{"id":28539,"date":"2024-12-06T05:30:43","date_gmt":"2024-12-06T10:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=28539"},"modified":"2024-11-13T10:12:32","modified_gmt":"2024-11-13T15:12:32","slug":"take-five-forgotten-classics-from-robert-palmer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/06\/take-five-forgotten-classics-from-robert-palmer\/","title":{"rendered":"Take Five: Forgotten Classics from Robert Palmer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s easy to forget the facts now, but when Robert Palmer scored worldwide mega-success with his 1985 album <em>Riptide<\/em>, he was anything but an overnight success. In fact, Palmer\u2019s career as a solo artist began more than a decade earlier; <em>Riptide<\/em> was his eighth solo release, and his first to crack the Top Ten on <em>Billboard<\/em>\u2019s album chart. That record spawned no less than three charting singles in the U.S. (including the smash \u201cAddicted to Love\u201d) and three in the UK (not even all the same tracks).<\/p>\n<p>Palmer got his professional breakthrough taking over as lead singer in British pop group The Alan Bown Set; a few years later he co-fronted Vinegar Joe, a well-regarded rock-blues-soul hybrid that nonetheless failed to set the charts alight. But once he began a solo career, initiated with 1974\u2019s <em>Sneakin\u2019 Sally Through the Alley<\/em>, Robert Palmer began an upward career trajectory (one that included work fronting the Power Station, a separate story in and of itself) halted only by his untimely death in 2003 at age 54.<\/p>\n<p>As this month marks the 50th anniversary of the release of his solo debut album, here are five forgotten classics dating from before Robert Palmer became a household name, MTV star and two-time Grammy Award winning artist.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cSneakin\u2019 Sally Through the Alley\u201d from <em>Sneakin\u2019 Sally Through the Alley<\/em> (1974)<\/strong><br \/>\nFor his solo debut, Yorkshire-born Palmer enlisted acclaimed New Orleans funk ensemble the Meters to serve as his backing group, and he added Little Feat founding upstairs Lowell George to the mix as well. The resulting music emphasized groove and rhythm, and the album\u2019s title track displayed all of those virtues. The albums scraped the lower reaches of the chart, and when released as a single, the title track wouldn\u2019t chart at all. But \u201cSneakin\u2019 Sally Through the Alley\u201d provided a hint of what was to come.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Y7RDdChjNJs?si=dJsG5PAjWgdAI_3G\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cMan Smart, Woman Smarter\u201d from <em>Some People Can Do What They Like<\/em> (1976)<\/strong><br \/>\nPalmer\u2019s second solo LP, 1975\u2019s <em>Pressure Drop<\/em>, wasn\u2019t much of a commercial success, but it earned favorable reviews. Palmer returned less than a year later with his third record, <em>Some People Can Do What They Like<\/em>, earning a minor hit (#63) with this reading of a 1936 calypso-flavored tune from Trinidadian singer King Radio. This album was Robert Palmer\u2019s first outing producing his own recording sessions.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/EpmbP61Kg68?si=_l9_vIF85blwFhL7\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cEvery Kinda People\u201d from <em>Double Fun<\/em> (1978)<\/strong><br \/>\nWritten by bassist Andy Fraser of Free, \u201cEvery Kinda People\u201d helped propel Palmer\u2019s fourth solo album to the #45 spot on the <em>Billboard<\/em> 100, then his most successful chart action to date. A testament to the album\u2019s appeal, no less than four singles would be released from<em> Double Fun<\/em>. \u201cEvery Kinda People\u201d made it to #16 on the U.S. singles chart, and landed on charts in the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand as well.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/R686uRAzwIk?si=-xR3ijGtWWBmJQ50\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cBad Case of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor) from <em>Secrets<\/em> (1979)<\/strong><br \/>\nWritten by Moon Martin, this song earned Robert Palmer his first #1 single ever (in Canada). The tune did quite well in the U.S. as well, soaring to the #14 spot. It was one of four charting singles released from <em>Secrets<\/em>, his fifth long-player. His career was in ascendancy: \u201cBad Case of Loving You\u201d was Palmer\u2019s most successful single to date.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DlPHmYtqSdA?si=5PMiabR8iA8n2G_B\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cLooking for Clues\u201d from <em>Clues<\/em> (1980)<\/strong><br \/>\nMusic Television (MTV) debuted on August 1, 1981. In its earliest days the channel had a fairly limited crop of music videos to broadcast. But from its very first day, MTV played the quirky video for Robert Palmer\u2019s \u201cLooking for Clues,\u201d the sort-of title track from his sixth solo album. The new wave-flavored <em>Clues<\/em> had just the right sound for the era, and Palmer\u2019s sophisticated, urbane look seemed custom-made for MTV-era success, too.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/92wCPfqyVbg?si=2EhDH3XSktr1OTZN\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s easy to forget the facts now, but when Robert Palmer scored worldwide mega-success with his 1985 album Riptide, he was anything but an overnight success. In fact, Palmer\u2019s career [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28540,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[5557],"class_list":["post-28539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay","tag-robert-palmer","cat-27-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28539"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28541,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28539\/revisions\/28541"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}