Tunes I used to like #5: the truth about me, in a soft chorus of mellifluous parps

Rico: "Ramble" from The Man from Wareika (Island, 1977)

Sun's out. Inappropriate shorts on.

Here's something y'all can enjoy whatever the flavour of your shorts, as a little gift from meezy-weez. One of my favourite sand-twixt-my-toes, easy-living lopes, by the Jamaican boneur Rico Rodriguez, third to Don Drummond and Vin Gordon in the Jamaican Boss Trombone Stakes.

Many years ago (possibly twenty?) I wrote a piece about trombone music for my old newspaper and included a sidebar, as I recall, about "the great trombonists you've heard but never seen" or something like that. I think I probably included Don Drummond as the Jamaican representative in what was a selective micro-survey of the world’s top bones, living or dead.

Rico, bless the old curmudgeon, promptly rang me up at my desk in Canary Wharf and bent my ear for twenty minutes until it was trombone-shaped, his theme: why I should always include Rico in anything I ever write about trombones, because he’s a groundbreaker, an innovator, a visionary and a legendary figure to boot. And then he threatened to sue me for not including him in this travesty of a sidebar.

“But Mr Rodriguez,” I said, falling back on conventional legal strategy, “you can’t sue me for not including you in something you think you should be in. And besides, it’s only my opinion…”

He barked, "Yeah, man, and it’s a shit opin-yarn” and hung up.

I quickly checked my ear to see if it was still trombone-shaped and discovered to my horror that it was still a trombone, only now it had valves.

Part two of ‘My life as a Trombone’ has just emerged form the foundry and will be available for tooting in a few days