Remember that Big Band classic “It Had to Be You”?

Bob Jorgensen does. And when he’s done blowing it on his trumpet, you won’t be able to forget it.

That song will be stuck in your head for days.

It’s a tribute to his skills on a horn. Bob, 80, started tooting at 14 and never stopped.

See him come to life in “The Horn Man” video at: gazettedev.gazette.com/yourspace.

Bob not only toots, he tinkers with instruments. Behind his garage is a little workshop where he has fixed many a sick horn.

“I do reeds and brass,” he says. “I don’t do strings. I probably could if I wanted to, but I don’t want to. I got enough trouble doing this. Takes a lot of patience.”

Carefully aimed patience, that is. Ask him about his last tuba job.

“All I had to do was hit it in a certain spot with a good mallet,” he says. “I just whacked the valve and it started working again.”

(Please, Bob, give me a good whack so I can get that tune out of my head.)

Bob came here from Mississippi in 1970 to repair instruments for a music store. It was his day job.

“I’d go to work and then go play from 8 until midnight,” he says. “I started out in a little club on Wahsatch. I played electric bass in the Broadmoor Tavern.”

Bob performs this Sunday with Bill Emery’s New Century Big Band at Colorado Springs Shrine Club. He also plays gigs for seniors with New Horizons Band.

“I like playing for old people,” he says, “because they know my old songs.”

(So he doesn’t have to say: “What? You don’t remember that song?”)

Bob, a widower since 2006, tried to pass his love of music to his offspring.

A granddaughter still plays a flute he sprang from the junk pile in his workshop years ago.

As for a grandson, well, he had other ideas about music. “I bought him a trumpet, a trombone, a set of drums, a guitar and an electric bass,” Bob quips. “He screamed in his rock band.”

A daughter expressed her talent by belly dancing.

Which, Bob admits, is more than he can do. “I played all these dances and never learned how to dance. Can you believe that? Oh, I did one time when I had too much to drink.”

Bob has lots of stories to tell about back in his heyday. A favorite is about a sophomore with coal-black hair named Charlie Rich.

“I was a senior at the University of Arkansas and I formed a little band and he was my piano player,” Bob says. “He was a strange dude. He never said two words to me.”

Bob isn’t envious of the Silver Fox’s fame. He’s too busy fixing flutes and making saxophones sing. And whacking tubas, if needed.

“I’d like to retire,” he says, “but people still bring me horns to repair.”

—Got a flat horn? Call Bobat 597-2373

Trumpet player Bob Jorgensen then and now Photo by ANDREA BROWN/THE GAZETTE

Andrea Brown, Your Space Columnist Photo by