Angelo Palladino

Angelo Palladino

Angelo Palladino is a blues singer, songwriter and guitarist from Leeds. He is associated with blues, rock and roll, jazz, contemporary music and roots music, and his work draws on a wide range of performers and styles from the blues tradition onward.

Early life and influences

Palladino is born and raised in the Whitechapel district of East London in 1949. He comes from an East End family background: his mother is from London and his father is an Italian prisoner of war. Because of racial threats and prejudice directed at his father, the family lives in the Jewish quarter of the East End. Palladino learns Yiddish from his father and continues to speak it later in life.

As a young musician, he is shaped by Robert Johnson, Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley. He also takes influence from guitarists including Micky Green of The Pirates and Steve Cropper of Booker T and the MGs. He later identifies blues as the music that becomes central to his life and songwriting.

Career in South Wales and London

Palladino spends his formative playing years in South Wales, where he leads and plays in a number of local groups. He also spends time in the South West of England. These years strengthen his confidence as a guitarist and songwriter and lead him to write and perform his own material.

After his father dies in 1975, he returns to London in 1976 and stops playing guitar for about two years while working in dock work and roof asphalting. In 1978 he begins playing again, buys new equipment and forms the Angelo Palladino Band. The group plays venues including the Bridgehouse, Dingwalls, the Speakeasy and the Hope & Anchor, where it supports Eddie & The Hot Rods. It receives attention from music papers including NME and Melody Maker.

Barflies and pub-band years

While in London, Palladino meets Alice, who is singing with Jerry Richardson of Last Exit, a band that at one time also includes Sting. After marrying, the pair move to Brockley in south-east London. They perform together in Get Out Of Jail Free, a group playing New Orleans-style jazz and material by Fats Waller.

Palladino and Alice later leave to form Barflies, a band playing original songs alongside rearranged cover versions. Barflies begins with dates in South London, including Deptford and New Cross, and builds a reputation through a monthly residency at the Royal Albert in New Cross. The group plays for five years, touring the UK and Europe, and records material including the lost 45 There’s A Fire, the cassette album Down to the Bone, and Live at the Marquee.

The Palladinos

After moving to Rawdon in West Yorkshire in 1989, Palladino forms The Palladinos, which becomes his largest audience draw. The group is managed by Miles Copeland and signed to Sting’s Pangaea label. Its debut album, Travelling Dark, appears in 1994 and is more acoustic than Palladino’s earlier work.

The Palladinos tour with Sting in the UK, Europe and the US, appearing at venues including London’s Royal Albert Hall and New York’s Madison Square Garden. The album is helped by (I Won’t Be) Going South For Awhile, which appears on the soundtrack to Leaving Las Vegas. The band also supports Squeeze around the UK and Europe and performs alongside Jools Holland, Sheryl Crow, the Chieftains and Steeleye Span. During this period, Palladino also writes songs with Carole King, Ted Nugent and the Bangles.

Solo work and later recordings

Palladino later ends The Palladinos and continues as a solo artist. In 2004 he releases Blood, Blues & Bad Dreams, a sparse and darker album produced by Robert Heaton, formerly of New Model Army. The record contains nine tracks and is presented as a set of story-based songs about shadowed characters and the ghosts of the past or imagination. Palladino dedicates the album to Robert Johnson. The album receives positive attention in the music press, including a three-and-a-half-star review in Rolling Stone and favourable notices in Blues Review, the Birmingham Weekly and the Hartford Courant.

By 2008 he has formed a backing band called The Skeleton Crew, made up of local musicians, and performs locally and across the north of England. The group records songs at Hall Place Recording Studios for a DVD project. Palladino’s live performances, both solo and with The Skeleton Crew, are reviewed positively. At Isle of Man Guitarfest he plays solo and with the band, performing songs including Two Crows, Another Mystery Train and a number of covers.

In 2010 The Skeleton Crew record new versions of five songs from Blood, Blues & Bad Dreams on the CD Five, which includes Just Can’t Sleep and an eleven-minute version of Twilight Blues. Palladino also releases Broken Hearts Still Beat, produced with Martin Gardiner. He presents it as a step forward from Blood, Blues & Bad Dreams, with electric guitars reintroduced more subtly and plans to perform the material both solo and with a full band.