Glow

by Rick James

  That reminded me that Malcolm had told me that Yorkville was the Greenwich Village of Toronto. “If you get to Canada,” he said, “head straight for Yorkville. It’s where the crazy artists hang out. You’ll feel right at home.”

  I found my way to Yorkville, my little sailor bag still over my shoulder, and liked what I saw—coffeehouses, record shops, jazz clubs, strip bars. Just when I felt how great it was to be out of racist Western New York, three men came up to me with thick Buffalo accents. They were in civilian clothes and obviously drunk.

  “You ain’t one of them AWOL niggers, are you?”

  I was about to slug him when his friends came right at me. I wasn’t sure I could handle all three, but then again, I didn’t have to. A trio of three other white guys saw what was happening and came running to my aid. Just like that, it was on—and the drunk assholes went down down down.

  I thanked my saviors. “I’m James Johnson,” I said.

  “I’m Pat McGraw,” said the cat who threw the best punches. “These are my friends Garth Hudson and Levon Helm. They’re musicians.”

  “I’m a musician,” I said.

  “We play with Ronnie Hawkins. Ever hear of him?” asked Garth.

  I hadn’t.

  “We’re his backup band,” said Levon. “We’re the Hawks. You oughta come by and hear us.”

  I wanted to. Later I’d remember this encounter when Garth, Levon, and their colleagues Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, and Richard Manuel backed up Bob Dylan and later got famous as the Band.

  We went for coffee. Garth and Levon were beautiful cats, deep into music. We talked about Muddy Waters and Cannonball Adderley. Their taste was as wide as mine. When they left for rehearsal, they scribbled down their numbers on the back of a matchbook. Meanwhile, Pat McGraw was eager to keep hanging.

  “Look, man,” he said, “if you’re AWOL, that raises my respect. Anyone who tells the army to fuck off is cool with me.”

  “How ’bout the navy?”

  “Fuck ’em all,” said Pat McGraw. “Let’s go get fucked-up.”

  He took me to an underground coffeehouse called El Patio, where, in the back room, we smoked. It felt great, like a weight lifted off my shoulders.

  “Band’s coming on,” said Pat. “Let’s stay and listen.”

  I was ready. I was glad the band played R & B. The musicians weren’t bad, but the singer really couldn’t hack it. Pat saw the look on my face and asked, “Think you can do better?”

  “Know I can,” I said.

  “Well, get your ass up there and try.”

  Nick St. Nicholas, the bandleader, was willing.

  “You know ‘Stand By Me’?” I asked.

  “What key?”

  “E.”

  “Hit it!”

  I hit it hard, and four minutes later everyone was up and screaming for me.

  “You can sing,” said Nick. He was a bass player, a blond cat with high cheekbones and kind eyes. “Here’s my number. Call me.”

  Everyone was handing out numbers. Aside from the nigger haters who tried to punch me out, everyone in Toronto was looking out for me.

  “You better crash at my pad,” said Pat, “until you get some paying gigs. The way you wailing, it won’t be long.”

  Turned out that Pat was a rounder—the Canadian term for hustler—so we spoke the same language. On the street, everyone knew Pat. At his crib, his chick Shirley, a sista, was waiting for him. She was a singer herself, foxy and sweet.

  “Who you, honey?” she asked when I walked through the door with Pat.

  “James.”

  “James is AWOL,” said Pat, “and he’s a singing motherfucker.”

  “If you AWOL,” said Shirley, “you best change your name.”

  “That’s right,” Pat chimed in.

  “We’ll call you Rick—Ricky James Mathews. That’s my cousin’s name. He’s dead, so he won’t mind.”

  I didn’t mind. New town. New identity.

  First night I slept on Pat’s couch. Next morning I called Nick.

  “You serious about me singing with you?” I asked.

  “Serious as sin. Come on over now.”

  A week later the Sailor Boys were born out of deep irony. We used my navy-issued clothes, all I had, as uniforms. We switched them up and made ’em funky, but the look was unmistakably navy. Our sound was unmistakably R & B. We covered everyone from the Isleys to Smokey and his Miracles. My voice was big enough where I could sing Walter Jackson, Bobby Blue Bland, or Ray Charles. Not only that, but I’d picked up the harmonica and had a one-man act I called Little Ricky.

