Home

Rico Rodrigues :: GOLDRUSH

No Comments Downloads

Right-Click here for MP3 Download

I worked with Rico over the last twenty years on three projects, “Heroes of Kingston” in 2000, where he played his own track, ‘Wareika Vibes’ [which has been very successful, appearing on many TV screens through the years], but when asked, kindly played some lovely parts for a couple of her tracks, and wouldn’t take any extra fee.

We stayed in touch and soon he recorded a solo album with us, ‘Wareika Vibes’ and during the recording we often sat down and listened to him reminisce about life in London in the sixties, him being the first Rastaman to leave Jamaica, or waiting on a Friday night in Wardour Street for bands to come along to pick him to gig with. “Of course they all wanted the Jamaicans playing for them, because they had the weed,” he would laugh. We all know Rico had such an impact to reggae music through the decades that followed, but he was such a lovely, pleasant and humble man, much different to the behavior some so called music legends adhere to. When we recorded his first album we worked on the backing tracks, but the day before recording started he said to me “I like to read”, so do I, I thought, he always had a rolled up Guardian under his arm… “No, I like my part in front of me.” That set me off on a frenzied twelve hours of learning how to write and transform the lead part onto manuscript paper, which I presented to him the next morning. Looking at it and smiling at me, he nodded. “Ok, that’s ok”. It worked, unless he knew what was happening and just remembered the parts for me. We decided to embark on another album around 2014, but his health was not so good, and had recently stepped down from his role in the Jools Holland band.

We did some tracks, banded about some ideas, played a bit more and he asked “Could I record this?” and started playing a song I vaguely knew, but couldn’t name. We soon started another track, which we jammed along with, both obviously from his younger days. We were to do another session a few months later, we met for lunch, but he had been in hospital and was quite poorly, which he never mentioned at all, and sadly passed away soon after. When I started unravelling the two tracks he asked to record, I realized they must have been from his early days playing the trombone, ‘Hold him Joe’ and ‘Ninety and nine’ both standards he would have been taught at school. We have worked on them and hope he would have been pleased with the result, especially as it would have probably been his last recordings. When I finished working on this album I had a tinge of sadness, but also a sense of pride to have been associated with this great man, its not often you work with your heroes.

Keith Finch January 2019

Facebooktwitterinstagram

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *