I considered it an exciting discovery. It was an exciting discovery, in the rarefied world of rock’n’roll historiography: namely, that the great New Orleans, later Los Angeles, drummer Earl Palmer was responsible for one of the major paradigm shifts in 20th century American culture: the rock’n’roll beat. The aha moment came when Earl and I were preparing his 1999 oral autobiography, Backbeat: Earl Palmer’s Story.
Long before my cantankerous interlocutor (Earl ran hot) unspooled his amazing life story for me, a running interview that swallowed the better part of my 1990s, I had come to believe that Earl played a major role, perhaps the major role, in the development of rock’s rhythmic underpinnings, hence of the music itself.
Walk with me through a young Earl Palmer’s musical surroundings (Earl’s dates: 1924–2008). From the late 1940s to the mid-’50s, rhythm & blues was the dominant strain. Four such quarter notes——make for one bar of shuffle. Ruth Brown’s 1953 smash “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean” was a shuffle, as was Big Mama Thornton’s original ’52 take on “Hound Dog.” So was Fats Domino’s biggest hit, “Blueberry Hill” from 1956, which Earl played on.
