Bud Powell: Un Poco Loco

"Un Poco Loco" can't be autobiographical because Bud Powell was more than a little crazy. Bopped on the noggin by, respectively, nightstick-wielding cops and a pistol-whipping bouncer in the mid-1940s, Bud was later assaulted by psychiatrists brandishing electroconvulsive therapy and repeated institutionalizations (one lasting a year). If Bud hadn't been loco before, he'd sure be post-"treatment." All of which makes "Un Poco Loco" even more redoubtable. Applying the Afro-Cuban approach that fellow bebopper Dizzy Gillespie had previously explored, Powell solos over Roach's relentless cowbell with the brilliant clarity of a cosmologist describing far-off galaxies as if he'd been there. Maybe Bud had.