The early '70s were rife with political and racial conflicts, indicative of the pressures surrounding the scandal of Watergate and
Richard Nixon, the assassination of
Martin Luther King, Jr., and the painful continuation of the Vietnam War. As explosive as the times were,
Frank Foster's
The Loud Minority reflected all of those mounting tensions while remaining hopeful in a self-determining way that gave rise to the "I'm Black and I'm Proud" sentiment.
Foster assembled a giant of a big band featuring dual instrumentation all around, including keyboards, basses, and drummers to power a horn section chock-full of the best mainstream jazz and progressive players of the day. Because funk-fusion was flowering, electrified elements of guitar and Fender Rhodes piano identify the music with the times, while vocalist
Dee Dee Bridgewater, never known as a protest singer, reads powerful poetry and screams freedom at the top of her lungs, inspired by a band that knows no bounds or limits, at its core a mighty modern jazz orchestra removed from
Foster's work with the
Count Basie band. "J.P's Thing" provides the ultimate in memorable melodic invention, vibrant layers of call and response, and the kind of shout-out energy every jazz fan craves. It's a driving, funky number, very much representative of the time period, full of hope and spirit, with low-end bass clarinets firing off the rest of the horns -- a great track! "Requiem for Dusty" is for a late, favored German Shepherd, a sad ballad with
Foster on his rarely played alto sax and
Stanley Clarke's arco acoustic bass solo with drama confined to smaller spaces, almost Greek epic, elegiac for sure. New York DJ Ed Williams is paid tribute to in "E.W. -- Beautiful People," a free and light Latin piece with
Foster's soprano sax wailing in a darkly dramatic hue, with fine solos from acoustic pianist
Harold Mabern and trumpeter
Charles McGee. The title track is a composition with
Bridgewater identifying icons of change and liberation from oppression, with statements that the Loud Minority is not a nonprofit, and the profit is in the victory "as opposed to you know whooooooooo." A united front of furious funk and churning rhythms via
Airto,
Elvin Jones,
Richard Pratt, and
Omar Clay with the Rhodes of
Jan Hammer and electric guitar of
Earl Dunbar under
Foster's spirited horn chart makes this one leap out of the speakers. Notable soloists include trumpeters
Marvin "Hannibal" Peterson and
Cecil Bridgewater, baritone saxophonist and bass clarinetist
Kenny Rogers, and trombonist
Dick Griffin. A different, less virulent edition of the Loud Minority came down the pike several years later, but this was the first and clearly the loudest, and not minor by any stretch of the imagination.