Bruce Palmer ✝

Bruce Palmer (September 9, 1946 – October 1, 2004) was a Canadian musician best known as the bassist in the seminal Canadian-American folk rock band Buffalo Springfield, who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. Palmer was born in Liverpool, Nova Scotia, later moving with his family to Toronto, Ontario, where in the early 1960s he began pursuing a musical career. He started out playing with Robbie Lane & The Disciples, then graduated to a local, otherwise all-black group fronted by Billy Clarkson. Next came British invasion-inspired Jack London & The Sparrows (which, after Palmer left, evolved into Steppenwolf). In early 1965 he left to join The Mynah Birds where he first met Neil Young who was playing lead guitar in the band. The Mynah Birds, fronted by future funk legend Rick James, had a bright future and were signed to the prestigious Motown Records to do some demo recordings before it was discovered that James was actually in Toronto to avoid serving in Vietnam with the United States Navy, from which he had gone AWOL. A planned single, "It's My Time" b/w "Go On and Cry", was withdrawn just prior to its scheduled release by Motown. Both sides of this single were included in the 2006 box set "The Complete Motown Singles, Vol. 6: 1966", released in a limited edition of 6000 by Universal label Hip-O-Select, marking the first time any of the 1966 Motown recordings by the Mynah Birds had seen the light of day. The group was forced to disband, and Young and Palmer drove Young's hearse to Los Angeles in the hope of meeting Stephen Stills, a journeyman folk musician with whom Young had played briefly in Canada two years earlier. Within two days of arriving in Los Angeles, Young and Palmer were driving on Sunset Boulevard and Stills was coming in the opposite direction. When Stills saw the Ontario licence plates, he turned around and pursued the hearse, pulled up beside them and realized who they were. Shortly after, the whole crew pulled into a carpark and introduced themselves. Thus they became the band Buffalo Springfield.