Robert Palmer’s extensive knowledge of music, ranging from blues and jazz to rock and folk to various genres of world music and the interconnectedness of all those idioms, made him a respected critic at Rolling Stone and the New York Times, but he is most often remembered most for his work as a blues author and producer. His book Deep Blues traced the Delta-to-Chicago blues route in informative, readable fashion, and he followed that up by writing and hosting a Deep Blues documentary film. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, on June 19, 1945, Palmer began attending rhythm & blues shows as a teenager and playing saxophone in local clubs. He later played clarinet and saxophone in an eclectic band called the Insect Trust, and though he focused on writing rather than playing music, he occasionally brought out his clarinet to sit in with Arkansas bluesman CeDell Davis and others. After Palmer moved from New York to Olive Branch, Mississippi, he produced several albums for Fat Possum Records by Davis, Junior Kimbrough, R.L. Burnside and others. He spent most of his final years in New Orleans. Health problems, some of them drug-related, eventually proved fatal, and Palmer, who had been sent to a Valhalla, New York, hospital in hopes of receiving a liver transplant, died on November 20, 1997. In November 2009, a compilation of his work entitled Blues & Chaos: The Music Writing of Robert Palmer was published by Scribner.
— Jim O’Neal
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