Robert Palmer (music critic)

Robert Franklin Palmer Jr. (born June 19, 1945 in Little Rock , Arkansas ; † November 20, 1997 in New York City , New York ) was one of the most famous American music critics from the 1970s to the 1990s, primarily through his music journalistic work for the New York Times and Rolling Stone , but also through his work as a producer of blues music and his book Deep Blues . He was also a university lecturer in ethnomusicology , music historian , screenwriter , music director , consultant for music documentaries and, in the 1960s, clarinetist and saxophonist for The Insect Trust .

Youth and early music career

Palmer, whose family belonged to the white middle class, grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, and developed an early affection for all kinds of music styles. In an environment that was still characterized by racial segregation in the early 1960s, he performed as a semi-professional saxophone player in local bands as a teenager, both at social events and in white honky tonk bars, as well as in juke joints , which were primarily operated and frequented by the Afro-American population.

In 1964, Palmer began studying at Little Rock University (later renamed University of Arkansas at Little Rock ), made his first journalistic experience as editor of the campus newspaper, and became involved in the civil rights and peace movement of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee .

The Insect Trust

After graduating, Palmer moved to New York in 1967, where he first wrote for Go Magazine and founded the band The Insect Trust with musicians Nancy Jeffries, Bill Barth and Luke Faust , whose name is derived from a phrase in William S. Burroughs ' novel Naked Lunch was inspired. Characteristic of the band's musical style, in which Palmer played the clarinet and alto saxophone , was a seemingly psychedelic mixture of prog rock , jazz , folk , blues and rock and roll . Initially, the band members commuted between their home in Hoboken and Memphis (Tennessee) , where they co-founded and organized the Memphis Country Blues Festival , and on which they performed annually until 1970.

The band finally released their first album of the same name for Capitol Records in 1968 , followed by their second and last album Hoboken Saturday Night in 1970 , which included the song The Eyes of a New York Woman , the lyrics of which were initially contributed involuntarily by the writer Thomas Pynchon has been. Pynchon, one of the most important representatives of literary postmodernism, initially wanted to sue the band, but eventually found such a liking for the song that he gave up his resistance. The album also features multi-instrumentalist Pharoah Sanders and jazz drummer Elvin Jones , both longtime musical companions of John Coltrane . The unusual mix of their music was well received by critics, but was too special to be commercially successful. The tension between the band members eventually increased. Although they played as the opening act for Frank Zappa , Santana and The Doors , among others , The Insect Trust broke up a short time later after the driving force of the with guitarist Bill Barth, who had been thrown out of the band because of his drug problems Had lost tape.

Collaboration with Ornette Coleman

Palmer, who was a good connoisseur of world music , introduced the free jazz pioneer and saxophonist Ornette Coleman to the traditional Sufi music of the Master Musicians of Jajouka , which he had recently recorded in Jajouka, Morocco . Coleman was immediately enthusiastic about Palmer's joint recordings with the Master Musicians and so impressed that he urged Palmer to travel to Morocco with him and some sound engineers immediately to record material for a record. Although the joint recordings in January 1973, which Palmer and Coleman had put together for a double LP , remained largely unreleased because Coleman's record company Columbia Records had decided at short notice to make Coleman and others, in their eyes, rather unprofitable jazz musicians such as Charles Mingus or Bill Evans to dismiss, Coleman was strongly influenced by experiences made in Morocco on a musical level and had at least a small part of the recordings - with Palmer on flute and clarinet - published in 1977 on the LP Dancing In Your Head .

Musicologist, writer and producer

Palmer's encyclopedic knowledge of various artists and musical styles made him a sought-after author in the field of music criticism and history. In addition to books on blues and rock music, he has published articles in daily newspapers, magazines and musicological works.

Palmer also had the opportunity to impart his knowledge of music history at various universities and colleges; for example, he held lectures on American music and ethnomusicology at Yale University , Carnegie-Mellon University , the Smithsonian Institute , Bowdoin and Brooklyn College and, from 1988, at the University of Mississippi .

In the early 1970s, Palmer took a position as editor for Rolling Stone magazine, before serving as the New York Times' first full-time pop and rock critic from 1976 to 1988, becoming well known and appreciated by many readers and musicians worked out.

Over the years he has also written liner notes for dozens of albums, these are introductory texts for an album or artist, which in the past were often printed on the back of records - even in several columns - and are still partly printed on CD today . Find booklets . Artists in question included Sam Rivers , Charles Mingus , Miles Davis , Yoko Ono , John Lee Hooker , Duke Ellington , Albert King , Ray Charles , Ornette Coleman, and the Master Musicians of Joujouka , among many others .