  Soon fans of the Sailor Boys would show up wearing bell-bottoms and sailor caps—we started a fad!—to hear us sing harmony tight as the Beach Boys. Then on one night a week, at that same club, different fans would come to see Little Ricky blow harp like Little Walter or Sonny Boy Williamson. Toronto was a music-loving town.

  Toronto also turned out to be a place where I did some careful studying and listening. For the first time I found myself smack in the middle of a community of white artists who were deadly serious about making music true to their souls. I saw Joni Mitchell in little clubs, playing her guitar and singing her life-experience songs. She’d come to hear me as well and was always encouraging. Same thing was true of Kenny Rogers, David Clayton-Thomas, Gordon Lightfoot, and Neil Young. Every one of these cats respected the African-American musical tradition. They drew from it. And they let me know I was a part of it. At the same time, they taught me about the white folk tradition—Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. I loved it all and felt like I was in the hippest college in the world. They played me Laura Nyro records while I played them Ornette Coleman. They introduced me to Elmore James and Robert Johnson while I introduced them to Joe Tex and Pharoah Sanders. The all-night jams had my brain working overtime.

  The other music we were listening to, of course, was the stuff from England. In the middle of the sixties’ British Invasion, Canada, a part of the British Commonwealth, was crazy over the Beatles, the Stones, the Kinks, and the Dave Clark Five. The only thing saving American music was Motown. In fact, the English groups even covered Motown songs.

  Far as I was concerned, I could do it all and it was all good. Turned out, though, that Nick was something of a slippery cat. He started gigging behind our back with a group called Jack London and the Sparrows. Dave Marden—known as Jack—was from Liverpool but the other guys weren’t English at all. They faked the accent and the look and, lo and behold, got a record deal on Capitol and a pop hit, “If You Don’t Want My Love.” People around me were starting to make serious money.

  When Nick left us for greener pastures, we recruited a superbad bass player named Bruce Palmer. Bruce brought the funk. Later in life he went big-time with Buffalo Springfield. Goldy McJohn was on organ. We were feeling big-time ourselves, selling out clubs all over town and making four hundred bucks a night. The hash was plentiful and so was the amyl nitrate. We were smoking and sniffing nearly every night.

  I was stoked. I’d come to Toronto with twenty-five dollars in my pocket. Now I had hundreds, a place of my own, and a name known all around Yorkville. I’d proven that my talent was all I needed. The Me Monster was growing strong.

  “Your band’s strong, but it can be a lot stronger,” said Colin Kerr, a cat from England who wanted to be Brian Epstein. “You can explode out of Toronto the way the Beatles exploded out of Liverpool.”

  I was impressed by this kind of big-time talk.

  “How you gonna pull it off?” I asked Colin.

  “Come down to my shop and you’ll see.”

  Colin had a coffeehouse called the Mynah Bird at Yorkville and Hazelton. That was his inspiration for the band name.

  Before Colin, we dressed like regulation hippies—bell-bottoms, psychedelic-patterned shirts, wild hair, little round purple glasses. Colin changed all that.

  “You need a different look,” he said. “You need your own look.”

  So we
put together outfits with yellow turtleneck sweaters, tight black leather pants, leather jackets, and yellow boots. Colin didn’t change our music all that much—we were basically still an R & B band—but he did change the way we got attention.

  “Gentlemen,” said Colin, “it’ll take more than music to get the press we need. We’re going to take a page out of Sinatra’s playbook.”

  Colin explained how in the forties Sinatra’s press agent hired teenage girls to scream at his appearances. The commotion made news.

  “You’re going to take a shopping trip through Eaton’s, the biggest department store in town, that’s going to make news.”

  Which is just what happened. Colin had girls chasing after us as we tried to shop at Eaton’s. They screamed our name and tore off our clothes as we ran to the safety of our rented limo. The next day the Mynah Birds were all over the papers. Rock group causes riot! Girls go nuts! And all this without a record.

