Photo: Rick Barz and his sister Cindy (provided by Steve Pavey) From Steve Pavey on Fb, 7/03/21: June was a terrible month for me. Started out good with my son, Richard and his wife Julia and one of the kids, Emily, coming to visit for a while. Then, my oldest and best friend of nearly half a century, who Rich was named after, went into the hospital and, while we were hoping for the best, passed away. His family is devastated and so am I.
Rick Barz was my brother from another mother. I met him in September of 1973 in the music room of the recreation center at KI Sawyer AFB in Upper Michigan. For around an hour, we didn’t say a word to each other…just played music! Then he turned around on the piano bench and said “I’m Rick”. I replied that I was Steve and we should start a band.
For the next 4 years, we played together nearly every day as a piano/drums duo. We won base talent contests and wowed people with our versatility, playing Motown, British Invasion, Psychedelic Rock, Country and even Ragtime Jazz.
Rick was one of the most amazing and talented musicians I’ve ever known. A multi-instrumentalist with perfect pitch, he played guitar, bass, sax and keyboards. He could listen to the first 30 seconds of a new song and then play along with it note for note. He had so much formal training and theory that he knew where a song had to logically go.
He met his future wife Gerry when all 3 of us were in the USAF at KI Sawyer. I was honored to be in his wedding, and at the reception, he told the cocktail jazz trio to just get something to eat while he and I played dance music for his wedding guests! Yes, the groom played at his own wedding reception!
When his daughter Athena was born, he was so proud and amazed that he and Gerry had created this beautiful human being. Until the end of his life, even after I left Michigan, we spoke for hours on the phone nearly every day. He was so proud of both Athena and her brother Ricky, although I think he had a hard time expressing his pride to them. But he told me.
I miss him so much. I have so many memories of the times both in the military playing with him and the times we either jammed in my garage or his basement. Shortly after Ricky was born, we took a short vacation back to Michigan to find that Rick had gone out and bought a drum kit just so I’d have a way to jam with him for a few days. I wish he was still with us. He got so excited over what Revenant was doing. I wish I could tell him about new songs we’ll add to our sets. But that’s not to be.
This photo I included is a photo of Rick and his sister, Cindy. For a long time, I had a tape recorded on my 8 track recorder of a night at KI Sawyer AFB of a night when Cindy and her friend Dianne came to visit and sang with us during an impromptu show at the Airman’s Club with a couple of guitarists and bass player. Cindy and Dianne had amazing harmonies on songs like Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy and Delta Dawn, and the end of the night we just made up an 18 minute instrumental jam to fill in time until the club closed! That tape got lost years ago in a move and I wish I still had it because it had some amazing playing by Rick. We did nearly the entire Tommy album by the Who, some Spooky Tooth and Crow, Grand Funk and then segued to the Bee Gees and America!! Thinking of that night makes me smile so big. Rick was an introvert by and large, compared to me but that night he was animated by the response of the crowd.
RIP, Rick. I love you, my brother.
https://www.facebook.com/steve.pavey.589
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Other Notable Musicians’ Deaths…
Again, the number of deaths from COVID is astounding. Please get vaccinated. Truly may save your life.
July 2021
7: Robert Downey Sr., 85, American film director (Putney Swope, Up the Academy) and actor (To Live and Die in L.A.).
6: Djivan Gasparyan, 92, Armenian musician and composer.
5: Raffaella Carrà, 78, Italian singer (“A far l’amore comincia tu”), actress (Caesar the Conqueror, Von Ryan’s Express) and television presenter, lung cancer; Beben Jazz, 54, Indonesian jazz musician and badminton player, COVID-19; Leo van de Ketterij, 70, Dutch guitarist (Shocking Blue).
4: Sanford Clark, 85, American rockabilly singer (“The Fool”, “Houston”), COVID-19; Rick Laird, 80, Irish jazz fusion bassist (Mahavishnu Orchestra, Brian Auger and the Trinity), lung cancer; José Manuel Zamacona, 69, Mexican singer (Los Yonic’s), COVID-19.
2: Bill Ramsey, 90, German-American jazz singer and actor (Music in the Blood, The Adventures of Count Bobby, Old Shatterhand); Nikolai Slichenko, 86, Russian singer and actor (Hard Happiness, Wedding in Malinovka).
1: Louis Andriessen, 82, Dutch composer (La Commedia, Writing to Vermeer, Rosa – A Horse Drama); Steve Kekana, 62, South African singer, COVID-19; Bryan St. Pere, 52, American drummer (Hum); Vítezslav Vávra, 68, Czech singer and drummer, lung cancer.