.
He announced his retirement in 2000, but returned to recording and performing at concerts, for many years. In 2013, he received the Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
His wife of 60 years, Iraida — whom he credited with nudging him to shift toward Latin jazz — died in 2014. He then moved to Hackensack and eventually recorded a tribute album to her, Mi Luz Mayor, which featured salsa singer Gilberto Santa Rosa and rock guitarist Carlos Santana.
During his time in The Garden State, Palmieri taught master classes for several years at Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts in New Brunswick, working with pianists as well as giving advice to budding musicians. “I discuss the musical dynamics, and how to make it more exciting,” he said in a 2018 interview for the Rutgers website. “After all the different bands finish playing, then we’ll play some records and we’ll talk.”
Throughout his career, Palmieri was a feisty innovator and ambassador for his community. He tangled with record executives as well as Grammy officials and stubbornly refused to live within the industry’s pigeonholes, creating music that built on African roots to combine with anything and everything.
Sometimes referred to as the “madman of salsa,” Palmieri was an animated performer, unable to contain his energy as he hammered out melodies, chords and rhythms on the piano keyboard.
“In a way the dancer is the enemy, the real enemy,” he said in a 1994 interview with DownBeat magazine. “It was between them and you. You wanted to get them to sweat so they would say at the end of an evening, ‘Oh, Eddie, that was terrific, you knocked me out!’ ”
The piano, he said in an interview with NJ.com in 2021, “is a beautiful instrument, for beautiful melodies, but it’s a percussive instrument that if you know how to attack it, it responds, and I excite the orchestra with what I do in my playing. And once I excite them, we’re on our way.”
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