Latin Jazz Pianist-Composer Eddie Palmieri, 1936–2025

DownBeat ^ | Aug. 12, 2025 | Frank Alkye

[real saxophonist]

Latin Jazz Pianist-Composer Eddie Palmieri, 1936–2025

By Frank Alkye

Aug. 12, 2025

“I don’t guess I’m going to excite you; I know I’m going to excite you,” Palmieri said in an August 1994 DownBeat feature.

Famed Latin jazz composer, bandleader and pianist Eddie Palmieri passed away in his New Jersey home on Aug. 6. He was 88. A product of the Spanish Harlem neighborhood in New York City, where he was born, and the Bronx, where he grew up, Palmieri brought the joy, complexity, grit and love of the music he heard around him as well as the sounds his parents brought with them from Puerto Rico. Palmieri became a pioneer and leader of the Latin jazz and Afro-Caribbean scenes in the city, then took his special brand of music around the world.

Palmieri began playing at an early age. By 13, he joined his uncle’s orchestra, not on piano, but playing timbales. Throughout the 1950s, he began making a name for himself, especially with the Tito Rodriguez Orchestra.

He founded the band La Perfecta in 1961, eschewing standard front-line trumpets in favor of the boost he could get with trombones and flute. The band made quite a stir by mixing Afro-Caribbean beats with jazz, featuring his “descarga” or jam session concept to offer up plenty of soloing opportunities within his arrangements. He disbanded La Perfecta in 1968, but did reassemble the group in the 2000s.

His discography spanned from his debut, La Perfecta (Alegre), in 1962 to 2018’s Mi Luz Mayor, with Carlos Santana sitting in as a special guest. The 45 albums Palmieri created as a leader, plus his electric live shows, garnered him 10 Grammy Awards, his first being The Sun Of Latin Music in 1975. He won two Grammys for his 2000 classic with Tito Puente, Masterpiece/Obra Maestra (RMM Records).

In 2013, Palmieri was named an NEA Jazz Master, one of the highest honors a jazz musician can receive. All of this built on jazz chops and a big, Latin heart.

“From the first album I recorded, the rhythmic structures have been there,” Palmieri told jazz critic Howard Mandel in the August 1994 edition of DownBeat. “You see, I don’t guess I’m going to excite you; I know I’m going to excite you. It’s because of structures that I sacredly maintain which are Afro-Cuban. That structure.”

Palmieri also credited having some of the finest musicians in jazz play in his bands over the years, a lineage that includes trumpeters Brian Lynch and Charlie Sepulveda, saxophonists Big Chief Donald Harrison, David Sánchez and Ronnie Cuber, trombonist Conrad Herwig, percussionist Giovanni Hidalgo and many more.

But even with his artistic accomplishments, Palmieri wanted more. He wanted people to dance.

“You know, in a way the dancer is the enemy, the real enemy,” he said in that 1994 interview. “That’s how it was when the music started in Cuba, when the music imitated the dance of the rooster and the chicken. When I started playing at the tail end of the Palladium era, after Tito Rodriguez, Tito Puente, Machito, Joe Cuba, my brother Charlie Palmieri with his Orchestra Charanga, and Johnny Pacheco and all that, we were one-on-one with dancers who were so well-versed they were our challenge.

“It was between them and you. You wanted to get them to sweat so they would say at the end of an evening, ‘Oh, Eddie, that was terrific, you knocked me out!’ When I heard that, I knew I’d satisfied the dancing part of the listening audience. When I hear that, because of music we play — ah, then my soul is elated!”

[real saxophonist]

I'm just a white boy who played professionally for 22 years. But I always had some Latin Percussion instruments in my bag of tricks.

[Hyman Roth]

Was he related to Rosie Palmer?

[lee martell]

88 years of a Jazzman’s life.
One year for every key on his piano.
Let him end it with one sweeping glissando;
(where the performer slides smoothly from one pitch to another ,creating a gliding effect.

**Think of that well known intro on “I Want You Back” by the
Jackson 5. That’s what I mean. Sparkling and energetic.
Real Saxophonist knows about such things far more than I do.
He IS a trained musician. I just like to listen very closely.

[nickcarraway]

I meant to post this the other day. Thanks.

[Kleon]

So many people dying lately. Was he vaxxed?

[real saxophonist]

I just got it in my email today. Thanks

[real saxophonist]

Of course not. Get off my thread.

[RitchieAprile]

The best ones always are..

[alexander_busek]

So many people dying lately. Was he vaxxed?

88 years is an eternity for a professional jazz musician.

Regards,