About the archive
About the Archive
This archive documents the life and career of Robert D. Palmer, an American songwriter, guitarist, producer, and recording artist, assembling a record that, until now, existed only in fragments across credits databases, trade publications, and family memory.
How the archive began
Palmer family archive.
Robert D. Palmer was my biological father. I met him in 2018, after spending nearly four decades apart. We had just over two years together before he died on December 31, 2020.
During that time, I recorded conversations with him about his life, career, music, and memories. Those recordings became the earliest materials in what would eventually become this archive.
Two years of conversations
Over those two years, Robert and I talked about his career at length: Booty People, the Far Out label, the Soul Train appearance, his later studio work, the songwriting credits he had accumulated, and the broader arc of a music career that spanned five decades.
Robert was also working on a memoir during this period, which he titled From Misery to Hope. The manuscript was developed through both writing and our recorded conversations.
Completing From Misery to Hope
After Robert’s death in 2020, I completed the editorial process and published the manuscript approximately six months later. The book preserves one final part of his creative work and remains one of the most important sources this archive draws on.
The book is attributed to Robert D. Palmer as author, with editorial completion by Kary Youman.
Discovering the missing record
While researching Robert’s career after his death, I discovered that much of his documented work had never been assembled into a single historical record.
The record was scattered across many places: credit databases, copyright records, trade publications, newspaper archives, television records, release credits, recordings, photographs, and the memories of people who had worked with him. But no one had collected it.
That discovery, that the record was scattered, incomplete, and at risk of disappearing, became the foundation of this archive.
Building the archive
The archive was built to do several things that a family memoir cannot:
- 01Preserve Robert's documented history in a permanent, publicly accessible form.
- 02Show the sources behind each fact, so anyone can follow the thread.
- 03Assemble Robert's work into a reliable public record that does not depend on any single person's memory.
- 04Distinguish documented fact from oral history, and say clearly which is which.
- 05Update the record when better sources emerge.
- 06Preserve materials (photographs, press coverage, trade records) that might otherwise disappear.
- 07Encourage contributions from musicians, researchers, archivists, historians, family members, friends, photographers, producers, engineers, and former collaborators.
An ongoing research project
The archive is not complete. It documents what is known, marks what remains uncertain, and keeps a note of what's still missing.
The Research Notes section publishes individual investigations: how a specific question was approached, what the sources showed, and what remains open. The Research page documents everything the archive is currently working to confirm.
Significant gaps remain: Robert’s full career through the 1980s and 1990s, his community work, and the specifics of many credited projects are still being traced.
How others can contribute
The archive welcomes contributions from anyone with direct knowledge of, or materials related to, Robert D. Palmer’s career.
Useful contributions include: photographs, sleeve or label scans, programs and posters, contracts, correspondence, audio or video recordings, press clippings, firsthand recollections, corrections to existing records, and leads to people or institutions with relevant materials.
All submissions are reviewed privately. Submission does not automatically grant publication rights, and nothing is made public without review. Corrections are logged, reviewed against what’s already on file, and dated.
Identity note
This archive documents Robert D. Palmer, the American songwriter and producer, not the British recording artist Robert Palmer. The two share a surname but are different people with separate careers. All biographical, credit, and media content on this site concerns the American songwriter.