Tuesday, December 09, 2025

Track Of The Day: Miles Davis - Mtume (Columbia)


Get Up With It’, the Miles Davis album that this track has been plucked from, is the perfect music to listen to while cooking the Sunday roast. I’ve already featured ‘He Loved Him Madly’, Davis’ tribute to Duke Ellington, a long, careering 30 or so minute piece of abstraction, and now this, not as long, and maybe more coherent. Mtume provided percussion for Davis in the early 70s. “it is crazy to me that his hands didn't just fall off with the way he played those congas. Plus, he was blasting a drum machine into a mic in the early 70s. It's crazy how much Mtume's work with Miles during that period foreshadowed drum and bass music.” Quote from a Reddit post around the time of James Mtume’s death a few years ago. You don’t get a Miles Davis tune named after you just by making up the numbers.

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