July 28, 2003

Just Happy to Be a Central Park Troubadour

ailure hasn't spoiled David Ippolito. Success hasn't spoiled him either, and he has had his share of both, this shirtless and barefoot troubadour of Central Park who calls himself "the most famous person no one knows."

He is famous for serenading large crowds on warm Sunday afternoons on a grassy hill on the western shore of the rowboat lake. There with the sun-dappled waters and gilded Fifth Avenue towers as a backdrop, Mr. Ippolito, who also styles himself "That Guitar Man in Central Park," (that sounding less pretentious than the) applies his lyrical light baritone to original ballads like "(Thank Heaven We're Not Both) Crazy on the Same Day" and "Who the Hell Knows," and spirited singalongs to classics like "Country Roads."

A dozen years of such performances on the Hill, as he calls the lakefront area a few blocks north of Strawberry Fields and West 72nd Street, have built him a large following. Regulars parrot his shticks as faithfully as midnight audiences at "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," and tourists from around the world rain e-mail messages on him. A few even know that Mr. Ippolito, 47, walked away with $64,000 from "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire."

"I really feel it's going to happen for him," said Sid Bernstein, 84, the rock manager and promoter who brought the Beatles to New York in 1964 and has been a fan since happening upon Mr. Ippolito in the park about five years ago.

Yet through no lack of trying — a busy Manhattan stage circuit with Saturday sunset concerts at Pier 45 in Hudson River Park at West 10th, Tuesday night shows at the SoHo Playhouse in the South Village and the marathon six-hour gigs at the lake — Mr. Ippolito has yet to hit it big. He has no agent or manager, although he does have a Web site (www.thatguitarman.com). He has no deal with a record label, although he has self-produced five CD's, "three of them pretty good," he says. No radio station has ever played his music.

His is a story of artistic fortitude, not that different, perhaps, from that of other struggling artists. "When you hit rock bottom, it may be the best gift a human being can get," he said. "After that, everything becomes the most amazing journey."

Strumming his electric guitar and sweeping back his wavy brown hair, he regales audiences with commentary and impersonations and delivers an authentic-sounding "Sweet Baby James." He plays and composes by ear and doesn't read music. His compositions range from the satiric, like "Talk Louder," a put-down of the obnoxious cellphone caller, to autobiographical laments of lost love like "Wedding in Danville" and "Another 15 Years," and a tribute to New York after 9/11, "City Song." Besides James Tayor he also mimics Paul Simon, Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan and Barry Manilow.

Children toddle up to dance to his songs or drop their parents' bills into his guitar case, which he opens a respectable distance away from his microphone. "It's not about the money" is all he will say about that. Boaters row over to hear him. Engagements have been staged to his music. And who knows what else? A woman once introduced her young son to him, telling her son in front of Mr. Ippolito: "You wouldn't be here if not for this man." Sting has stopped by. So have John Mellancamp, Jerry Seinfeld, Yoko Ono, Bruce Willis and other celebrities.

"He sings to my soul," said Phyllis Shaitelman, 59, an eighth-grade teacher in Washington Heights who said she comes every Sunday.

Mr. Ippolito thrives on the acclaim. "You're looking at the luckiest man alive," he tells his audiences.

His mother died in 1987 of cancer, leaving his father, a fireman, a widower. David studied the guitar, became a graphic artist, joined an actor's studio and worked in restaurants.

Then, he said, drugs and alcohol discovered him. He joined with four other street musicians, playing the bars in Greenwich Village and subsisting mainly on beer and tequila. "I'd wake up in some girl's bed and hit the sidewalk and look for the World Trade Center to see where I was, and sometimes it was across the river," he said. Nothing was beneath him, Mr. Ippolito recalled: "I would steal a 20 out of someone's wallet."

He resolved to get sober and went six months without a drink. Then he binged again and blacked out in his small Hell's Kitchen apartment. He awoke, he said, on Jan. 4, 1992, and sank to his knees. "I can't do this any more, God help me," he remembered praying. And that was it, he said. He quit.

Then one day in June 1992, riding through the park in a taxi he spotted the Hill. "It was out of the way," he recalled. "I didn't want much traffic."

The following Saturday he returned to set up his mike and two small amplifiers. People were sitting on the grass. "Is it going to bother anybody if I play?" he asked. Nobody objected. He played. There was applause. "Please don't," he said he begged. "It's just us."

One of the people passing by who stopped to listen was Jack Rosenthal, then the editorial page editor of The New York Times. Inspired by the concert, he got Mr. Ippolito's name and wrote an editorial for the Sunday paper. Suddenly fame had found Mr. Ippolito. He was excitedly back the next week, calling himself "That Guitar Man." And back again just about every weekend when the temperature hit 60 or more, his performing threshold.

By 2000, after a few dustups with the Parks Department, he was established enough to snag a series of concerts in Merkin Hall. Eartha Kitt was a well-wisher. His girlfriend's daughter also persuaded him to call in as a possible contestant for "Who Wants to be a Millionaire." He qualified and won the first round by correctly putting a number of literary works in chronological order.

The $64,000 he ultimately walked off with went to replace the girlfriend's stolen car and this and that; now it's basically gone. Which leaves him untroubled and happy to return to the Hill each Sunday with his open guitar case and general anonymity. "This is soooooo cool," he said.