Double Fun

Though only the most studious aficionados of '70s music know it, Robert Palmer’s fourth solo album—1978’s Double Fun—contains many of the decade’s great cross-genre congregations. Not only did Palmer have excellent taste in records; he was the kind of fan who studied the credits on the back of albums. In addition to featuring his longstanding friends and collaborators in Little Feat, Every Kinda People engages the talents of superior sidemen like bassist Bob Babbitt, a member of Motown’s house band from 1966 to 1972. If that weren’t enough, this is the only album in history to include two of music’s most innovative producers: Tom Moulton (disco figurehead and inventor of the remix) and Lee “Scratch” Perry (the mad genius of Jamaican dub). Throughout Double Fun, listeners can feel the lushness and hypnotism of disco blending with Palmer’s taste for Caribbean music. From this stew of ideas came Palmer’s highest-charting hit to that date, “Every Kinda People”; it exudes windswept momentum and desire reminiscent of Marvin Gaye’s epochal “What’s Going On.”