Un Poco Loco

For the song from Coco, see Coco (soundtrack). For the Bobby Hutcherson album, see Un Poco Loco (album).

"Un Poco Loco" is an Afro-Cuban jazz standard composed by American jazz pianist Bud Powell.^[1][2] It was first recorded for Blue Note Records by Powell, Curly Russell, and Max Roach on May 1, 1951.^[3][4]

"Un Poco Loco"
Single by Bud Powell
from the album The Amazing Bud Powell, Volume One
B-side	"It Could Happen to You"
Released	1951 (1951)
Genre	Jazz
Length	4:42
Label	Blue Note
Songwriter(s)	Bud Powell
Producer(s)	Alfred Lion
Bud Powell singles chronology
"Hallelujah" (1951) "Un Poco Loco" (1951)

Musical characteristics

"Un Poco Loco" is in thirty-two bar form.^[4] It uses the lydian scale, incorporating chords overlapping chords to imply a polytonality (D major 7 over C major 7: CEGBDF#AC#) with the improvisation based on an alternating polytonality and an altered dominant chord. Particularly remarkable to jazz musicians is the placement of C# against a C major 7 chord; James Weidman attributed this to bitonality, while Tardo Hammer attributed it to an extension of the circle of fifths.^[5]

Legacy

In the late 1980s, literary and cultural critic Harold Bloom included "Un Poco Loco" in his list of the most "sublime" works of twentieth-century American art (from his introduction to Modern Critical Interpretations: Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow).^[6]