Willie Colon plays DC on farewell tour!!!!!

this lp which i'm proud to say i found for a buck at crooked beat records has also been critical in spurring my interest in fania salsa and more generally latin music.....its a compilation of willie colon materiall... and i cannot say willie colon without confessing my heartbreak in reading this week that willie colon brought his career closing tour to the H20 club here in dc... why am i hearbroken? because colon who started recording at 15 (!!!!!!!) is retiring afte 40 years in the biz from touring to concentrate on writing or so he says... well the gist is just last week i looked on his web site and pollstar to find out if he was touring and found out he was putting together this career ending tour but there was no mention of any dates at all.. fast forward to yesterday when i pick up a paper and find a review of his concert! ahhhhhh..no fair! in any case willie colon has to be one of the most important salsa musicians of all time... sure, he plays the trombone but his role in arranging and writing and in some sense helping make the careers of two of salsa's top singers ruben blades (the willie colon masterpiece "siembra" was recorded with blades) and hector lavoe (my absolute favorite salsa meister these days) merits him full on legend tag... in any case back to this lp... this is some no name compilation but its got all the right names and cherry picks from colon's vast fania catalog to include a song with celia cruz, one with blades and most importantly to me SEVEN classics with hector lavoe iincluding some of the best songs this genre has ever seen: i'm talking "el dia de mi suerte " ("the day of my luck"), la murga, che che cole, abuelita etc......anyways this greatest hits titled willie colon su vida musical 14 exitos originales (so creative: "willie colon his musical life 14 original hits") was released by some no name label profono internacional in 1982 and its a winner.... and who knows maybe i'll trek somewhere to catch willie colon's show... check out some of willie colon's album covers from fania if you can find them (the reissues are worth it just for the cover art)..i'm talking "el malo" ("the bad one"), "the hustler", etc....check them out on ebay...