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Great R&B Session Players - Part 1

© Barney Quick

Earl Palmer – This ubiquitous musical presence was born and raised in the Treme district of New Orleans. Colorful banter at the local barbershop, food wafting from every door, pimps, dope and music are all part of his memory of those times. He was still a child when he toured with Ida Cox’s vaudeville revue as a tap dancer. Vaudeville generally, and certainly black vaudeville, had fallen on hard times by the mid-thirties, when Palmer and his mother were on the road together with Cox. Still, Cox made sure the people in her troupe were taken care of to the best of her ability.

Service in World War Two took Palmer to France, where he managed to have a good time in the villages of freshly liberated Europe, even as he took part in the liberating. Wine and young women were factors in his military experience.

When he returned home to New Orleans, he found a musically frustrated city. The world had come to love its musical heritage, and traditionalist bands could still find plenty of work playing for tourists, but there was a sizable community of progressive jazz musicians that hoped to find an audience for bebop. Palmer, who only seriously took up drumming upon his return, was one of these. Others included pianist Harold Batiste and trumpeter Dave Bartholomew. Several musicians in this crowd went to Grunewald’s music school, where they learned compostion and the theoretical principles behind their technique.

The gigs just weren’t there, though. The people in New Orleans and the outlying bayous wanted to hear rockin’ dance music. That’s why, when Dave Bartholomew and Paul Gayten formed big bands, they emphasized jump and stroll material.

Palmer was Bartholomew’s drummer from 1947 through 1952. The band used Cosimo Matassa’s J&M Studio on Rampart Street for all its sessions. He was with him when Bartholomew plucked Antoine “Fats” Domino, an easygoing Ninth Ward pianist, from the Dew Drop Inn. Palmer plays on nearly all the sides Domino made during his formative years. He provided the easy-rolling shuffle on Lloyd Price’s first record on the Specialty label, “Lawdy Miss Clawdy.” Professor Longhair, Shirley and Lee, and Kansas City’s Big Joe Turner used him on sides cut at J&M in the early fifties, and Palmer was supplying the beat when Little Richard cut loose with a bawdy tune from his club act called “Tutti Fruiti” and made rock history.

He stayed in New Orleans for two more years. In 1957, he’d acquired a new girlfriend (who would eventually become his second wife) and he felt as though he’d exhausted the city’s musical opportunities. He headed for Los Angeles and within two years he had played on sessions of everybody from Doris Day to Slim Whitman to Jan & Dean to Art & Dottie Todd. By the early sixties, he was appearing on the sessions of Ray Charles, Dinah Washington, Willie Nelson, Bobby Vee and Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. In subsequent years, he’s been on the records of Neil Young, Count Basie, Taj Mahal and myriad other artists.