Sideman Spotlight: Earl Palmer

My recent post about Sam Cooke, Anatomy of a Classic: Bring It On Home To Me, featured a brief aside about drummer Earl Palmer. I wasn’t sure if Palmer manned the kit for the song — I subsequently discovered it was Frank Capp – but in researching that matter, I listened to a decent sampling of Palmer’s recorded work. And that factotum brings us to today’s discussion.

Greatest ever musician discussions usually degenerate into a roll call of showoffs, shredders, and mythology. You know who I’m talking about. The guitar hero who crams 400,000 notes into a 30-second instrumental break or the drummer with the 172-piece kit who is damn well gonna make sure you hear all 172 pieces. Yawn City. These guys are like rocket-armed quarterbacks who’d rather demonstrate arm strength than make good decisions that win games.

“Hey Coach, did you see how far I threw that ball?”
“Very impressive. Too bad I called a screen pass.”

To reference the Book of Mike Watt, ballhogs may get the sexy highlights, but I’ll take the tugboats and their service to the song. The sideman aesthetic = less is more. Less playing, more listening. It’s not that sidemen can’t solo, be a lead voice, or offer unique accents and coloring, but functionally speaking their role is that of support. It may be a singer they’re supporting, but at the very least a good sideman supports the needs of the song. The best sidemen are not necessarily the fastest or loudest, but they are invariably the best listeners and know when NOT to play. God bless the tugboats. Their sense of economy is a necessary corrective to overrated “squeaky wheel” showoffery.

The operational difference between a sideman and session man is that a sideman is generally a member of a touring band, while a session man is part of a band only in a studio context. Their roles are fairly similar, though. In fact, all session men are ad hoc sidemen, but not all sidemen are necessarily session men. Some musicians are both. Clarence White was a session man for years, including early stints with The Byrds. Later, he became a sideman in The Byrds, but also worked as a session man when the band wasn’t touring. I know, it’s all very complicated. But we’re testing on this next week, so please take notes.

This brings us back to the greatness of Earl Palmer. I’m not sure how much touring he did, but his early work in New Orleans as part of Dave Bartholomew’s studio band (1947-57) laid the groundwork for rock drumming. In 1957, he moved to Los Angeles, where he continued his prolific session career, playing on approximately 3 billion records. He is one of the greatest drummers of all-time, but try and locate a single extended solo in his lengthy discography. You certainly won’t hear one today. While I won’t go into a full-blown career overview — mainly because I might run out of internet — I will cover a handful of his career highlights to showcase his talents in a variety of contexts. But first, let’s watch this Earl Palmer overview, an excerpt from Mitch Woods DVD, Big Easy Boogie. boogie-woogie piano player, Mitch Woods.

http://youtu.be/i-CHEnpplTw&w=560

THE SONGS OF EARL PALMER

Fats Domino – The Fat Man
1949
Fats Domino – The Fat Man

Sorry about this track’s crappy sound (you can’t hear Palmer’s drums all that well), but a better version doesn’t exist. I was on the fence about including it, but it’s the first significant recording in Palmer’s career, so it’s in. It’s also Fats Domino’s first single and you gotta love his pseudo-trumpet falsetto. It’s also significant because according to the googlepedia, “(Palmer’s) playing featured one of the first instances of the backbeat. Said Earl, “That song required a strong afterbeat throughout the whole piece. With Dixieland you had a strong afterbeat only after you got to the shout (last) chorus. It was sort of a new approach to rhythm music.”

Little Richard – I Got It
1956
Little Richard – I Got It

“I Got It” is an obscurity in the Little Richard catalog, but it’s almost identical in structure to classics like “Tutti Frutti” and “Ready Teddy,” and I think it better showcases Palmer’s talents. The song has Earl punching in on the 2 and 4 (the backbeat) while mirroring the bass pulse with quarter notes on the ride cymbal. The tune is vintage Little Richard, but Palmer’s fills, accents, stops, and starts — especially beginning with the first chorus at :47 — elevate it (and the band) to another level.

Lloyd Price – I’m Glad, Glad
1956
Lloyd Price – I’m Glad, Glad

“Lawdy Miss Clawdy” was more influential, but you won’t find another Lloyd Price song with better Palmer. First, you gotta love the rolling intro. Second, after one verse, you hear not only the hard backbeat, but you get that heavy bass drum, New Orleans parade beat turnaround into the second verse. In fact, I’ve included this song because it’s a perfect fusion of Palmer’s second line background with rock’s big beat future.

Professor Longhair – Tipitina
1953
Professor Longhair – Tipitina

I’m going back a few years for a reason. While the Lloyd Price and Little Richard tunes took “The Fat Man’s” backbeat and ran with it, this Professor Longhair classic stays locked in the New Orleans rhumba/parade tradition. Palmer eschews the cymbals completely in favor of snare and bass syncopations, accenting on the 2, but before the 4. This is straight up, second line marching band fundamentals. The song also demonstrates Palmer’s instinctive tugboat mentality, playing with the song’s needs in mind. While the Little Richard and Lloyd Price songs required him to push the beat, “Tipitina” needed the drummer to lay back and join the parade.

