ROBERT PALMER : Music & Style

Two years after recording Sneakin' Sally Through The Alley, his first album for Island Records, Robert Palmer's future has begun to clarify.

His latest effort, Some People Can Do What They Like, has bulleted to #48 on the Cash Box Top 100 Album chart five weeks after its debut, as Palmer approaches the end of a North American tour that will wind up with headlining appearances at New York's Palladium and the Roxy in Los Angeles.

One of the British singers who best epitomizes "blue-eyed soul", Palmer spent a long stretch sharpening his talents with little public recognition.

Vinegar Joe, the UK band of which he was a member just before striking out on his solo career, made only the slightest dent in the US market.

In the maturation of his distinct style, Palmer paid tribute to singers of the '60s Motown era including Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, though he explains that he has "concentrated on trying to reproduce the aura of the music that I like without copying the style of any one singer."

He writes much of his own material, though his repertoire draws from reggae and the New Orleans tradition.

Appearing on stage in characteristic three-piece suits, with relatively short hair and subdued bearing for a rocker, the quietly good-looking Palmer derives his intensity from within.

The singular emotive quality of his roughly textured, carefully phrased vocals has carried him over the FM airwaves.

With performance and personality appearances on nationwide television slated for the near future, Palmer's chances of considerably broadening the base of his audience are promising, indeed.

(Cash Box magazine, Nov. 1976)