Some things you need to speak about more than once. Hence this column today in SO IT GO, which ran many months ago in this space Stabroek News has generously given me a long time now to vent my feelings. Nuff said.
A number of years ago I played in Castries at the funeral of a St Lucian friend who had died after a tough 2-year battle with cancer. His name was Bobby Clarke, and our friendship goes back to the early 1970s when Tradewinds were popular all over the Caribbean and came to make the first of many appearances in St Lucia. During my time in music, I have met, literally, hundreds of people, but only a few have become special. Bobby Clarke was one of those. In the 35 years after we met, even with him living in St. Lucia and me mostly in Grand Cayman, or latterly Guyana, I don’t think any two-month period passed without us talking to each other or visiting each other. I had even played with Tradewinds, at Bobby’s wedding in St Lucia. The bond between us never weakened. We told each other everything. We had become brothers, out of the blue, one Guyanese, one Lucian, simply propelled by the music. Important point to a long story.
