Eddie Palmieri , the pianist, composer, and bandleader who was instrumental in the creation and ongoing reinvention of salsa, died on Wednesday, August 6, at his home in Hackensack, New Jersey. The news was shared in an Instagram post . His youngest daughter, Gabriela Palmieri, told The New York Times that her father’s death followed “an extended illness.” He was 88 years old.

Eduardo “Eddie” Palmieri was born to Puerto Rican parents in New York’s Spanish Harlem. His older brother, Charlie Palmieri, also a pioneering pianist, led the way for his younger sibling, who wavered between piano and timpani but finally abandoned his role as a “frustrated percussionist” to “take it out on the piano,” as he once put it. The eight-piece he formed in 1961, La Perfecta, steered the mambo scen

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