  We’d gone to see A Hard Day’s Night, the Beatles movie, and suddenly I was living it. For a while I was loving it. Who didn’t wanna be chased down by a gang of girls? For the most part, the girls were white and none of them seemed prejudiced. Actually, the opposite was true. As the black lead singer of the white Mynah Birds, I stood out. Ever since I’d been in Toronto—going on two years now—I’d stood out. I was an authentic R & B singer living in a city where white musicians were striving to play authentic R & B. That added to my status. It also got me laid. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious to taste pussy in all its wonderful flavors. White pussy was a new treat for me, and I gorged myself as much as I could.

  Reflecting back, I got to say that before Toronto I hadn’t thought much about sex outside my race. It just wasn’t an issue. I was a product of black Buffalo and had no complaints about black women. Still don’t. But most brothas of my generation were curious about white pussy, just as I’d guess many white guys wanted a taste of chocolate. The grass is always greener. When I first scored white women in Canada, it was a novelty. Stretched out in bed after a hot fuck, seeing my dark skin next to the whiteness of a beautiful lady was a novelty and a kick. After a while, though, the novelty wore off and I stopped discriminating. I quickly learned that good pussy, like true love, isn’t restricted to one group or another.

  The Mynah Birds was a group definitely geared to white girls. In that sense, I dug the fantasy of being John Lennon, Paul McCartney, or Mick Jagger. I dug how my musical flexibility allowed me to be part of a Canadian-concocted British Invasion group. I also dug the possibility of the group taking off and making millions.

  Jagger was my man. The Stones had a harder edge than the Beatles, and with the Mynah Birds I sang a lot of the Stones’ early hits, like “Get Off of My Cloud” and “Satisfaction.” Much as I admired Jagger for his swagger, he was a white cat trying to sing black. I didn’t have to try. I am black, and so when people started saying they liked my versions of the Stones’ songs better than the originals, I wasn’t surprised.

  As my life went through these amazing changes, I thought back to what Brother Malcolm Erni said about the glow that he saw shining inside me. When I got to Canada, that glow got me through. It came out in my music. People saw it and liked it. The glow got all over them, and they told others about it. Word got out that Little Ricky could blow harmonica and wail some mean blues. Word got out that Ricky James Mathews was fronting the Sailor Boys and singing up a storm. Then this same guy was causing a commotion with the Mynah Birds.

  I wrote Mom that all my dreams were coming true—that my musical talent was real and getting realer every day. I wanted to visit her as soon as possible. She wrote back saying that the FBI was looking for me—and to stay where I was. The cats I was playing with didn’t know I was AWOL—and I was careful to keep it that way.

  I wasn’t much for future planning. I was, am, and will always be an improviser. I made up my life the same way I was making up my songs—on the spot. If I thought too far ahead, I’d get worried, and worry wasn’t conducive to creativity. I was all about creativity. Now, with the creation of the Mynah Birds, I felt myself on the brink of a breakthrough.

  I wanted fortune and fame, and I just knew that they were right around the corner. No mistake about it. I couldn’t be wrong.

  Or could I?

  MY TIME

  In my time in prison, Brotha Guru and I continue to have some deep talks. The other day he was accusing me of being cocky. Only a man like Brotha Guru, who I respect so much, could get away with saying something like that.

  “If I wasn’t cocky, I wouldn’t have gotten where I am,” I said.

  “And where are you, Brotha Rick? You’re in jail!”

  “I mean my music career wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t a confident motherfucker.”

  “Big difference,” said Brotha Guru, “between confident and cocky.”

  “I don’t see the difference.”

  “That’s why you landed in prison. Confidence is moving ahead with a calm conviction that your God-given talent will see you through. Cockiness is when you start believing that nothing and no one can stop you.”

  In 1965, a seventeen-year-old wrapped up in the explosive music scene in Toronto, I couldn’t help but be cocky. I was moving up so fast and furiously that I really didn’t think that anything could hold me back. That’s the attitude that led me to break away from Colin Kerr, my first real manager.