Ritchie Valens – La Bamba
1958
Ritchie Valens – La Bamba

By the time this song was recorded, Palmer had left the cozy confines of New Orleans for Los Angeles session work. Ritchie Valens’ signature tune, “La Bamba,” was probably an early challenge for Palmer in LA since it was undoubtedly one of his first encounters with Mexican music. Nevertheless, Palmer is the consummate sideman, effortlessly laying down the beat and embracing Latino flourishes (a woodblock ostinato and conga fills) without being too busy. Totally pro.

Sam Cooke – Rome Wasn’t Built In A Day (1962)
Sam Cooke – Shake (1964)

Like I wasn’t gonna come back to Sam Cooke. Please. “Rome” has to be one of the most underrated tunes in the Cooke catalog. Sam’s smooth croon is in typical top form and the horn charts anticipate much of the work at Stax. But what makes this song move are Palmer’s accents and the syncopation between his snare and bass drum. Together, they give the tune a unique rhythmic tension, elevating it from generic pop to a soulful R&B/pop fusion.

“Shake” differs markedly from “Rome,” let alone so many previous Sam Cooke songs, in its total absence of melody. In that respect, it anticipates much of James Brown’s coming music — if not soul music, in general — which was almost wholly driven by rhythm, often disregarding melody entirely. However, Palmer’s backbeat and fills in “Shake” are the foundation upon which Sam, the horn section, and the rest of the rhythm section spreads out. This song may have been perfected by Otis Redding (who often played with the great Al Jackson on drums), let’s not forget that Sam died before he could answer Otis’ gutbucket rendition with his own Harlem Square-esque ministrations.

Lalo Schifrin – Mission: Impossible TV Theme
1966
Lalo Schifrin – Mission: Impossible TV Theme

Bet you didn’t see this one coming. Sho nuff, that’s Earl Palmer keeping 5/4 time on Lalo Schifrin’s immediately recognizable theme song. Subtle, jazzy, hip … yep, Earl’s involved.

Randy Newman – Sail Away [early version]
1972
Randy Newman – Sail Away [early version]

“This was the way I first had the song. Maybe it’s better. Milt Holland, Jim Keltner, and Earl Palmer did a great job.”
–Randy Newman, from the liner notes to the Sail Away reissue

This version of Randy Newman‘s ode to the slave ship is remarkable for 2 reasons: 1) No orchestra, which is so familiar to longtime fans, and 2) You can practically hear “Louisiana 1927” clawing its way out, especially with Earl Palmer’s marching band pressrolls underneath Newman’s piano like a clarion call from Rampart Street. While the released version on Sail Away is a classic for a good reason, this demo is a revelation. And you gotta love the :20 outro, with the polyrhythmic drums probably meant to invoke the chaos of the auction block as the bells eerily stand in for slave chains. Subtle, but powerful.

Tom Waits – Whistlin’ Past The Graveyard
1978
Tom Waits – Whistlin’ Past The Graveyard

In retrospect, Tom Waits working with Earl Palmer is a no-brainer. If you’re gonna write R&B-influenced jazz songs, why wouldn’t you want Earl Palmer in your band? However, this session is also noteworthy because it featured an important studio reunion. Years earlier, Palmer had worked with Waits’ producer, Bones Howe, when a much younger Howe engineered Sam Cooke’s “Rome Wasn’t Built In A Day.” In fact, the piano player on “Whistlin'” is Harold Battiste, who worked with Palmer and Howe on Sam’s legendary “A Change Is Gonna Come” session. Meanwhile, the tenor saxophonist here is Herbert Hardesty, who worked alongside Palmer in Dave Bartholomew’s studio band on those Little Richard and Fats Domino hits. The lesson here is that if you stick around long enough, your worlds will collide.

Elvis Costello – Poisoned Rose
1986
Elvis Costello – Poisoned Rose

“It was the rhythm section that was daunting. On drums: Earl Palmer who, among many other things, had starred on most of the great Little Richard sides. On bass: Ray Brown, whose jazz recording credits could, and probably do, fill a book.”
–Elvis Costello, from the King Of America liner notes (Rhino reissue)

My final Palmer number comes from Elvis Costello’s great 1986 album, King Of America. Elvis’ voice has rarely sounded better than it does on this song, his vocal prowess no doubt driven by the fact that Ray Brown and Earl Palmer were on hand, forcing him to bring his ‘A’ game. However, as good as Elvis sounds, Brown and Palmer make this song, their push-pull tension, subtle accents and fills, and tasteful understatement transforming a very good song into something damn near transcendent.

THE EARL OF PALMER

And so concludes our “Sideman Spotlight” on Earl Palmer. While the rest of the world heaps plaudits on showoffs and ballhogs, I wanted to give a little pub to one of American music’s great tugboats. Palmer fashioned a 60-year hall of fame career out of being the consummate role player, bringing his best to each song, and in so doing being one of the unspoken pioneers of R&B and rock ‘n’ roll.

If you’d like to investigate further (and in much greater detail) you should check out the bio, Backbeat: Earl Palmer’s Story. To hear more of his recorded work, you should spring for Backbeat: The World’s Greatest Drummer, Ever!, an Earl collection put out by the British Ace label. This is where I got the Little Richard and Lloyd Price tracks, so if you enjoyed those, keep in mind that there are 28 other songs, all from his 1950s heyday.