Earl Palmer; his drums laid backbeat for birth of rock

Earl Palmer, with a drum set he kept in the trunk of his car. He played with performing stars from Lawrence Welk to Sarah Vaughan but is most known for his work on early rock hits. (Times-Picayune via AP/ File 1986)

LOS ANGELES - Earl Palmer, a New Orleans drummer who provided the distinctive backbeat for seminal rock 'n' roll songs by Fats Domino and Little Richard, then traveled west to become one of Hollywood's busiest session musicians, has died. He was 83.

Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, Mr. Palmer died Friday at his home in Banning, Calif., after a long illness, his family announced.

Often called the most recorded drummer in music history, Mr. Palmer played in thousands of rock 'n' roll and jazz sessions, as well as on movie and television scores.

He set the rhythm for Fats Domino's "I'm Walkin'," Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti" and "Long Tall Sally," Richie Valens's "La Bamba," and Sam Cooke's "You Send Me" in the 1950s. Producer Phil Spector used him to build his legendary Wall of Sound in the 1960s on such songs as "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin"' by the Righteous Brothers and "River Deep, Mountain High" by Ike and Tina Turner. In more recent years he played with Randy Newman, Elvis Costello, Bonnie Raitt, and B.B. King.

In the "Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll" from 1976, Langdon Winner called Mr. Palmer a "master of bass-drum syncopation and possibly the most inventive drummer rock and roll has ever had."

Born in New Orleans, Earl Cyril Palmer was tap-dancing by the time he was 5 on the black vaudeville circuit. He didn't learn to play drums until after serving in Europe with the Army in World War II.

But his childhood experiences served him well, Mr. Palmer said later. "I had the advantage of knowing music before I played it," he said in 1993. "Being a dancer gave me an understanding of rhythmic 'time,' and you can't teach that."

Jazz, blues, R&B, and country music were fusing into a new, distinct genre of music, with Fats Domino, Little Richard, Lloyd Price, and Smiley Lewis the frontmen laying down tracks in the early 1950s for what would become known as the beginnings of rock 'n' roll.

"What we were playing on those early records was funky in relation to jazz," Mr. Palmer told the Los Angeles Times in 2000. "What we were playing already had that natural New Orleans flavor about the music. I played the bass drum how they played bass drum in funeral parade bands."

Besides providing the driving backbeat on many rock 'n' roll tunes, Mr. Palmer can be heard on recordings by jazz and pop stars Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, and Doris Day, as well as on the TV theme songs for "Mission: Impossible," "Green Acres," and "The Odd Couple."

"When you're working in the studios you're playing every genre of music," Hal Blaine, his friend and another prolific session drummer, said. "You might be playing classical music in the morning and hard rock in the afternoon and straight jazz at night. . . . That's where they separate the men from the boys. If you're going to be a studio musician, it's the top of the ladder."

In 2000, Mr. Palmer and Blaine were among the first class of previously unsung sidemen inducted into a new category of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which cited Mr. Palmer's "solid stickwork and feverish backbeat" in laying the foundation for rock 'n' roll drumming.