  Colin had the Mynah Birds practicing for months before he took us to the studio. I was impatient. I was ready to rock. I was writing songs that I thought were smash hits. But Colin’s brother had songs of his own. Those were the songs that Colin insisted we record—“The Mynah Bird Hop” and “The Mynah Bird Song.” To me, they were jive. But ’cause Colin was paying the bills, he got his way.

  After we cut the tunes, Colin sent us to do a teeny-bopper TV show in Hamilton, Ontario. I was excited. The studio was filled with screaming girls—all hired by Colin—and, as a gimmick, I was supposed to sing to a blind mynah bird.

  I went along with the program. I let them put the bird in my hand as I sang this dumb-ass song. The girls loved it, but I didn’t, especially when the bird started shitting in my hand. When I tried to push him off, he dug his claws into my skin. With shit and blood all over me, I nearly bolted. Somehow I got through the song. Somehow I also got through four Mynah Bird shows at the Colonnade Theater. The girls were screaming so loud I couldn’t even hear myself sing.

  “This is bullshit,” I told the guys in the band. “The music is bullshit, the act is bullshit, and the little money we’re getting is bullshit. I say we burn these jive-ass costumes and tell Colin to fuck himself.”

  The guys agreed. We left Colin and kept the name Mynah Birds but changed our look. We went back to the far-out hippie image that was closer to our true character. We also changed our music, the result of something that happened when I went down to New York City and heard what was happening in the folk scene of Greenwich Village.

  I was reluctant to leave Canada because of my AWOL situation, but a new friend of mine, Morley Schelman, told me not to worry. He was rich enough to buy me out of any legal hassle. Morley was gay but, knowing that I wasn’t, felt uncomfortable mentioning it. I couldn’t have cared less. I have prejudices, but homophobia is not one of them.

  When we got to New York, a limo was waiting for us. Seated inside was Sal Mineo, Morley’s best friend and obvious lover. Mineo had some killer grass and we got blasted immediately. I was buzzed, not only on the weed but on the fact that I was meeting my first movie star. I’d seen Mineo with James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause at least three times. It was one of my favorite flicks. I’d also seen him in The Gene Krupa Story, where he played the great swing drummer. In that movie, Krupa gets busted for pot, and there we were in the limo, talking about that while getting blasted on fat joints. Sal had also learned to play drums for that film. So we could talk drummer-to-drummer. I was surprised that he was familiar with bebop drummers like Kenny “Klook” Clarke a
nd Connie Kay of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Sal Mineo was one hip cat.

  We settled into the apartment of Morley’s parents on Park Avenue. They had one whole floor of the building. When the elevator opened, you weren’t in a hallway, you were in their crib. Never had seen that before. Also never had seen so much cocaine. In those days it was pure. One line could take off the back of your head. Morley had a small attaché case filled with blow that went with us as we hit the clubs in the Village.

  “You like this coke?” he asked as the three of us—Morley, me, and Mineo—rode in the back of the limo heading down to the Night Owl Café on MacDougal Street.

  “It’s good,” I said, “but I’m mainly a weed man. Coke really isn’t my thing.”

  At that point I should have added “at least not yet,” but I couldn’t see the future. All I could see was a line of hard-core hippies waiting to get in to see the Lovin’ Spoonful. Morley knew the club owner and got us right in. I dug everything I heard. Later in life when I told writers that the Lovin’ Spoonful was one of the groups that influenced me most, they thought I was kidding. I wasn’t. John Sebastian was a great harp player. He knew the black masters and became a master himself. John and his cats—Joe Butler on drums, Zal Yanovsky on guitar, and Steve Boone on bass—had this acoustic/electric mix of folk, blues, and rock that knocked me out. It felt fresh. I loved songs like “Do You Believe in Magic” and “Summer in the City.” After their first set, we hung out for a long time and exchanged ideas. My ego got pumped when they said people coming back from Toronto were talking about me. I dug the Spoonful so much that I went to see them two more times before Morley and I said good-bye to Sal Mineo and flew back to Canada.