Puerto Rican pianist, composer, and bandleader Joe Loco, like many Puerto Ricans of his time, was born and raised in NYC in the 1920s. As a young man, he was groomed to be a Vaudeville dancer then segued into playing the piano, specializing in jazz, which was all the rage in NY at the time. As a pianist for Machito, Joe helped form the emerging hybrid that today, we call Latin jazz.