Robert Palmer

Robert Allen Palmer (19 January 1949 – 26 September 2003) was an English singer and songwriter. He was known for his powerful and soulful voice, sartorial elegance, and stylistic explorations, combining soul, funk, jazz, rock, pop, reggae, and blues. His 1986 single "Addicted to Love" and its accompanying video came to "epitomise the glamour and excesses of the 1980s".

Having begun in the music industry in the 1960s, Palmer had a spell with Vinegar Joe in the 1970s and then found success in the 1980s. It came both in his solo career and with the Power Station, scoring Top 10 hits in the United Kingdom and the United States. Three of his hit singles, including "Addicted to Love", featured music videos directed by English fashion photographer Terence Donovan.

Palmer received a number of awards throughout his career, including two Grammy Awards for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance and an MTV Video Music Award. He was also nominated for the Brit Award for British Male Solo Artist in both 1987 and 1989. He died at the age of 54 from a heart attack.

Palmer was born in 1949 in Batley. When he was only a few months old, he and his family moved to Malta, where his father worked in British naval intelligence. He was influenced as a child by blues, soul, and jazz music played on American Forces Radio and by his parents' musical tastes. His family returned to the UK when he was 12.

In his teens, Palmer moved to Scarborough. He joined his first band, the Mandrakes, at the age of 15 while still at Scarborough High School for Boys. He left school the next year, after obtaining six O-levels and briefly studied art at Scarborough School of Art & Design, before landing a job at the Scarborough Evening News. He was reportedly fired after police found "the stub of a cannabis joint in a raid on his bedsit".

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.