SAN DIEGO — Sue Palmer became a San Diego favorite in the 1980s and 1990s as a key member of the bands Tobacco Road and the world-touring Candye Kane & The Swingin’ Armadillos. But when this award-winning pianist and band leader formed her rollicking Motel Swing Orchestra in 2000, she had a simple goal.

“Making a living!” Palmer recalled with a hearty laugh. “My main ambition was to play piano, and to play with other people.”

How well she has succeeded is an undisputed matter of record for this Ocean Beach native, who has long been billed as “The Queen of Boogie Woogie.” She also has the distinction of leading a brassy four-woman, three-man band whose lineup — apart from its lead singer slot — has remained constant for the group’s entire 25-year history.

Palmer has distinguished herself as an in-demand performer, recording artist, composer, collaborator, band leader, radio and podcast host, teacher and mentor. She sidelines as a vintage vinyl record-spinning DJ at the Lafayette Hotel, Part Time Lover and Tio Leo’s. In February, the monthly San Diego Troubadour magazine debuted her monthly column, “Women in Jazz and Blues,” in which Palmer shares her passion for two of America’s greatest homegrown art forms.

“I write in a personal way about musicians who mean a lot to me, like (pianists) Hadda Brooks and Hazel Scott,” she said. “Boogie woogie was a precursor to big-band jazz and rock ‘n’ roll, and people still love to dance to it.”

Fans will soon have ample opportunity to do precisely that.

On Tuesday, Sue Palmer and Her Motel Swing Orchestra will celebrate their 25th anniversary with a concert at Tio Leo’s in Bay Park that will feature guest spots by the band’s two former singers, Deejah Marie and Sharifah Muhammad. It will be followed by other shows this spring and summer, including — on May 10 — Palmer’s 23rd consecutive performance since 2003 at the annual Gator by the Bay on May 10.

‘A cultural icon’

“Sue is a cultural and musical icon in San Diego and I absolutely can’t imagine doing Gator without her,” said festival co-founder Peter Oliver. “She’s a great talent and a class act.”

Those sentiments are shared by retired San Diego City Councilmember and State Senator Christine Kehoe, and by Chris Goldsmith, the president of Solana Beach-based Belly Up Entertainment.

“Sue is tireless and she lives and breathes music,” said Kehoe, a longtime fan and friend. “She brings such joy to the stage and she expresses herself through music in such a meaningful way.”

“Sue’s become a legend,” said Goldsmith, who has produced Grammy-winning albums for Ben Harper, the Blind Boys of Alabama and other artists.

“She has contributed in significant ways, musically, and to the scene in San Diego by being so fun and entertaining. And I can’t think of anyone else in San Diego who’s led a band with the same lineup of instrumentalists for 25 years.”

Those instrumentalists include some of the most respected musicians in the region. The lineup includes trombonist April West, saxophonist Jonny Viau, guitarist Steve Wilcox, drummer Sharon Shufelt, bassist Pete Harrison and lead singer Liz Ajuzie. Like Palmer, they are all skilled performers who have devoted much of their lives to honing their art.

A 1965 Point Loma High School graduate, Palmer grew up in a musical family that often sang together at home. When she was 7 years old, her mother implored her to start taking music lessons and asked what instrument she’d like to learn.

“I said I wanted to play drums,” Palmer recalled with a chuckle. “And my mom said: ‘OK, you’re starting piano lessons tomorrow!’ We had a piano at home. My aunt was a pianist. My uncle and all their kids were swing musicians. I studied with different piano teachers. And my family had all these songs we’d play together, like (W.C. Handy’s 1914 blues classic) ‘St. Louis Blues.’ “

Palmer’s introduction to the transformative power of boogie woogie when she was 10 years old may not quite qualify as a religious experience. But it was a life-changing epiphany.

“It was summer vacation and I was going to a bible school class with a neighbor friend at the First Baptist Church in Ocean Beach,” Palmer said. “I couldn’t see the pianist, who was in another room, and I don’t know if they were male or female. But they were playing a boogie-woogie version of ‘Do Lord, Oh Do Lord, Oh Do Remember Me.’

“I’d never heard it done that way before — I’d never heard boogie woogie before! — and a light bulb went off. My piano teacher gave me the sheet music for Pinetop Smith’s (1928 song) ‘Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie.’ From there, I got into Ray Charles and I just kept going. I got the boogie-woogie bug, and it never went away.”

Palmer, 77, has yet to record a song called “Boogie Woogie Bug.” But she has been a steadfast champion of the propulsive music, which grew out of ragtime and rural Texas blues. It was popularized in the 1920s by such ebullient pianists as Smith, Cow Cow Davenport, Albert Ammons, Meade “Lux” Lewis and Pete Johnson.

Then and now, the impact of boogie woogie has been profound.

It was adapted in the 1930s by Count Basie and other swing-era band leaders, as well as by such early R&B and proto-rock artists as Louis Jordan and Little Richard, and such pop vocal groups as The Andrews Sisters. The music’s influence extended into subsequent decades, as evidenced by as the Grateful Dead’s “New Speedway Boogie,” Little Feat’s “Old Folks Boogie,” Jackson 5’s “Blame It On The Boogie,” Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Boogie Wonderland” and Weather Report’s “Boogie Woogie Waltz.”

“It’s very rhythmic music, and I like that a lot,” Palmer said. “You have to have a very strong left hand and playing boogie woogie is like a train zipping down a track. That’s one reason I love it so much — and why dancers love it.”

Boogie woogie ballet

Palmer also embraced blues, jazz and other vital American roots-music styles, but boogie woogie is her trademark. It was a key component in the music she wrote and performed with the Motel Swing Orchestra for San Diego Ballet’s 2023 world premiere of “Eight To The Barre.”

