BEFORE HE WAS KNOWN AS "RICK JAMES".
16-Year-Old Rick James singing with 'The Mynah Birds' band in 1964.
In the early 1960s, 15-year-old singer James Johnson (Rick James; February 1, 1948 – August 6, 2004) signed up for the U.S. Naval Reserves.
When a friend told him he could avoid the draft by joining the reserves, 15-year-old James lied about his age and enlisted in the Navy reserves. Unfortunately, that same friend forgot to tell him the deal hinged on attending meetings twice a month. James, who had a habit of skipping class as a kid, got put on active duty almost immediately when he didn't show.
When called up for active service in August 1964, he fled to Canada and made his way to Toronto, Ontario. There he almost immediately got into an altercation on Yonge Street.
As he tells it in his autobiography, Johnson was rescued from a beating by a couple of local musicians, Levon Helm and Garth Hudson of Levon and the Hawks, who would achieve legendary status as The Band. Hudson and Helm took him to a local bar, where he jumped up onstage with the band playing at the time.
That fight changed Rick James’s life. He became close friends with the young gentlemen of The Band —“They rescued me and took me under their wing,” says James—and through them he met Joni Mitchell and his future bandmate, Neil Young.
Neil Young and Rick James, or Rickie Matthews as he was known then (he changed his name multiple times to avoid getting caught by the Navy), were in a band together.
They were originally called the Sailor Boys but changed their name to the Mynah Birds. James performed vocals and played a little harmonica as well.
As for his musical relationship with Neil Young, James considered it both natural and unique; surprising, perhaps, but fundamentally compatible.
“I was singing those days mostly and playing a little harmonica,” said James. “Neil was playing really melodic, really pretty chords. I would write R&B lyrics over these chords. Really, it was an interesting combination.”
The Mynah Birds’ “interesting combination” of sounds eventually landed them a manager and a record deal with Motown.
The group road tripped to Detroit and cut four songs at Hitsville, U.S.A. They were in the studio so much that one day, James, exhausted after a 24-hour recording session, passed out on the narrow staircase that divided the label’s studios downstairs from the Berry Gordys’ apartment upstairs.
It was while in Detroit that James met his musical heroes, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. After meeting Wonder and telling him his name, Wonder felt the name "Ricky James Matthews" was "too long", and told James to shorten it to "Ricky James".
"The songs that came out of those recording sessions feature a totally different version of Rick James than the one the world came to know in the early ‘80s."
This is Rick James the swingin’ rock star. On the track “It’s My Time” James’s voice is warm and scratchy, like a hand-me-down wool sweater. It sounds nothing like the buttery vocals that defined his later hit “Mary Jane.” On “I’ll Wait Forever,” he sounds gritty and sensual like Mick Jagger.
Unfortunately, the Mynah Birds never released their Motown album. The label shelved it after the group’s manager, angry about a financial dispute, reported Rick James to the feds. None of his bandmates had even known he was AWOL. The Navy snatched James up and threw him in the brig for seven months.
After he got out, James went back to Detroit and worked as one of Berry Gordy’s trusty songwriters. He spent a couple of years learning the craft but grew tired of the competition and the authority. Besides, he wanted to make rock & roll, not Motown. So he went to California, and that’s where, as David Ritz puts it, “Rick James becomes Rick James.”
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