I picked up Eddie Palmieri’s 1989 album Sueño – along with, uhhh, far too many others – at a local record fair last weekend. I’m slowly making my way through everything that I bought, but this one’s an early highlight. I suppose that’s not really a surprise, given the quality of Palmieri’s output over several decades, but still: this one is a welcome addition to the shelves. Sueño has also recently been reissued by Intuition on 180g vinyl, but my copy’s an older pressing.

The pianist/arranger, who sadly passed away in 2025, was on fine form during these sessions. They were the first to feature the trumpeter Brian Lynch, who would go on to become a mainstay in the band across the next two or three decades. For the most part it’s the kind of salsa and Latin jazz you would expect to hear, harking back to Palmieri’s best work of the 1970s, but with one notable outlier (more on that later). There are just seven tracks in total, two of which feature Eddie soloing on piano, and one of those is pretty much an introductory theme.

The album properly kicks off with a then-new arrangement and recording of Azucar, originally from the mid-60s and appearing on the album Azucar Pa’ Ti. I was taken by the Cuban and Puerto Rican percussion trio on this right away; Charles Cotto on timbales, Fransico Aguabella on congas and Antony Carillo on bongos. The three of them together are so strong here, and they set the tone for the majority of the rest of the album. The best moments are, for my money, where that percussive trio is front and centre. There’s a lively lead vocal by Luis Vergara here, too.

The playing on the instrumental Just A Little Dream is subtler, the tempo slower, and Palmieri’s piano is initially at the forefront, setting the rhythm before Shiro Sadamura’s violin solo insists on your attention. (The Japan-born, New York-based musician was a regular in Palmieri’s band in the late 1980s/early 1990s, and is one of three violinists on this record; the instrument features quite heavily.) Trumpets come in later, adding a celebratory, magisterial feel.

Perhaps the highlight on side 1, though, is Covarde, where again there’s greater focus on the percussion and vocals; this time Milton Cordona joins in on the bata drums. Deeply funky, joyous music and I can’t wait to include it on a mix.

I mentioned there was an outlier on this record, and that’s the utterly incongrous Humpty Dumpty (yes, that Humpty Dumpty), which kicks off Sueño‘s second side. This blog is in its initial stages, and one of my guiding principles is that I’m going to try and be positive when writing about music, rather than waste my time being overly negative, but I can’t really let this one pass without comment. A very late-80s electric guitar solo puts the frighteners on you straight away and the song never quite recovers from that point on. Vocalist Victoria Webb clearly had incredible power, but it feels like she should be belting out the vocals on a house record, as opposed to this souped-up arrangement of the famous nursery rhyme. Look, if I never hear this track again in my life that’s perfectly fine by me. Let’s just move on, shall we?

Thankfully things quickly improve and the rest of side two is more in step with side one. Verdict on Judge Street is the second solo piano track on the album before the set closes with another highlight, La Libertad/Comparsa. Incredible percussion once again, going hard at first and then quietly forming the bridge between the two distinct parts of the track.

So that’s Sueño. By no means a perfect album, but some of Eddie Palmieri’s playing here is superb, and the arrangements are great at showcasing the talented musicians he played with around this time, with the violins, trumpets and – particularly – the percussion sounding great.