EARL PALMER
Earl Palmer (October 25, 1924 – September 19, 2008) was an American rock & roll and rhythm and blues drummer, and member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Palmer played on many recording sessions, including Little Richard’s first several albums and many other iconic Rock & Roll songs. According to one obituary, “his list of credits read like a Who’s Who of American popular music of the last 60 years”. (More from Wikipedia)
By 1969, Jim Sullivan’s friends in the L.A. scene pooled their money and invested in getting his first album produced. Called U.F.O., the music is an amalgam of folk, country and rock and has a real spiritual side. It might have been just one more lo-fi singer-songwriter album, except that Sullivan had several musical heavyweights from the legendary Wrecking Crew backing him up: Don Randi (keyboards), Earl Palmer (drums), and Jimmy Bond (bass), plus Bond handled the string arrangements that lent a haunting quality to songs that were conceived as being purely acoustic. At times, there were 15 or 20 musicians in the studio.
(October 2011)
* * *
Hal Blaine and another drummer Earl Palmer were the first Sidemen inductees in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000; the entire Wrecking Crew was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame in 2007.
(February 2015)
