Upon hearing of Eddie Palmieri’s death, bassist Carlos Henriquez said this, on Facebook: “The music will never be the same. ‘The Sun of Latin Music’ — a title rightfully given to him — fit perfectly. He was our rhythmic bedrock and our musical diary. The moment he laid down a montuno pattern with his left hand, you instantly knew it was Eddie . . . The ‘Sun of Latin Music’ will forever be remembered as one of the greatest and most influential artists of our time.”
When Henriquez, now a member of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, was 15 years old, he received a call to perform with Palmieri at The Wolf Trap in Vienna, VA. “I wasn’t old enough to travel alone,” he said, “so I asked Eddie if my mom could accompany me on the trip. I remember how calm he was — and how much I learned just by watching him play.”
As a 17-year-old, vibraphonist Joe Locke, then a student at the Eastman School of Music, would “turn my speakers out the window and blast ‘Un Dia Bonito’ at the students walking to class from their dormitories next door. ‘The Sun of Latin Music’, ‘Live at Sing Sing’, and ‘Unfinished Masterpiece’,” Locke said on Facebook, “played in heavy rotation in that Rochester apartment.”
Palmieri passed away August 6, 2025, at the age of 88 in Hackensack, NJ. According to The New York Times’ Giovanni Russonello, Palmieri’s contributions to Afro-Caribbean music “helped usher in the golden age of salsa in New York City.” In a 2012 interview with the Smithsonian Oral History Project, Palmieri described the roots of his music as “Afro-Cuban.” With the involvement of Puerto Ricans and Nuyoricans like himself, he added, it developed into “Afro-Caribbean”, and then “Afro-World”.”
Growing up in the South Bronx, Palmieri began playing piano at age eight. He was inspired by his 17-year-old brother, Charlie, who was already playing professionally, studied at Juilliard, performed with Tito Puente’s orchestra, and later headed his own band. In a 2009 interview with The Savannah Morning News, Palmieri recalled that Charlie would bring home recordings of big band leaders such as Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller. Charlie died of a heart attack in 1988.
As a teenager, Palmieri played in local bands and led one with vocalist Joe Quijano. In 1956, he joined an ensemble led by Cuban singer Vicentico Valdes and spent two years with Tito Rodriguez’s orchestra at the Palladium Ballroom. He left Rodriquez in 1960 to form his own band, La Perfecta. AllMusic’s John Bush considers La Perfecta’s first recording, Conjunto La Perfecta (Fania Records), “One of the best albums released by one of Palmieri’s best bands. La Perfecta is an excellent example of early Latin dance before Western fusion became the name of the game.” Conjunto La Perfecta, Russonello said, “became the talk of New York City north of 96th Street and then a landmark in Latin music, perhaps the closest thing there was to an opening bell for the salsa movement.”
In the late 1960s, Palmieri collaborated with vibraphonist Cal Tjader on two albums, El Sonido Nuevo (Verve: 1966) and Bamboleate (Fania Records: 1967). In the early 1970s, Palmieri and his brother formed Harlem River Drive, a fusion band combining jazz with funk, soul, and salsa. The band’s first album was called Harlem River Drive (Rhino: 1971). When Palmieri reprised some of its music in a 2016 concert at Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem, The New York Times‘ Ben Ratliff recalled that the original recording “was the natural result of New York’s Black and Latino audiences having gravitated toward the same sounds for decades.” He called the Harlem concert “tantalizing,” adding that, on the record, Palmieri “used a mixture of his own musicians with others who were working with Aretha Franklin. One of his own was the timbalero Nicky Marrero; one of Ms. Franklin’s was the drummer Bernard Purdie. Luckily, both were present for Saturday’s show, and important parts of it.”
Due to problems with the Internal Revenue Service, Palmieri spent much of the late ’70s and ’80s in Puerto Rico but returned to the U.S. in 1992. In 1994, he released an album called Palmas on the Elektra/Nonesuch label that featured such mainstream jazz artists as trumpeter Brian Lynch and saxophonist Donald Harrison, backed by an Afro-Latin rhythm section. AllMusic‘s Bruce Ishikawa wrote that, “Eddie Palmieri’s Palmas starts at full speed and doesn’t stop . . . Fans of his older salsa material will be surprised by Palmas. But careful listening reveals surprising constancies in Palmieri’s piano playing over the years. Be ready for a trip on this one.”
Palmieri went on to win consecutive Latin Jazz Album Grammy Awards in 2005 and 2006, first for Listen Here! (Concord Picante) and then for Simpatico (ArtistShare), a pairing with Lynch. In 2001, the Tito Puente/Eddie Palmieri recording, Masterpiece/Obra Maestra (Rmm Records) won a Grammy for Best Salsa album. Palmieri was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master and received a Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013.
Survivors include four daughters, Gabriela, Renee, Eydie, and Ileana; a son, Edward Palmieri II; and four grandchildren. His wife of 58 years, Iraida, died in 2014.