Read on Twitter
One evening in London, @robertrotifer and I were on our way to an Amy Winehouse headline gig at the Empire when Robert was told that, sadly, and, alas, so predictably, it had been cancelled. But the other act on the bill just took over Bush Hall for the evening. It was Toots.
By the time we'd walked there, the place was packed, but, thanks to a Jamaican musician we knew and met by chance at the stage door, we got in. Toots walked on and took all of five seconds to transform the small venue into the most joyful of pandemoniums.
Mike held to his chest - his voice was so powerful that he barely needed one -, he went through one of the greatest repertoires in any genre of popular music in front of 200 or so people who couldn't believe their luck.
A couple of friends joined him. "Ladies and gentelemen... Ernest Ranglin!" Good Lord...then "a Jamaican lady is here tonight, a good friend...Grace Jones!" who ran dancing on the small stage, wrapped in a gauze veil and dress and not much else.
Robert and I have been recording together over the last week and, somehow, we ended up talking about this gig, reminding each other of how it had been one of the most life-affirmingly beautiful things we'd ever witnessed. And then, this morning, the awful news.
I'm sure there are thousands of people in this world who felt like us, shocked, bereft. Toots was not 'just' a master entertainer, a great singer and songwriter. Friends who knew him tell me he was as generous in person as he was in his music. How generous he must have been.
Let's just be thankful that he shared it with us all. RIP Toots.
