http://loungerenownrecords.com/ photo of Jay from website...To read deeply moving piece on Jay http://loungerenownrecords.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=115&Itemid=151
A star football player at Carter Middle School, Jaee was an honor roll student who lived with his father, 7-year-old sister, Jaelena, and grandmother, Dorothy, in North Oakland. His dad remembers Jaee as a talented singer, an athlete who overcame asthma to become a starting running back on the Berkeley Cougars football team and a loving, intelligent teen who worried about his friends. “My son wanted to help everyone. He thought he was Superman,” Logan, 43, says.
Jaee’s death was one of 148 homicides in Oakland in 2006, the highest total in more than a decade. Nearly three-quarters of the city’s homicides that year were street shootings, and about half were the result of undetermined motives."
I am teary eyed...perpetual exhaustion but I feel quiet joy to be in contact with Jay Logan, Giuseppie Logan's son and he today he texted me and called me "angel lady".
A year ago I found GL playing his sax on a freezing cold day like today and the park was desolate. I am an artist....I know the feeling...the drive, the passion and the lack of an audience so I asked if I might film him. He played a haunting rendition of "Begin the Beguine". I knew I had something powerful and I ran home and posted what felt like a mini-film...magical New York Moments.
When I posted the footage on YouTube I found footage of Giuseppi Logan (he drops the "e" on his record covers) with his small son Jay in the very same park Tompkins from 1966.
What I did not know is people thought Giuseppie "Giuseppi Logan" jazz musician and composer was dead. I was to receive countless missives from people all around the world deeply moved by my YouTube.
I first saw Jay in a YouTube as a small boy, 1966, being escorted with his Dad and dog that showed up along with my YouTube in the very same park, Tompkins! There is a close up of their hands locked in a loving embrace, father and son and I get teary eyes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSb-JgMIeuA The clip is from a film by Edward English and the very end of the segment has GL returning with his son and dog from Tompkins to his home nearby to be happily greeted by his wife.
Shortly after posting Tim Madison, a writer contacted me. He was deeply moved by my YouTube. I asked him to watch the other YouTube. It looks like Tompkins Square Park! I could not believe it. I doubted my reality and asked Tim to reassure me. Tim was the first person to explain the depth of GL...his contribution with his music and his composing. When I first posted the YouTube a gentleman with the YouTube name Raggety commented "He lives".
GL's life has a vibe like "The Soloist" but it is a New York City story and the fracture of a family because his wife would divorce him, sell his instruments and take their son to the West Coast. GL star was rising but so was his need to self destruct. There are hints of anger in his eyes when the topic comes up but I understand why she left.
Giuseppie Logan had made two albums (you can find them on Amazon.com) that people have contacted me about and told me they still have before he disappeared. I want tell you the story now. I am too tired.
I am also used to people ripping off my work and not acknowledging me so it was something to have the publisher of Signal to Noise, Pete Gershon write a piece "Out from the Shadow" and he opens with reference to the film maker English's video clip on YouTube in Tompkins and mine almost 50 years apart. Pete Gershon refers to me has artist and community activist.
In the background of English's clip on YouTube is one of Giuseppi Logan's original compositions and GL's talks about wanting to support himself and his family through his music. Jay is playing in the children's park still there today but fenced in and now you can find GL's as an old man playing on a park bench near that children's park.
I hope to film Giuseppie and Jay Logan reunited for the first time in over 30 years this January!!!!!
I remember I was deeply moved and I spoke with Tim Madison. We both said we watched the YouTube I made over and over. My immediate response as always is too withdraw. I also rarely go out and have yet to hear GL play in a professional setting but Tim urged me to follow up. I felt unsure but I did and have.
One of Jay's friends, another talented musician and angel as well contacted me on behalf of Jay and through him and another key player, musican and angel Matt Lavelle who is dedicated to GL and is constantly getting him bookings to play and helping him earn money worked to communicate and we got Jay GL's address, new phone no. although mostly the phone is not working and the message the Jay hopes to see Giuseppie in January.
Here is a link about Jay and it also can move you to tears...he and his wife lost their son in a random act of violence -- heartbreaking...I have never asked GL certain questions and one is does he know about the loss of his grandson. I am sure he does. I just can't bring myself to ask, at least yet. The link has inspiring information so please read
I am exhausted so it is hard to absorb -- I took these paragraphs from his bio....want to cry...
