Making Music Gumbo
“There we were stirring Dixieland and surf music, rockabilly and R&B, pseudojazz and honky tonk country and western into a big gumbo.”

That’s how Robert Palmer described his start in the early 1960s in small, sometimes rough local clubs across Arkansas. In those days, Palmer played saxophone and clarinet with local bands. No one knew then that those gigs would launch the distinguished career of a musician, writer, critic, and historian.

When Palmer died in 1997, Rolling Stone headlined its tribute, “America’s Pre-eminent Music Writer Dead at 52.”

Making A Renaissance Man
That music gumbo he made in his early years, abetted by the vast and unique perspective he acquired over his lifetime, created the Robert Palmer who became a nationally acclaimed critic of all types of music. He made broad historical and cultural connections in music that redefined – and sometimes eliminated – existing musical categories.

As a student at Little Rock University (now the University of Arkansas at Little Rock), Palmer was editor of the campus newspaper and a self-described “campus radical.” He graduated in 1967 and began his journalism career at the Arkansas Gazette.

Palmer later wrote about music for both scholarly and popular publications, everything from Rolling Stone and Atlantic Monthly to the Journal of American Folk Lore and Ethnomusicology.

His love for rock ‘n’ roll, combined with an encyclopedic knowledge of music, prepared him for his role as the first popular music critic for the New York Times. Palmer once said rock ‘n’ roll was “so much more vitally alive than anything we had heard before that it needed a new category.”

Making A Music Mark
As respect for Palmer’s voice grew, he enjoyed a prolific career, teaching, writing books, working on music documentaries and television programs, producing records, and much more. While teaching at Brooklyn College in the early 1970s, he served as the first senior research fellow of the Institute for Studies in American Music. Palmer also taught at Yale University, Carnegie Mellon University, Bowdoin College, and the University of Mississippi, among other schools.

Palmer’s books have focused on the music of the greats, like Jerry Lee Lewis and the Rolling Stones. He wrote and co-directed the award-winning film, The World According to John Coltrane, and served as chief consultant on the highly acclaimed 10-part public television mini-series Rock & Roll: An Unruly History, produced by WGBH in Boston and the British Broadcasting Company. Palmer’s last book, “Rock ‘n’ Roll: An Unruly History,” was written to accompany the popular series.
“Deep Blues,” perhaps Palmer’s greatest contribution to music literature and a classic among books about the blues and blues people of the Delta, inspired the 1991 film of the same name. Palmer, who wrote and narrated the film, leads viewers on a musical pilgrimage from Beale Street to the North Mississippi hill country. This documentary led to the “rediscovery” of several all-but-forgotten artists. The film ends with Palmer remarking that “it seems incredible, but as we anticipate the coming millenium, the blues itself is more visible than at any time in its history.”

Palmer died at what should have been the prime of his career. But in his 52 years, he made an incredible impact on music, both as an artist and as a writer.