ABSTRACT
The 1950s rock ’n’ roll sound emerged from a variety of sources, among them the integral contributions of such studio musicians as New Orleans drummer Earl Palmer (1924-2008). In the passages excerpted here from Tony Scherman’s collaborative biography, Backbeat, Palmer recalls his time playing with Dave Bartholomew (born 1920) and Little Richard (born Richard Penniman, 1932). Bartholomew was an important New Orleans songwriter, producer, and bandleader whose ensembles were among the first to navigate the transition from jazz to rhythm and blues. As Palmer reminds us, the majority of jazz musicians in these bands, who were highly sought after for studio sessions, did not come to rock ’n’ roll naturally. It was most of all commercial considerations, as well as their encounters and musical interactions in the studio with dynamic young performers like Little Richard, that helped shape the driving rhythms that would come to define the rock ’n’ roll big beat. Palmer himself, as it turns out, was equally as ebullient and volatile as the music he helped pioneer, qualities that come across vividly in Tony Scherman’s concluding author notes, provided especially for The Rock History Reader. As Scherman describes, the telling of rock’s story is often frought with both complications and compromises.
