Salsa Sol Sayonara

Eddie Palmieri Orchestra - Pa' Huele

Well, you know how it goes. We're born. We live a while. We die. It's kind of an endless wheel of reincarnating Karma and if we're lucky, we get some good food, sex and music in between Bardos.

Oh yes, the music. The consensus among the many voices inside my cranium is that it's the very best and most vibrationally substantial thing humans do whilst tottering around above the ground.

The few remaining, semi-literate among us know that the great performance nihilist Hunter Thompson opined, accurately, that the music business is a shallow trench where good men die like dogs, and that there's also a serious and terrifying downside.

He wasn't wrong, but the worst downside of all the many is the ever-present Mortality Factor, where these iconic musical figures depart the coil after decades upon decades throwing all of Humanity life jacket after life jacket in the open, shark-infested waters of three-dimensional existence.

Which brings us to this, my third Death Tribute in four posts and the inaugural August articulation, wherein we pay tribute to an artist who, before leaving the world yesterday at 88, tickled the 88 ivories on a piano in ways that transformed the musical DNA of the planet.

While he rode -- and he rode long and well -- he earned the term The Sun of Latin Music, and there is simply no other figure in the modern sense of it that occupies that rarified territory more deservedly than Eddie Palmieri.

Of course his friends and family are feeling the grief of his loss at the individual level, but when someone of this stature lives to be so old and gives so much in so many ways, it's kind of spurious for the rest of us to flail in unassuageable sorrow, when you think about it.

We take the universal, vertical integration of every style and flavor of music for totally granted now, and we get to do that because gargantuan, iconic cultural avatars like Eddie Palmieri pave the roads upon which we enjoy that life in the fast lane.

In the interview portion that accompanies the Sausalito '74 segment of today's share, there's a really informative sequence where Eddie describes how pliably and effortlessly the complexities of the Latin rhythms integrate into Rock and other sounds, because of the way the accents sit against backbeats and whatnot.

Which I found to be a more informative 30 seconds than has been contained or expressed in the entire last 40 years of US politics, for instance.

When a pillar of this position passes from the plane, it's hard to come up with any sort of instant, appropriate homage, but for Maestros of this magnitude I try to do so anyway, as their departures really do seem to mark our times with signposts of a sort.

There aren't a whole heckuva lotta Eddie Palmieri ROIOs because, with monumental cats that invented whole sections in record stores like him, HST's well-described business side of the street tends to scrape every available barrel in the Quest For Eternal Revenue.

Which is why we again give the heartiest of thanks to our pals at Bill's Bag O'Boots, who've got a whole passel of pre-FM quality digibits I spent all of yesterday arranging into something superior to a streaming pile of shush.

Eddie Palmieri Orchestra

Live In the USA

California/Carnegie Hall

Spring 1974

CD1

01 Que Suene la Orquesta

02 a conversation with Eddie Palmieri

03 Pa' Huele

04 band introductions

05 Adoración

Record Plant, Sausalito CA 4.28.1974

CD2

01 introduction by Felipe Luciano

02 Adoración

03 Puerto Rico

04 Camagüeyanos y Habaneros

05 Pa' La Ochá Tambó pt. 1

06 Pa' La Ochá Tambó pt. 2

01-04: Newport Jazz Festival, Carnegie Hall NYC 6.7.1974 late

05-06: Newport Jazz Festival, Carnegie Hall NYC 6.7.1974 early

Total time: 1:30:17

Eddie Palmieri - piano 

Barry Rogers - trombone & tuba

Jose Luis Rodriguez - trombone

Mario Rivera - baritone + tenor saxophones & flute 

Ronnie Cuber - baritone saxophone (CD2 only) 

Victor "Vitín" Paz - trumpet 

Alfredo de la Fé - violin

Nicky Marrero - timbales (CD2 only)

Tommy "Chuckie" Lopez - bongos & percussion

Jerry Gonzalez - congas 

Eladio Perez - congas (CD2 only)

Eddie "Gua-Gua" Riviera - bass 

Ismael Quintana - vocals 

Jimmy Sabater - vocals (CD2 only)

Willie Torres - vocals (CD2 only)

Manny Oquendo - timbales, percussion & vocals (CD1 only)

MC on CD2 is Felipe Luciano from the original, 1960s formation of The Last Poets

320/48k audio streamed from Wolfgang's Vault

spectral analysis is lossless to 20 kHz, so this is more or less preFM-equivalent

converted to 16/44 CD Audio, edited, assembled & remastered by EN, August 2025
506 MB FLAC/direct link

I have been working on a specific, mind-numbing project I messed up four years ago and finally have gotten around to fixing, but I wanted to stop by here and pay proper respects to this towering figure.

I'll return in the middle of the month with a super centennial celebration, but let's make sure we are all clear that no one ought ever to forget the instantly immortal Eddie Palmieri, world ambassador of Salsa and now in his own Mt. Rushmore spot alongside Tito Puente, Chano Pozo and the other gigantes of Latin sounds.--J.

12.15.1936 - 8.6.2025