Salsa icon Eddie Palmieri, who died Aug. 6 at the age of 88, was one of the artists who best summed up the restless beauty of the New York music scene. Born in East Harlem to Puerto Rican parents — and the younger brother of Charlie, another virtuoso keyboardist and bandleader — Palmieri reflected the city’s inner turmoil and avant-garde tendencies through a propulsive patchwork of jazz, Afro-Latin rhythms, funk, and psychedelia.
Now, filmmaker Spike Lee is giving us another chance to cherish the maestro’s legacy. Palmieri is featured performing with his band in the legendary director’s latest film, Highest 2 Lowest, a neo-noir crime saga starring Denzel Washington and based on Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 classic High and Low. One of Palmieri’s most influential tracks — the 1973 gem “Puerto Rico” provides the backdrop to an epic chase sequence.
“That’s one of the most vivid moments in the film,” Lee tells Rolling Stone. “The energy is just bustling there. The music, the colors, the vibrancy — the whole rawness of it makes you feel like you are literally in the streets of New York. This is right around my way. I’m less than 10 minutes away from Yankee Stadium. I could walk there.”
For Nuyorican actress and longtime Spike Lee collaborator Rosie Perez, who also appears in the film, working with Palmieri was especially poignant.
“What a great loss to the jazz and Latino community,” she says. “Puerto Ricans are crying, but also rejoicing, because he gave so much to this world, and he was a great ambassador for us, God bless his soul.”
Anybody who knew Palmieri in person was aware that the keyboard genius was also salsa’s funniest, most eccentric conversationalist. Perez is no exception.
“I got to know him prior to shooting this scene, because I would always go to the New York Jazz Festival and similar events,” she recalls. “Most people don’t know this, but that man was hilarious. He was just so funny. Who would have thought that I would be blessed to be on the last scene that he ever recorded for the screen. I feel privileged, yes, but also a bit melancholy.”
