Follow The Medicine Man

Gary Bartz NTU Troop: Standin' On The Corner and Sing Me A Song Today
From: Follow The Medicine Man [Prestige, 1972]

Where's the love for Gary Bartz? One of the most consistently high performers of the fusion scene, Bartz seems to have been labelled as a purely smooth soul jazz musician. This is no doubt mainly due to the great success of his classic Mizell Brothers productions such as Music Is My Sanctuary in the late seventies but Bartz had a lot more strings to his, eh, alto saxophone than this.

Having toured with Max Roach and Miles Davis (including soloing on the classic Live-Evil) Bartz knew his roots when he formed the NTU Troop in 1970. Combining influences from funk, soul, jazz and folk the band created a unique style that still hits home today.

Follow The Medicine Man is one of Bartz's grittiest albums from this period. I was looking for an easy comparison to this work but to be honest I'm hard pushed to think of one.

Standin' On The Corner is a laidback chilled piece of street corner funk with gorgeous production featuring a combination of great horn work, a continuous bubbling piano line and Andy Bey singing his heart out over the clashing cymbals and alto sax.

Sing Me A Song Today is like some proto drum and bass track twenty plus years before it's time consisting as it does of a proper tech step beat, warped trumpets and what can only be described as an ominous bassline. With a stop-start rhythm and stomping groove it was only on the third or forth listen that I really "got" this track - so far ahead of the game it's a little frightening.

Show the man some love.