ROBERT FRANKLIN PALMER

This son of Little Rock, Arkansas was a respected music writer and journalist, a contributing Editor for Rolling Stone magazine and the first Rock Correspondent for the New York Times. He taught at the Universities of Mississippi and Memphis State, at Yale and the Smithsonian; he produced Blues albums for RL Burnside among others and he played Blues clarinet on the anti-apartheid album ‘Sun City’ at the express invitation of Keith Richards. He wrote ‘Deep Blues’, ‘Rock and Roll-An Unruly History’, ‘Jerry Lee Lewis Rocks’, and the liner notes to hundreds of albums. He also directed the documentary films ‘The World According to John Coltrane’ and ‘Deep Blues’. The latter was based on his fine book of the same name, which chronicles the story of The Blues’ journey from the field hollers of the Delta to it’s current place as ‘The World Boogie’.