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Former Jazz Star Giuseppi Logan Returns to East Village for Comeback Attempt

By Patrick Hedlund | August 27, 2010 9:42am | Updated on August 27, 2010 11:11am

By Patrick Hedlund

DNAinfo News Editor

EAST VILLAGE — Up until recently, most New York City jazz fans thought musician Giuseppi Logan was dead.

That was before the former saxophone star came strolling into a Midtown music shop two years ago looking to buy a new reed for his horn.

“I said, ‘Who are you man, Giuseppi Logan?’” recalled musician Matt Lavelle, 40, of Washington Heights, who was working in the shop’s brass section at the time.

“He said, ‘Yeah, I’m back, and I need to go back to playing.’”

So he did.

Nowadays, East Villagers can find him performing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and other classics at Tompkins Square Park.

But he isn’t just another street musician playing for loose change.

“For many years I didn’t play the horn,” said Logan, 75, guiding the sax’s mouthpiece toward his unwieldy gray beard at the park’s northwest corner. “I’ve been coming out here to get myself in good shape.”

Logan, once a notable contributor to the city’s experimental jazz scene, suddenly vanished at the peak of his career, only to resurface more than three decades later for the most unlikely of comeback attempts.

“His intent was to finish his life playing music,” Lavelle said, “after coming back from wherever he’d been.”

Logan is originally from Philadelphia, but came in New York in the mid ’60s after studying music at Boston’s New England Conservatory.

Once in the city, living on Bleecker Street, he began to rise up in the local jazz circles and recorded two albums, performing with such luminaries as John Coltrane and Dizzie Gillespie along the way.

But during his prime Logan became addicted to drugs and eventually found himself in and out of mental institutions and estranged from his wife and children.

He left New York about 1980, he said, relocating to Norfolk, Va., where his sister lived, until deciding to make an unexpected return.

“I come out here every day. I make a few dollars,” said Logan, who now lives in supportive housing on East Fourth Street. “I gotta pay my rent.”

If he earns enough to buy a bag of chips, he noted, that’s enough. But the goal remains to get back on stage.

Many details of Logan’s life during his time away are sketchy, but his main reason for returning was to reignite a once promising career that many believed had burned out decades earlier.

When he arrived back in the city, he was homeless and sleeping in phone booths — but had his saxophone and a determination to find work, Lavelle explained.

“I’ve never detected any of the mental illness that he may have been diagnosed with. He’s more focused and stronger,” Lavelle said. “He still has his demons and that, but I think he’s past it. Music is all he really has at this point.”

The two began playing together in their spare time, and word soon started spreading throughout the neighborhood that Logan had returned.

“Once he got the stability of a place to live, we decided to try to take it to the next level, which was make a CD,” Lavelle said. “There was a rumor going around he couldn’t play.”

Logan landed a handful of local gigs, and was soon approached by Tompkins Square Records to put down some new tracks.

What resulted was an eight-song album by the newly formed Giuseppi Logan Quintet — a remarkable turnaround for someone who’d barely touched the saxophone for decades.

“He’s really growing leaps and bounds. He sounds really good now,” said Judy Rhodes, a jazz producer, photographer and owner of Charlie Parker’s landmarked former residence on Avenue B. “He sounds so much better now than when I first met him two years ago.”

Rhodes found Logan through a local church that had been helping him when he first arrived, and she would occasionally take him out for hamburger or lend him a few dollars to keep him on his feet.

“He’s out there running around. He doesn’t look that healthy, but I think he’s healthier than some of us,” said Rhodes, 73. “He flies on the street. I think he’s so driven to make this happen again.”

But aside from a few packed houses at performances in New York and Philadelphia, the gigs haven’t been coming as steady as Logan would like.

He plays semi-regularly at local venues, but hasn’t broken through to the point where he can fully support himself by performing.

“I think his age and the way he relates to reality, its almost like he’s a time traveler,” Lavelle said. “He’ still like from the ’60s. For him to get gigs and promote himself in 2010, it’s just not there for him.”

Tompkins Square Park has at least provided a venue for Logan make some money and get noticed. While some passersby scowl at him — tired of hearing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” for the umpteenth time — most stop to offer a smile and sometimes a dollar or two for the effort.

“I see him all the time. He always plays nice songs,” said Eve Cusson, who’s lived on Avenue C for the past 40 years. “I want to encourage him to stay. Underneath the pain, you can see what’s there.”

Logan’s constant presence in the park speaks to his commitment to the craft — and his understanding that music is the one thing keeping him going.

“Living the kind of life he’s lived, he’s at the point where he’s accepting of the fact that today or tomorrow could be his last day,” Lavelle said. “Just that fact that’s he’s in the city and trying to play at all is something. … You got to have a lot of faith to take a leap like that.”