Rico

Trombonist Rico Rodriguez ranked among Jamaica's busiest session players during the pre-ska years, later serving as a key spark for the late-1970s Two-Tone wave in Britain through both solo releases and his role in the Specials. Born October 17, 1934, he first took up music at Kingston's Alpha Cottage School, a home for wayward boys, where the legendary Don Drummond taught him trombone. In the years that followed he became one of the island's most respected session musicians, often working under producer Duke Reid. Months before ska erupted, Rodriguez moved to the U.K. in 1961, cutting sides for the fledgling Island label and performing regularly on the jazz and R&B circuits with Georgie Fame's Blue Flames and other groups. He stayed in demand as a session player, appearing on Sugar & Dandy's 1967 classic "A Message to You Rudy." Although he kept a permanent home in Britain, Rodriguez upheld his Rastafarian convictions, and Island frequently financed return trips to Kingston so he could record with the city's leading players; jazz remained his core style, yet he adapted his improvisational technique to sessions by notables such as Sly & Robbie. In 1977 he released the solo album Man from Wareika under the name Rico, followed a year later by Midnight in Ethiopia. Rodriguez joined the Specials for their 1979 cover of "A Message to You Rudy" and soon became a full-time member; on the band's Two-Tone label he also directed his own group, Rico & the Rudies, producing the albums Blow Your Horn and Brixton Cat. Again recording simply as Rico, he issued That Man Is Forward in 1981 and its 1982 follow-up, Jama. Session work then occupied him for more than a decade until the mid-1990s, when he resurfaced with solo projects that included 1995's Roots to the Bone and 1997's Tribute to Don Drummond.