Eddie Palmieri

Eddie Palmieri, the electrifying pianist, composer, and bandleader who helped shape modern salsa and Latin jazz, died August 6, 2025, at his home in Hackensack, New Jersey. He was 88. Family members said he had endured an extended illness.

Born December 15, 1936, in New York City, Palmieri grew up in a Puerto Rican household where music was a part of daily life. He studied piano young, detoured briefly to timbales as a teen, then returned to the keyboard with percussive fire.

In 1961 he formed Conjunto La Perfecta, replacing the violins that are traditionally at the center of charanga music with a trombone frontline and forging a tougher, brass-driven sound that reshaped Latin dance music. The group’s innovations helped define the sound later called salsa.

Palmieri blazed a new trail at the 1975 Grammy Awards when "The Sun of Latin Music" earned the inaugural award for Best Latin Recording. Over a career spanning nearly 40 albums, he won eight Grammys.

He pushed boundaries with albums like "Harlem River Drive," fusing Afro-Caribbean rhythms with funk, soul, and jazz, and he kept performing and recording into his eighties. He was named an NEA Jazz Master in 2013 and received the Latin Recording Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award the same year.

Offstage, Palmieri was known as a champion of Latin culture. His kinetic piano attack—what he once called the outlet of a “frustrated percussionist”—became a signature of the New York sound.

Palmieri is survived by five children—four daughters and one son—and four grandchildren. He was predeceased by his wife, Iraida, in 2014.

A visitation and funeral were held in New York; the family offered a public livestream and asked that memorial gifts be made to WBGO, El Museo del Barrio, the Jazz Foundation of America, and Women's Housing Economic Development Corporation.

By Legacy News Staff

(Image: Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images)