Eddie Palmieri, Boundary-Pushing Star of Latin Music, Dies at 88

Eddie Palmieri, the pianist, composer, and bandleader who was instrumental in the creation and ongoing reinvention of salsa, died on Wednesday, August 6, at his home in Hackensack, New Jersey. The news was shared in an Instagram post. His youngest daughter, Gabriela Palmieri, told The New York Times that her father’s death followed “an extended illness.” He was 88 years old.

Eduardo “Eddie” Palmieri was born to Puerto Rican parents in New York’s Spanish Harlem. His older brother, Charlie Palmieri, also a pioneering pianist, led the way for his younger sibling, who wavered between piano and timpani but finally abandoned his role as a “frustrated percussionist” to “take it out on the piano,” as he once put it. The eight-piece he formed in 1961, La Perfecta, steered the mambo scene towards the more complex Afro-Cuban rhythms of salsa, but was so inventive and bloody-minded that it seemed to instantaneously explode out of the genre it was forming. As saccharine salsa romántica became a pop phenomenon, Palmieri skewed toward economical composition and sonic bombardment, his penchant for trombone-heavy setups sparking a movement of its own within salsa. His monumental 1969 album, Justicia, combined elements of funk, soul, and psychedelic rock with Cuban dance rhythms and lyrics rallying against racism and colonialism.

Though the genre bears his unmistakeable imprint, Palmieri was always unhappy with the term “salsa” and referred to his music as “Afro-Cuban,” part of a continuum mixing African rhythms with an expanding range of diasporic influences. Going forward, he preferred to play in smaller bands, favoring a conjunto format more in keeping with his combustible sensibility. That sensibility translated to his business dealings—he was nicknamed “the Madman of Salsa” for his confrontations with everyone from mob-backed industry executives to the Inland Revenue Service—even as he embedded in the working musician lifestyle, becoming a regular of the mythic Monday night bills at New York club Village Gate.

Palmieri’s proud status as a working-class insurgent in the music industry never stopped him winning establishment respect, almost in spite of himself. In 1976, he became the first Latin person to win a Grammy—taking the inaugural Best Latin Recording award for the album Sun of Latin Music—and went on to win seven more, including the following year’s in the same category, this time for Unfinished Masterpiece. His prestige allowed him to push for the creation, in 1995, of the Best Latin Jazz Album category, which he successfully campaigned to reinstate after its deletion in 2012. His final solo studio album, Listen Here!, won the category’s 2006 award, and he continued to release collaborative records and tour well into his eighties. In 2013, the National Endowment for the Arts named him a Jazz Master and the Latin Grammys gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award.