San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Musician’s ‘Juicy Fruit’ became hip-hop sample
James Mtume, a musician, songwriter, producer, bandleader and talk-radio host whose 1983 hit “Juicy Fruit” has been sampled in more than 100 songs, died Jan. 3 at his home in South Orange, N.J. He was 76.
The cause was cancer, his family said.
Mtume started his career as a jazz percussionist. He was in Miles Davis’ band for the first half of the 1970s, appearing on Davis’ landmark 1972 jazz-funk album “On the Corner” and its successors.
But in the late ’70s he turned to R&B: He co-wrote hits for Roberta Flack and Stephanie Mills, produced albums and formed a group, Mtume, which had major hits with his songs “Juicy Fruit” and “You, Me and He.” His sparse, sputtering electronic beat for “Juicy Fruit” gained an extensive second life in hip-hop when it was sampled on the debut single by the Notorious B.I.G., “Juicy,” a No. 1 rap hit in 1994.
Mtume was born James Forman on Jan. 3, 1946, in Philadelphia. His father was jazz saxophonist Jimmy Heath, but he was raised by his stepfather, James Forman, a jazz pianist also known as Hen Gates who had played with Charlie Parker, and his mother, Bertha Forman, a homemaker.
Jazz musicians including Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Dinah Washington and John Coltrane were frequent family visitors, and the young James Forman grew up playing piano and percussion; his biological uncle, jazz drummer Albert (Tootie) Heath, gave him his first conga drum.
He was a champion swimmer in high school, winning the Middle Atlantic title for backstroke, and attended Pasadena City College on an athletic scholarship.
In California, he joined the US Organization, a Black nationalist cultural group that introduced the holiday Kwanzaa, and he took an African last name: Mtume, Swahili for messenger. He also turned seriously to music.
In 1969, Albert Heath recorded four modal, Afrocentric jazz compositions by Mtume on his album “Kawaida,” featuring Mtume on congas alongside Herbie Hancock on piano, Don Cherry on trumpet and Jimmy Heath on saxophones. Mtume also worked with Art Farmer, McCoy Tyner, Freddie Hubbard and Gato Barbieri.
He joined Miles Davis’ band in 1971 as it was making the transition to the jagged, openended, rhythm-dominated funk of “On the Corner.” He worked with Davis until 1975, touring and appearing on the
James Mtume was a R&B, jazz and funk musician whose music continues through sampling by others.
albums “Big Fun,” “Dark Magus,” “Agharta,” “Pangaea” and “Get Up With It,” which included a Davis composition titled “Mtume.” Working with Davis, Mtume expanded his sound with electronic effects. “You don’t fight technology, you embrace it,” he said in 2014. “It’s like fire. It’ll burn you, or you learn how to cook with it.”
In 1972, Mtume made his recording debut as a leader with “Alkebu-Lan: Land of the Blacks” on the Strata-East label, credited to the Mtume Umoja Ensemble.He released a second jazz album, “Rebirth Cycle,” in 1977.
When Davis stopped performing in 1975, Mtume and guitarist Reggie Lucas, another member of the Davis group, joined Roberta Flack’s band. Their composition “The Closer I Get to You,” which she recorded as a duet with Donny Hathaway, reached No. 2 on the
Billboard Hot 100 in 1978 and was later remade by Beyoncé and Luther Vandross. They formed Mtume-Lucas Productions to write and produce songs. Among the artists they worked with were Phyllis Hyman, Teddy Pendergrass, the Spinners and Stephanie Mills, for whom they wrote the 1980 hit “Never Knew Love Like This Before,” a Grammy Award winner for best R&B song. On Instagram this week, Mills praised Mtume, writing, “He was so brilliant and an amazing music mind.”
Between production jobs, Mtume and Lucas recorded with their core musicians as the group Mtume, which featured singer Tawatha Agee. Mtume described the group’s first albums as “sophistifunk,” using plush harmonies and elaborate orchestrations.
But one day, Mtume recalled, he realized that “I was playing something that sounded just like something else I had done. I got up and I walked away, and I disbanded the band, and I decided not to do any more productions.”
He put together a second lineup of Mtume, without Lucas. The new Mtume lineup recorded “Juicy Fruit.” At first, Mtume’s record label, Epic, dismissed the song as too slow for daytime radio, but it became a No. 1 R&B hit.
The title song of Mtume’s 1984 album, “You, Me and He” — a confession of polyamory — reached No. 2 on Billboard’s R&B chart. On the group’s final album, “Theater of the Mind,” released in 1986, Mtume turned to sociopolitical commentary in songs like “Deep Freeze (Rapa-Song) (Part 1).” That same year, Mtume wrote the score for the film “Native Son” and produced a solo album for Agee.
In a radio interview in 1988, during a freewheeling era of hip-hop when samples were widely used without payment or credit, Mtume denounced hip-hop’s reliance on sampling, calling it “Memorex music” and complaining that the originators were ignored. The hiphop group Stetsasonic responded with “Talkin’ All That Jazz,” which argued, “Rap brings back old R&B/And if we would not, people could’ve forgot.”
Eventually, sampling — by then licensed and credited — would keep Mtume’s music on the radio. “Juicy Fruit” has been sampled by Alicia Keys, Warren G, Jennifer Lopez, Keyshia Cole, Faith Evans and dozens of others, and many of Mtume’s other songs and productions have made their way onto new tracks.
He is survived by his wife, Kamili Mtume; his brother, Jeffrey Forman; two sons, Faulu Mtume and Richard Johnson; four daughters, Benin Mtume, Eshe King, Ife Mtume and Sanda Lee; and six grandchildren.
“Pressing the boundaries. To me that’s always what it was about,” Mtume said in 2014. “Never give yourself a chance to look back, because that’s always easier. Looking forward is always harder.”