His most important and best book is Deep Blues , published in 1982 , a historical analysis of blues music, in which Palmer describes the development of the blues from its rural acoustic roots in the Mississippi Delta to the electric, urban blues in Detroit and Chicago in the 20th century. Century. The documentary of the same name, whose screenplay Palmer also wrote and which he produced in 1990/91 together with ex- Eurythmics member and blues fan Dave Stewart , dealt primarily with the blues of the North Mississippi Hill Country , the music of the northern hill country the Mississippi region, which was rather unknown compared to the Delta Blues .

In the early 1990s, Palmer, whose health was increasingly compromised, turned to some projects that were particularly close to his heart. In addition to the film projects Deep Blues and the John Coltrane biography mentioned, he also began to get involved in the production of blues albums. For the Fat Possum label, which he co-founded , he produced artists such as RL Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, whose music he had already presented in Deep Blues . The rough country blues of the juke joints , which they embodied, had a hard time with other labels because it did not seem commercially viable. Palmer's idiosyncratic productions, however, helped the label to gain some attention and the artists Burnside and Kimbrough, who were over sixty years old, later to national and international fame.

His book Rock & Roll: an Unruly History , published in 1995, served as the basis for the ten-part documentary History of Rock and Roll , an American-British co-production by the BBC and PBS , during which he also acted as a consultant. The quality of the book as well as the series is controversial. While some critics described this as relatively incoherent and incomplete, Palmer emphasized that it should not be a comprehensive work, but only a subjective selection of important milestones of the genre .

Sickness and death

In late 1997, shortly after the ten-part television series about the history of rock and roll aired, Palmer's health problems worsened significantly. It was the aftermath of an initially undiagnosed jaundice that he had contracted in 1985. Because he, like many musicians and authors in the USA , did not have sufficient health insurance to finance the expected costs of a liver transplant of around 100,000 US dollars and therefore moved to New Orleans , where he has been with his wife since 1993 lived, further treatment had been refused, musicians friends like Patti Smith , Sonic Youth , Yoko Ono, Alex Chilton , Allen Toussaint , Tony Joe White and Junior Kimbrough presented themselves for benefit concerts in New York, New Orleans and Palmer's temporary residence and among others Fat Possum Records , Oxford , Mississippi , offices available.

However, Palmer died on November 20, 1997 in New York at the age of 52 in anticipation of a suitable transplant liver. Palmer's widow, JoBeth Briton, set up a foundation called the Robert Palmer Fund for Artists' Aid to support artists in similar emergencies.

In 2002 he was posthumously inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame in his home state of Arkansas .

Selection of works

Books

• Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi Delta, 1995, Penguin Books, ISBN 0140062238 (first edition 1981) ( Blues Hall of Fame Category: Classics of Blues Literature 1984).
• Rock & Roll: die Geschichte einer Kulturrevolution, 1997, ISBN 3-85445-140-7 (English original title: Rock & Roll: an Unruly History , 1995).
• A Tale of Two Cities: Memphis Rock and New Orleans Roll and Deep Blues.
• Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, 1988, ISBN 3-473-51854-9 (English original title: The Rolling Stones ).

Music documentaries

• Deep Blues (1991; screenwriter, music director and narrator: Robert Palmer; director: Robert Mugge), nominated for the 1992 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival .
• The World According to John Coltrane (1990; writer and co-director with Toby Byron).
• History of Rock and Roll (1997), Palmer wrote the companion book and was a key advisor in its implementation as a television series.

music

With The Insect Trust

• The Insect Trust (1968)
• Hoboken Saturday Night (1970, CD: 2005)

With Ornette Coleman and the Master Musicians of Joujouka

• Dancing in Your Head (1976, CD: 2000), the original version from 1976 contains the title Midnight Sunrise from Coleman's journey in January 1973 to Joujouka , on which Palmer can also be heard as a flautist and clarinetist; the CD reissue also contains an alternative version of the same title, which was also recorded with Palmer at the 3-day recording sessions in Joujouka.

As a producer

• Deep Blues - Original Soundtrack (1992, Atlantic Records)
• Junior Kimbrough - All Night Long (1992, Fat Possum)
• Junior Kimbrough - Sad Days, Lonely Nights (1993, Fat Possum)
• RL Burnside - Too Bad Jim (1994, Fat Possum)
• CeDell Davis - Feel Like Doin 'Something Wrong (1994, Fat Possum)
• Junior Kimbrough - God Knows I Tried (1998, Fat Possum)

Web links

• Literature by and about Robert Palmer in the catalog of the German National Library
• Robert Palmer in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Death report and obituary at VH1 (English)
• Robert Palmer at allmusic.com (English)
• Arkansas Jazz Hall of Fame 2002 Laudation from Jobeth Briton (English)