“Coco Loco (La Guajira)” by Herb Alpert

A truly wonderful song and a scintillatingly superb performance, Diego Verdaguer’s “Coco Loco (La Guajira)” is the highlight of Herb Alpert’s fine 1982 album Fandango. Featuring a lovely trumpet line performed by Alpert – who has probably never gotten the credit he deserves for his supple, lovely playing – and highlighting a superbly lithe arrangement from Bill Cuomo, “Coco Loco” is a masterpiece of easy going South of the Border dance music.

Alpert is featured along with Bill Cuomo’s keyboards, synthesizers and a delicious strings arrangement, Miguel Peña’s guitar, Victor Ruiz Pazos’s bass, Carlos Vega’s drums and session master Paulinho DaCosta’s perfectly realized percussion. The group crafts a positively hypnotic groove here that one wishes could have exceeded its two minute and 54 second playing time.

The clip included here isn’t the best. You’ll have to turn it up to hear it properly. And, the poster doesn’t seem to know exactly what they are posting. But, surprisingly, there are no other samples of “Coco Loco” on YouTube and, of course, the song is not readily available on CD or iTunes (for the record, Diego Verdaguer’s own version of the song can be found on Inolvidable, which is on CD and iTunes).

This one almost breathes of the finest vacation you can imagine.

Here is Diego Verdaguer’s wonderful original: