Robert Palmer, an acclaimed music critic and also a musician and producer, died of complications from liver disease early Thursday morning. He was 52.
\\Palmer died awaiting a liver transplant at the Westchester County Medical Center in Valhalla, N.Y., to which he had been admitted on September 16. He was transferred there from the University of Arkansas Medical Center, where he had been admitted weeks before, suffering from liver and kidney failure.
\\Palmer was the chief popular music critic for the New York Times from 1981 to 1988, but his most seminal work is the book "Deep Blues." He also wrote "Jerry Lee Lewis Rocks!," "The Rolling Stones" and, more recently, "Rock & Roll: An Unruly History." He was also a longtime contributing editor to "Rolling Stone."
\\In addition to writing the music documentaries "Deep Blues" and "The World According to John Coltrane" and serving as chief adviser of the ten-part public television mini-series "Rock & Roll: An Unruly History," Palmer played and produced the music he wrote about. Most famously, he was a member of the avant-garde group Insect Trust in the late '60s and early '70s. In the early '90s, he produced several rough-and-ready blues albums by artists on the independent Fat Possum label, including R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough.
\\Palmer was best known for writing about blues and jazz, but he brought authority and insight to subjects ranging from the Master Musicians of Joujouka to Sonic Youth. Indeed, the connections he drew between diverse acts and genres helped make his criticism so incisive.
\\It's a sign of Palmer's influence and the enormous respect many musicians had for him that when it was announced he needed a liver transplant and had no medical insurance to pay for one, the rock & roll community organzied several benefits. Patti Smith played a concert at New York's C.B.G.B.'s, Alex Chilton performed at the House of Blues in New Orleans and benefit shows were also organized in Los Angeles and Oxford, Miss.
\\Before he beca