Mumbo Back

A great fan of the Cellar, P.R. Lee alerted me to the similarities between two McCartney songs: Mumbo, and Get Back. In particular, some early versions of Get Back have a more improvised character, resembling the mumbo-jumbo of Mumbo.Mumbo was recorded on July 25th, 27th, 28th & August 1971, and appeared on Wild Life. The song is credited to Paul and Linda McCartney. McCartney appeared to have liked this nonsense song, since he played it live 10 times, a.o. in Amsterdam and Groningen in 1972.McCartney said about Mumbo: “Mumbo is just a big scream of no words. A wacky idea, cos it was just ‘Whuurrrgghh A-hurrgghhh!’ and we mixed it back so it was like ‘Louie Louie’. Everyone’s going, What are the words of that? Just hope they don’t ask for the sheet music. Which no one ever did, luckily.”We don’t need to ask for sheet music, because the chords are very similar to Get Back…..Get Back also started with different lyrics, describing immigration of Pakistani and others; but McCartney changed them into more innocent lyrics. Both Mumbo and the early takes of Get Back feature Paul’s “Little Richard’ voice that he also used on Helter Skelter. In this remix, these McCartney tracks mesh seamlessly together.