Mass Production is an American

funk Funk is a music genre that originated in African-American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African-Americans in the ...

disco Disco is a music genre, genre of dance music and a subculture that emerged in the late 1960s from the United States' urban nightclub, nightlife, particularly in African Americans, African-American, Italian-Americans, Italian-American, LGBTQ ...

musical group, best known for their 1979 hit, "Firecracker." Based in

Norfolk, Virginia Norfolk ( ) is an independent city (United States), independent city in the U.S. state of Virginia. It had a population of 238,005 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of cities in Virginia, third-most populous city ...

, the ten-piece group had a series of minor R&B hits in the late 1970s and early 1980s. "Firecracker" is commonly misattributed to the similarly named (and sonically/stylistically similar) band Brass Construction.

History

The band consisted of Kevin "D'No" Douglas (

bass Bass or Basses may refer to: Fish * Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species Wood * Bass or basswood, the wood of the tilia americana tree Music * Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in th ...

and

vocals Singing is the art of creating music with the voice. It is the oldest form of musical expression, and the human voice can be considered the first musical instrument. The definition of singing varies across sources. Some sources define sing ...

), James "Otiste" Drumgole (

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz musical ensemble, ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest Register (music), register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitche ...

flugelhorn The flugelhorn (), also spelled fluegelhorn, flugel horn, or flügelhorn, is a brass instrument that resembles the trumpet and cornet, but has a wider, more conical bore. Like trumpets and cornets, most flugelhorns are pitched in B♭, though ...

clarinet The clarinet is a Single-reed instrument, single-reed musical instrument in the woodwind family, with a nearly cylindrical bore (wind instruments), bore and a flared bell. Clarinets comprise a Family (musical instruments), family of instrume ...

flute The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Flutes produce sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In th ...

piccolo The piccolo ( ; ) is a smaller version of the western concert flute and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. Sometimes referred to as a "baby flute" or piccolo flute, the modern piccolo has the same type of fingerings as the ...

and vocals), Agnes "Tiny" Kelly (

lead vocals The lead vocalist in popular music is typically the member of a group or band whose voice is the most prominent melody in a performance where multiple voices may be heard. The lead singer sets their voice against the accompaniment parts of the ...

vocoder A vocoder (, a portmanteau of ''vo''ice and en''coder'') is a category of speech coding that analyzes and synthesizes the human voice signal for audio data compression, multiplexing, voice encryption or voice transformation. The vocoder wa ...

; later replaced by Dee (DeeDee) Henderson), George Jefferson (

trombone The trombone (, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the Brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's lips vibrate inside a mouthpiece, causing the Standing wave, air c ...

), Larry Marshall (lead vocals, triangle,

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a percussion mallet, beater including attached or enclosed beaters or Rattle (percussion beater), rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or ...

and

xylophone The xylophone (; ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Each bar is an idiophone tuned to a pitch of a musical scale, whether pentatonic or heptatonic in the case of many African ...

), Gregory “Sagittarius” McCoy (

saxophone The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed on a mouthpiece vibrates to p ...

tuba The tuba (; ) is the largest and lowest-pitched musical instrument in the brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, the sound is produced by lip vibrationa buzzinto a mouthpiece (brass), mouthpiece. It first appeared in th ...

bassoon The bassoon is a musical instrument in the woodwind family, which plays in the tenor and bass ranges. It is composed of six pieces, and is usually made of wood. It is known for its distinctive tone color, wide range, versatility, and virtuosity ...

and

kazoo The kazoo is a musical instrument that adds a ''buzzing'' timbral quality to a player's voice when the player vocalizes into it. It is a type of '' mirliton'' (itself a membranophone), one of a class of instruments that modify the player's v ...

), Emmanuel Redding (

, kettle drums and

marimba The marimba ( ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars that are struck by mallets. Below each bar is a resonator pipe that amplifies particular harmonics of its sound. Compared to the xylophone, the mari ...

), Ricardo Williams (lead vocals,

drums The drum is a member of the percussion instrument, percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel–Sachs classification system, it is a membranophones, membranophone. Drums consist of at least one Acoustic membrane, membrane, c ...

), Tyrone Williams ( keyboards), Rodney Phelps (

lead guitar Lead guitar (also known as solo guitar) is a musical part for a guitar in which the guitarist plays melody lines, instrumental fill passages, guitar solos, and occasionally, some riffs and chords within a song structure. The lead is the featur ...

, keyboards) and LeCoy Bryant (

rhythm guitar In music performances, rhythm guitar is a guitar technique and role that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse (music), pulse in conjunction with other instruments from the rhythm section (e.g., d ...

, vocals). Phelps left the band prior to the recording of their 1980 ''Massterpiece'' album, leaving Bryant to handle all guitar duties. Phelps was later replaced by Dan Harris (

). Harris toured with the group as a freelance guitarist for a couple of years, then left the band to work as a recording session musician. The band would soon expand back to ten, with Samuel Williams joining on drums in the early 1980s, allowing Ricardo Williams to concentrate more on vocals. In addition to "Firecracker," which hit number four on the R&B

chart A chart (sometimes known as a graph) is a graphics, graphical representation for data visualization, in which "the data is represented by symbols, such as bars in a bar chart, lines in a line chart, or slices in a pie chart". A chart can repres ...

in the late summer of 1979, other hits by the band include "Cosmic Lust", "Groove Me", “Shanté” and "Turn Up the Music." The group stayed together for several more years, scoring a string of small hits, before deciding to disband in 1983. At that time, the group’s popularity was such that they were the only people who knew they had disbanded. Mass Production has recently reunited with the mostly original lineup, is in the process of recording new material, and has been playing live shows since 2017. "Firecracker" was

sampled Sample or samples may refer to: * Sample (graphics), an intersection of a color channel and a pixel * Sample (material), a specimen or small quantity of something * Sample (signal), a digital discrete sample of a continuous analog signal * Sample ...

2 Live Crew 2 Live Crew is an American hip hop group from Miami, Florida, formed in 1984. The group was originally composed of DJ Mr. Mixx (David Hobbs), Fresh Kid Ice (Christopher Wong Won), and Amazing Vee (Yuri Vielot), though its most well-known lineup ...

for their 1989 hit single " Me So Horny", from their

album An album is a collection of audio recordings (e.g., music) issued on a medium such as compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl (record), audio tape (like 8-track cartridge, 8-track or Cassette tape, cassette), or digital distribution, dig ...

'' As Nasty As They Wanna Be''.

Discography

Studio albums

*''Welcome to Our World'' (1976) *''Believe'' (1977) *''Three Miles High'' (1978) *''In the Purest Form'' (1979) *''Massterpiece'' (1980) *''Turn Up the Music'' (1981) *''In a City Groove'' (1982) *83'' (1983)

Compilation album

*''Firecrackers: The Best of Mass Production'' (1996)Mass Production discography
Discogs.com, Accessed 1-10-2010

References

External links