Giuseppi Logan Quartet – Giuseppi Logan Quartet (1965)

Giuseppi Logan Quartet – Giuseppi Logan Quartet (1965)

Giuseppi Logan was a reeds player (mostly alto sax, but many other instruments besides) who was working with trumpeter/composer Bill Dixon in the early 1960s, but it was Milford Graves who brought him to the attention of Bernard Stollman. According to Stollman, when the band was walking into the studio to record this album, Logan said to him, “If you rob me, I’ll kill you.”

The band on this album features Don Pullen on piano (making his recorded debut), Eddie Gomez on bass, and Milford Graves on both drums and tabla. The five compositions have a kind of lurching swing; Pullen’s hands tumble across the keys in a sort of clanging, barroom approach to free jazz, while Graves’s drumming creates a pulsating rhythm without worrying about momentum, and Gomez keeps busy plucking and throbbing between them. Logan’s style is unique; it seems almost untutored at times, but he’s actually got exquisite control of the horn, and any raggedness or rawness in his phrasing is entirely deliberate. Unfortunately, after making one more album for ESP-Disk, and working with trombonist Roswell Rudd and vocalist Patty Waters, he disappeared from the scene for over three decades; many people thought he was dead. In 2008, he returned to New York, and has since made three albums, backed by younger musicians.