Gary Bartz Ntu Troop - I've Known Rivers and Other Bodies (Prestige)

I’ve been on a serious Gary Bartz jag lately. It’s a bender bolstered mostly by his parts on the Cellar Door Sessions, which, while hardly revelatory, still throw down hard. Along with the listening, I’ve come across commentary from a couple folks on a sister jazz site busting Bartz’s chops. This ROW pick is meant as both a recrimination and a general cry of phooey toward such claims. Any of the Ntu Troop records waxed for Prestige in the early Seventies could lend credence my side of the debate, but the live nature of this one gives it an edge.

Bartz was still feeling the contact high of his Miles assignment a few years previous when he and his band gigged the Montreux Festival in ’73. Crowds were smaller by an order of magnitude than the gargantuan dates with Davis, but Bartz brought the same level of enthusiasm and showmanship to the stage. The Troop mustered at his flanks exposed his Blakey-like proboscis for sniffing out young talent. Harold Eaves replaced the absent Andy Bey on keys both electric and acoustic, his Fender working from a particularly groove-rich reservoir. Stafford James exhibited a similar versatility on basses both upright and slung. Bartz assumed vocal chores alongside his customary alto and soprano, and Howard King, all of seventeen, fashioned exuberant funk and rock-fed rhythms from behind the drum kit.

Bartz establishes the laidback mood on the double album opener “Nommo-The Majick Song” with an Africanized entreaty to everyone in the audience with “bad thoughts and bad vibrations” to split forthwith. Subsequent tracks also borrow from other Ntu Troop albums. “Jujuman” cops its core theme freely from Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” while “Bertha Baptist” gets into swirling funk fireworks on the strength of Eaves’ rippling lead line and a driving rhythm from James and King. Bartz’s soprano is tart, his alto less acerbic, but exhibiting equal agility through a steady succession of solos. Lyrics are lame in spots with slogans like the “dancing is part of being black” directive of “Don’t Fight That Feeling” bluntly dating the set. If anything though, they also indicate that Bartz’s world-class afro wasn’t just for show.