I’m getting used to living in a city again. I’ve lived in Boston for a few years. Los Angeles. But for the most part, I’ve always gravitated to the exurban life. Occasionally the suburbs would swallow the exurbs I was in, but I’d generally moved on by then. Not always because the police told me to.

Mérida, Yucatan, where I am now, is big. Depending on how you count its metropolitan area, it’s got either just under a million souls, or 1.3 million. That’s about the same population of the entire state of Maine. Not many people here have even heard of Maine, when they ask me where we fled from. We usually give up after a few tries and say, “Boston,” and that satisfies them, if not me.

This city is like Los Angeles used to be, though. Not much of it is over a two stories tall. It’s spread out all over, but the houses are packed cheek to jowl. You can wander a long way without encountering any gap between buildings. The zoning is by sixteen-sided dice, I think. Everything is everywhere. You can encounter all kinds of things just by wandering around aimlessly. All kinds of people, too, if you’re open to it.

Yesterday evening, we went out to eat with some friends. After we lightened the larder at a sitdown restaurant, we walked down the Corredor Gastronomico, the long strip of restaurants, nightspots, and general folderol this city offers to the sunburned and the thirsty, i.e., us. We pounded dinner home with some frosty helado, sat outside, and watched the parade of people passing by. It’s in the mid-seventies at night, so we decided to just keep wandering around, in search of a nightcap or something.

We got to the head of the remate, the butt end of the big north-south boulevard called the Paseo Montejo. We’ve been there plenty of times before. We were going to pass on by, when we heard the clear, clarion call of a trumpet. Music spills out into the street from lots of doorways, but you can always tell when music isn’t recorded. And a trumpet carries further than other instruments. We shrugged and said, “What the hell,” and went to find our Mérida Joshua.

There was an unusual combo playing at the Tropico 56, an indoor/outdoor place we’ve been to plenty. There was the trumpet we heard first, joined by a keyboard, a pretty girl singer, and a percussionist. We sat down and decided to put ourselves outside some beers, and hang a while.

They were really good, and favored exactly the stuff we’d always like to hear, but never do. One Note Samba. Spooky, by the Classics IV, or the Atlanta Rhythm Section, depending on how old you are, or they were, at the time. We especially liked Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps:

We’ve always loved the Perez Prado version, but you can hear everyone from Doris Day to Cake performing that one.

So it was an eclectic, very cool jazz and pop combo, with an equally eclectic mix of music. When they took a break, the trumpet player walked by, and we asked him if he spoke English. He answered in American TV weatherman diction, which made us laugh. We asked him the name of the band. He said he didn’t know, but he’d ask, which also struck us funny.

Music is like that sometimes. Combos, especially jazz combos, are often put together on the fly. Guys that can really play can simply be plugged in at the last minute and still do the job. My brother is like that. I never was. I noticed the trumpet player reading a chart over the keyboard player’s shoulder. That’s a tell. He might not have ever played some of the tunes before, but as long as he could see the chart, no one in the audience would notice. His name was David Terran.

We got to chatting, because he used to live in Los Angeles, and my brother owns a music store in West LA that’s popular with jazz musicians, among others. Then he casually mentioned I might know who his father was. I did, and I bet you do too, even though you don’t know you do. I’m pretty sure this is him, playing the trumpet:

His dad was Tony Terran, a member of The Wrecking Crew, a loose assortment of regular recording sidemen that I’ve written about before. They played on so many hit records that if I listed them, the internet would run out of pixels. Tony played with everyone from Sinatra to Jay Z. You can check out a partial listing of his film work, television credits, and various kinds of music here.

Here he is making a featured appearance on I Love Lucy:

Tony passed away several years back, full of years and accolades. I’m sure he would have enjoyed hearing his son play outside the Tropico. I know we did.