“I first heard Sue playing with Tobacco Road at the Old Time Cafe when I was a teenager in the 1980s,” recalled Belly up honcho Goldsmith, 60. “She was my introduction to boogie woogie and I was very impressed by her.”

Kehoe also first heard Palmer in the 1980s with Tobacco Road and was immediately impressed.

“I used to hear Sue back then at the corner of Laurel and Kettner in The Club, which was a gay bar — a lesbian bar, pretty much — and is now the Casbah,” Kehoe said. “I could walk into a venue and know it was her playing, even without seeing her or knowing she was performing there, because she’s such a wonderful stylist.”

Palmer took her time developing that style and absorbing others.

As a teenager, she and her then-boyfriend would drive to Los Angeles to attend performances by such jazz greats as drummer Shelly Manne and saxophonists Pharoah Sanders and Cannonball Adderley. Palmer was also inspired by the sophisticated keyboard voicings of former Miles Davis Quintet pianist Bill Evans.

“I was a blank, hungry slate wanting to learn everything I could,” she said.

Palmer graduated in 1969 from SDSU, where she majored in political science and minored in English. After graduating, she lived in a commune and became a Welfare Department eligibility worker for a few years, then left for other day jobs while continuing to play music at night and “learning how to perform.”

She played piano in a succession of bands, including Ms. B Haven and Pearl Tapioca before forming the swing-happy Tobacco Road. Palmer resumed her employment at the Welfare Department several times and also worked as a substitute U.S. Postal Service carrier. She then pivoted to a job at the International Rescue Committee.

With the exception of lead singer Liz Ajuzie (at far right), the lineup of Sue Palmer and Her Motel Swing Orchestra has remained intact since its inception 25 years ago. The band’s members are (from left). trombonist April West, saxophonist Jonny Viau, bassist Pete Harrison, drummer Sharon Shufelt, Palmer, guitarist Steve Wilcox and Ajuzie. (Nick Abadilla / Community Press)

Gettin’ wiggy with it

A self-described late bloomer, Palmer did not devote herself to being a full-time musician until she turned 40 in 1987.

“I never looked back,” she said. “And I never had to work another job — at least, not another day job.”

Palmer led Tobacco Road for more than a decade. Its lineup featured trombonist West and drummer Shufelt, who are both members of the Motel Swing Orchestra and also alums of Ms. B Haven.

But Palmer’s most high-profile gig came after she became the pianist and musical director for San Diego vocal dynamo Candye Kane in the early 1991.

A larger-than-life force, Kane sometimes used her breasts to play Palmer’s piano during concerts. The singer overcame considerable odds, including sexual abuse and drug use in her youth. Kane battled her pancreatic cancer for eight years before it claimed her life at the age of 54 in 2016.

“We did over 250 dates a year, most of them away from home, and it was fantastic,” Palmer said. “I got to travel all over the world with Candye and she brought out a lot in me that I hadn’t done before, including my onstage costumes. I learned so much from her.”

It was while performing with Kane in 1993 at the Belly Up, where they opened for blues-soul vocal great Etta James, that Palmer unveiled the enormous beehive wig that would soon become her visual trademark.

“I was trying to find a way to complement Candye on stage,” Palmer said. “She was a big singer with a big voice and a big personality. She was big in every way. The wig was such a huge hit I had to wear it at every gig we did for the next eight years! I went through six or seven wigs before settling on the red one, and I had to have a special container for it when we toured in Europe.”

Palmer stopped wearing the wig at shows in 1999, after she had tired of constant touring and left Kane to form the Motel Swing Orchestra. But its legacy lives on.

“That beehive is iconic!” Kehoe said.

“I was at the 1993 Belly Up show when Sue wore it on stage for the first time,” Goldsmith said. “It was a real crowd-pleaser and the beginning of a legend. There might not be anything more iconic in the San Diego music world than the image of Sue with her beehive.”

“The wig became a character unto itself,” agreed Swing Motel Orchestra trombonist West, who lives six blocks away from Palmer’s Talmadge home near SDSU.

West and drummer Shufelt have played music with Palmer since the 1980s and the three share an almost symbiotic relationship.

“Sue is like my sister,” said West, a retired San Diego elementary school music teacher. “She treats people really well and she’s also very forgiving of everybody’s musical idiosyncrasies. Sue is the only band leader I know who hands out the paychecks before we start playing.

“As for the band’s longevity, we did discuss a couple of rehearsals ago how lucky we are that all of us in the band are pretty similar in our political outlooks, and always have been. And all four women in the band are feminists, whatever that means nowadays.”

Lead singer Ajuzie joined the Motel Swing Orchestra four years ago. At 35, the Illinois native is the band’s youngest member.

“When I first met Sue, I was apprehensive because I’d done musical theater and choral music but had never sung boogie woogie or blues before,” Ajuzie said. “But she’s very generous and made a lot of time for me and still does. She texts me anytime she comes up with a song she thinks I’d like. The band has been so welcoming to me and Sue is a wealth of information. Every time I sing with her, I learn something new.”

The joy of making music remains stronger than ever for Palmer, who plans to keep performing with the Motel Swing Orchestra indefinitely.

“My band is fabulous and I’m so proud of us,” she said.

“After 25 years together, I appreciate every second. I have lost Candye and so many musician friends, and they were younger than me. When you’re pushing 80 — which I am! — you start thinking about retiring. But as long as I can sit down and still play the piano with my band, I will.”

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Sue Palmer & Her Motel Swing Orchestra

When: 7 p.m. Tuesday

Where: Tio Leo’s, 5302 Napa Street, Bay Park, California

Tickets: $12 at the door

Phone: 619-838-3316

Online: tioleos.com

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