I saw him to enter to the  old set  of the street San Miguel one of the first days of 1996 "to make a solo", said in the door. Enriqueta Almanza had thought about him to touch in the last night, famous bolero-mambo of Bobby Collazo, in the new disc of Omara Portuondo because "here makes lack of Rubén´s  sound ". Enriqueta produced those recordings. Somebody expressed their doubts: He will be able? How he is not going to be able, she said. In that moment Rubén arrived. He  walked with difficulty and he smiled all along. It greeted well-known and strangers, because in his memory they were already begun to confuse. A long time ago he  did not work, by arthritis. I have understood that by then the old piano of its house had been devastated by the termite.

He touched the last night, well, flavorfully, as all the life and soon followed with the fingers in the keyboard while the presents approached to talk, to ask to him how Rubén goes to you, and mainly, to remember last pranks between musicians in a carnival, a remote dance, a performance in Japan years back. Does not exist pause in recording some in which he does not repeat thousand times you remember? you remember? and this was not the exception. While they spoke to him, Rubén "put" any thing in the piano - fragments of danzones, montunos or songs of the style of All The Things You Are- without paying much attention to the words. This man touched with Arsenio Rodriguez, God mine, thought I.

Those days of year 96 were going to be decisive for the life of some of the people whom it was called to participate in that disc of Omara Portuondo (among them, the trombonist Jesus Aguajes Ramos, the percussionist Amadito Valdés, the trumpet Manuel Guajiro Mirabal, the bass,  Cachaíto Lopez and the own singer) then in March, also in the studies of San Miguel, would record discs To all Cuba likes and Buena Vista Social Club, thanks to the diligence of Juan de Marcos González, who in time record - because the study was contracted conceived a nourished and many-colored staff, after the impossibility to make the project original of Ry Cooder and the producer Nick Gold to reunite in Havana to a group of musicians of Mali to touch Cuban music. To the African to be beached in Paris by difficulties with their migratory documents, the guitar slide Ry Cooder and the strange drum of their Joachim son were integrated to group formed basically by popular musical veterans of Cuba: Compay Segundo, Cachaíto, Pío Leyva, Ibrahím, Puntillita... and Rubén.

After publication of A all Cuba..., awarded the Buena Vista..., and of the successful Introducing Rubén González, (in which the pianist acts with a minimum format and gained a Grammy Award 2000), Cooder declared to the press that was "the greatest soloist of piano which I have listened in my life. A Cuban crossing between Thelonius Monk and the Gato  Felix ". The phrase has been repeated in very many languages since then.

I had the luck to be near Rubén González in the preparation of its disc Fiddle (2000), his second like titling for the company World Circuit. He often visited it in his house and we left some times, always in old cars of rent. We spoke much, all along. He took old recordings to him to listen to them together: "He hears what well touches Anselmo Sacasas, what taste, what Cuban. He tries to obtain to some disc of the orchestra of Belisario Lopez with Facundo Rivero, you are going to see what pianist that one... tremendous type ". The greater flattery than could dedicate to somebody was "sounds to him very Cuban", but he did not lavish that distinction.

Late I accompanied he until the house by his friend Senén Suárez, with whom many years back had touched in the set of Grenet in Tropicana and written with him Melody of the river. He wanted to record in a new Melody disc of the Riviera, of Senén, music that was singing by several days, and I believe that later it forgot, like so many other things that dissolved in their memory. The urgency whereupon performances, tests, recordings followed one another and constant interviews stunned a little, although already at that time I do not believe that he became aware too much of which it happened to his work. To reach world-wide celebrity in the threshold of the eighty years of age does not have to be game thing.

They enchanted hot to him dogs and to take cold milk. When one seated to the piano that he had by those years - electronic instrument that simulated perfectly the acoustic sound touched, first, “El cadete constitucional”. I do not know if because danzón felt predilection by that, If it told you, mixed with his As I and Laura feel, song to which it put in passages to him of a nocturnal one of Chopin: "each note of that Pole is a drop of his blood". In 1974 he recorded a disc of boleros destined to Radio Enciclopedia, that the sound of the electrical organ is not better by the tendency to use in some tracks, something novel in those years. Some good single one was left in its recordings with the Soneto de Jazz de Pucho Escalante in the years 60 and very few and brief in the discs with the orchestra of Enrique Jorrín, in which do are excellent orquestationed, of the best ones than they knew charangas the time. I also recommence some loose recordings that Fabian did next to the bear Garcíaa (Fabiando), the Papines (Descarga Papines), and those that made as arranger  and accompanying of unjustly today forgotten Carlos Embale. In the series Stars of Areito (1979)he  is his performance better developed, the extension of his creative fullness in a free atmosphere of "unloading", climate in which Rubén felt to his wide ones, which is evident. He is not accidental that in the middle of extensive single his, is listened to the voice of a musician who exclaims: "and that that is two hands". Moments shining of Rubén in those albums - not yet published in Cuba in digital support -:  Mi amanecer campesino, Yo si como candela, Guaguancó a todos los barrios, El pregón de la montaña y Fefita.

Throughout many years Rubén González was writing his memories. I think that sometimes they will see the light. I trust that they are in good hands.