More than any other decade of the 20th century, the 1970s get a bad rap.  Unfairly judged by the worst of its excess and constantly degraded by shorthand stereotypes, the seventies have come to mean cheesy, tacky, and pre-fab -- the very worst of American popular culture.  It's really hard to figure out why this should be so; both high and low culture were extremely well-served by the years from 1971 to 1980.  If people want to judge the whole era by "HONK IF YOU'RE HORNY" bumper stickers, avocado-green refrigerators, and the collected lyrics of Rupert Holmes, that's their own lookout -- the rest of us can enjoy one of the richest periods in all of American film, as well as the ascendant periods of funk and jazz fusion and the arrival on American shores of the high-energy cinematic candy known as chop-socky.

Those characteristics all came together on the soundtrack to Bruce Lee's first American-produced martial arts film, the legendary Enter the Dragon.  The movie itself, while lacking some of the more elegant formal qualities of other great films of the decade, features some classic setpieces and wall-to-wall dynamite in the action sequences.  Lee had never looked more invincible, and some of his demonstrations of his style of jeet kune do are still breathtaking 35 years after the movie's release.  When it came time to commission a soundtrack, producer Fred Weintraub brought in longtime pro Lalo Schifrin to do the job.  A classically trained Argentine who was already well-established as a highly skilled jazz pianist when he came to Hollywood in the late 1950s, he wrote some of the most memorably TV themes of the following decade before shifting to the big screen.  He'd just made a big splash in the business in 1971 by penning the theme music to his friend Clint Eastwood's megahit Dirty Harry, and Enter the Dragon was meant to be little more than an easy paycheck between projects.  For some reason, though, Schifrin chose to really pull out the stops on the Bruce Lee vehicle; working with an ad hoc mini-orchestra equally comprised of Warner Brothers studio pros and hot session jazz musicians, the soundtrack is a wonderful, energetic, thrilling, sometimes dirty but never trashy thrill-ride that combines classical cinematic sting with some incredible jazz and funk overtones that are prominent from the very first notes.  Schifrin peppers the score with pseudo-'traditional' Asian music cues, but their transparent bogosity never overwhelms the propulsive soundtrack to the point where they become cheesy; they're just loud little splashes of color on a vibrant canvas of sound.  

BEST TRACKS: The album's opening track -- "Theme from Enter the Dragon" -- is an absolute smash, a stunning blend of action-movie symphonic flash with deep-funk guitars and wickedly played funk guitar and organ.  It's a testament to its quality that it's been endlessly sampled in hip-hop songs (most recently in the De La Soul comeback hit "Ooooh").  That piece sets the tone, but there's plenty more to love here:  "Bamboo Birdcage" lulls the listener in with quiet, thoughtful reeds and woodwinds only to blast out highly funky horn shots when they're most effective; and "The Big Battle" serves almost as an overture -- though it appears near the end of the film -- with its jazzy, improvisational riffing on several major themes from other tracks, punctuated by dynamic stings and carried by a monster funk bassline.