Take a glance at the number of compilations in the discography and you’ll get a sense of his subsequent commercial success, but for Hughesy the initial reaction to Sneakin’ Sally Through the Alley and, to a slightly lesser extent, Pressure Drop meant subsequent efforts tended to be skipped over. That’s not to suggest they weren’t noted, but it was in the era I refer to as The Wilderness Years, when discussion and analysis of new music was affected by a lack of interested parties who could contribute to the dialogue.
You couldn’t help noticing the voice, the dress sense, and the video clip for Addicted to Love, but from where I was sitting I definitely preferred the earlier, equally slinky but far less mainstream, material.
The inquisitive reader will find a lengthy meditation on the former in Rear Views and Retrospectives, while tracking down a digital copy of Pressure Drop has prompted the current page.
As far as a potted biography is concerned Robert Palmer (19 January 1949 – 26 September 2003), son of a British naval intelligence officer, spent his formative years in Malta where he picked up on blues, soul and jazz played on American Forces Radio. He was back in Yorkshire by age fifteen, attending Scarborough Boys' High School where he joined his first band, The Mandrakes. He was nineteen when a 1960s blues outfit called The Alan Bown Set passed through Scarborough, found itself without a singer after Jess Roden departed, borrowed Palmer for the night and invited him to join them in London.
Palmer changed his name from Alan to Robert, sang on the outfit’s single Gypsy Girl and re-recorded Roden’s vocal tracks for The Alan Bown Set! From there, he moved on to twelve-piece jazz-rock fusion outfit Dada, which also featured singer Elkie Brooks. The band morphed into the critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful Vinegar Joe, who delivered three albums, Vinegar Joe and Rock 'n' Roll Gypsies (both 1972) and Six Star General (1973) to Island Records before disbanding in March 1974.