"SAVOY, or Stop All Violence on Youth
It was a beautiful summer day when Jay Logan dropped off his 14-year-old son Jaee in West Oakland on July 2, 2006, to attend a barbecue with friends. Three hours later, he received a call that Jaee had been shot and killed.
It was a beautiful summer day when Jay Logan dropped off his 14-year-old son Jaee in West Oakland on July 2, 2006, to attend a barbecue with friends. Three hours later, he received a call that Jaee had been shot and killed.
A star football player at Carter Middle School, Jaee was an honor roll student who lived with his father, 7-year-old sister, Jaelena, and grandmother, Dorothy, in North Oakland. His dad remembers Jaee as a talented singer, an athlete who overcame asthma to become a starting running back on the Berkeley Cougars football team and a loving, intelligent teen who worried about his friends. “My son wanted to help everyone. He thought he was Superman,” Logan, 43, says.
Jaee’s death was one of 148 homicides in Oakland in 2006, the highest total in more than a decade. Nearly three-quarters of the city’s homicides that year were street shootings, and about half were the result of undetermined motives."
I can't wait to photograph them together in Tompkins and to film them together.
They want to reunite. They want to play together. Giuseppie told me he wants to record with his son on his old label. Both Father and Son are deeply talented, musically gifted souls that live and breath their music and always have instruments nearby. GL and his son play many instruments and GL has told me proudly how gifted his son is. GL's small living space by Tompkins given to him by the Salvation Army is filled with instruments that GL's has bought or been given as gifts.
I can't wait to film this deeply moving reunion in Tompkins Square Park.
I have a YouTube series and I can't wait for the day towards the end of January to add the footage that will mirror the past and marry the future none could have imagined a year ago and tell more of the story of the YouTube I found from 1966 when I posted mine from 2008.
Here is one of fourteen in my playlist and here he plays a new composition he has written. My first YouTube I tell you he needs a home and a place to write music. (If you look to the right down the side is the playlist of 14 YouTubes.
This man has been through so much, suffered so much even if some was self inflicted and he comes back here as I often myself returning to Tompkins to a hexagon where I have a poem not to far from where GL plays...it says miss you, miss the trees, miss the NY idiosyncrasies...the word missing from these few words of my poem is "love" which is implied....
how touching that where I first filmed GL -- he is standing by my poem in the hexagon by the fountain.
Sometimes I feel like he and I are ghosts from one of the short stories I have written but this is real life and he has come back from the dead -- so many people had just assumed he had died but he did not and he came back from what seemed like being dead to compose more music, to play with the constant love and support of Matt Lavelle and now to reunite with his gifted son.
I do not need to go out to see a movie...my life feels like a film...
I am exhausted...too tired to fix the fonts, typos but as usual the passion and the work are what is important.
To artists, passionate artists, to the magical of New York, the internet, YouTube and google...
to miracles of all sizes so much in need....
Happy New Year,
Love Suzannah
Note: I am not Steve Lopez -- never had a job at a newspaper and working at the LA Times made all the difference when it came to helping his subject. He brokered a deal, a book, a movie and helped create a foundation in Nathan's name to help artists in need.
I pray a film or films are made about Giuseppie Logan, his son and Grandson (rest in peace) that tell the passionate story of the human spirit of artists compelled to make music -- to play on and one day there will be a foundation to based in NYChttp://www.naayers.org/ A foundation here would help someone like Jim Mosaic Man Powers and his dog Jesse Jane and many other really brilliant artists that struggle with homelessness and other issues. I can't have contact with Jim anymore because he has these moods and his treatment of me unacceptable but I wish he had a foundation as well as other support systems trained to help him and support his art.
Steve Lopez was given so much support and resources while I have been given "sub-zero. Anyone who knows me knows the reason why I believe this is. It is a boys club and only "girls" that power date and or know their place belong. I do not. Just look to my art work protesting Mike Bloomberg and how much coverage it got...brilliant work that I believe will be acknowledged by history. Thank goodness for YouTube even though it has it's down side and I was banned for 28 hours. Google did apologize and that was meaningful.
p.s. I am exhausted and as many of you know I was wrongly banned from YouTube -- imagine if YouTube Google had not restored my work.....? I have made zero dollars from my YouTube work but I feel my documenting GL is as powerful as the Susan Boyle YouTube phenomenon with no help from main stream media so on a humble level but deeply moving and powerful.
