Rick James

The only Grammy Rick James won in his life was given to him for a song he did not record. It was the twentieth of February 1991, at the thirty-third edition of the awards, and the category was Best R&B Song for "U Can't Touch This". The song is MC Hammer's, it came out in April 1990 on Capitol and it reached number eight on the Hot 100; what it has of James is the bass riff from "Super Freak", used without asking permission. James sued for copyright infringement, the matter was settled out of court with Hammer agreeing to credit him as a writer, and the Grammy for Best R&B Song rewards the writers, not the performers. So the academy read out three names: M.C. Hammer, Rick James and Alonzo Miller. The award came out of a lawsuit.

And there lies the other fact that almost never gets told: "Super Freak" is credited to two people, and the second one is not a musician. Alonzo Miller was a DJ at the Los Angeles station KACE and he appears in the writing credits because he helped soften the lyric James had improvised, so that the song would have a chance of being played on the radio; afterwards he put it into the rotation of his own station. For his own work, the work he wrote and produced himself, James never won: he was nominated at the 1982 ceremony, for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for "Super Freak", and he left empty-handed.

Toronto, 1964, and the single Motown cancelled

His name was James Ambrose Johnson Jr. and he was born on the first of February 1948 in Buffalo, New York. As a teenager —the sources say at fifteen— he enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve, and it is worth saying what he did it for: precisely in order not to be drafted by the Army. In August 1964 he was called up to active service, he did not report and he fled to Toronto. There he went by the name Ricky James Matthews. From that fugitive's alias, and not from some label's bright idea, comes the name Rick James.

In Toronto he put together The Mynah Birds, in 1964. The line-up that recorded for Motown was this one: Ricky James Matthews on vocals, Neil Young on guitar, Bruce Palmer on bass, John "Little Johnny" Taylor on second guitar and Rickman Mason on drums. Goldy McJohn on keyboards and Nick St. Nicholas on bass also passed through the group, and both were later in Steppenwolf. In early 1965 they released their only commercial single, "The Mynah Bird Hop" / "The Mynah Bird Song", on Columbia's Canadian division; the following year Motown signed them and took them to Detroit. They recorded at the West Grand Boulevard studios on the nineteenth and the twenty-first of January 1966 and went back at the end of February for a whole month, with Smokey Robinson and R. Dean Taylor producing.

There was a single ready: "It's My Time" / "Go On and Cry", with catalogue number V.I.P. 25033. Motown cancelled it on learning that its singer was absent without leave from the Naval Reserve. The group fell apart, Young and Palmer went to Los Angeles and founded Buffalo Springfield, and James turned himself in to the FBI in May 1966: court martial, five months of hard labour, an escape after six weeks, six months on the run, a second surrender and release from Portsmouth Naval Prison in August 1967. The Motown tapes were finally released in 2006, forty years later, in the box set The Complete Motown Singles, Vol. 6: 1966.

Gordy, and twenty weeks at number one

In 1977 he signed with Gordy, Motown's subsidiary, together with the Stone City Band. The first single, "You and I", came out on the twenty-sixth of March 1978 and was number one on the R&B chart for two weeks, number thirteen on the Hot 100 and number three on the disco chart; the album Come Get It! appeared on the twentieth of April, reached number thirteen on the Billboard 200 and was certified Gold. In the autumn of that same year came "Mary Jane", number three R&B, and it is important not to mix it up with what came afterwards: it is from 1978 and from the debut album, three years before "Give It to Me Baby" and five before "Cold Blooded". Then, Bustin' Out of L Seven in 1979, number two on the R&B albums chart; Fire It Up the same year, with a tour that took Prince and Teena Marie as support acts; and Garden of Love in 1980, which stopped at number eighty-three and was the first stumble.

Street Songs he recorded between December 1980 and January 1981 and produced himself. It came out on the seventh of April 1981, reached number three on the Billboard 200 —his best placing— and spent twenty weeks at number one on the R&B albums chart. "Give It to Me Baby", released on the twentieth of February, was number one R&B for five weeks. Half of Motown plays on that record: the harmonica on "Mr. Policeman" is by Stevie Wonder, the drums are put down by Narada Michael Walden, the saxophone and flute by Gerald Albright, and the backing vocals by The Temptations. And one word of caution about the figures, which is where everybody inflates: the only certification that exists is an RIAA Platinum dated the seventh of July 1981, and it was never updated. The four million worldwide the press keeps repeating are not certified by anybody.

The single of August 1981 was "Super Freak", and James said that he wrote it quickly and deliberately as a silly song. It reached number sixteen on the Hot 100, number three R&B and number one on Hot Dance Club Play, and it is certified Gold, not Platinum, in the United States. MTV refused to air the video that year; James put it down to racism, and the channel's head of acquisitions, Carolyn Baker, explained it years later by saying that there were half-naked women in it and that it was rubbish. It is also worth putting it in its place: it was his biggest crossover hit with the pop audience, but on the Black chart it came third. His real number ones are other songs, and there are three of them: "You and I" in 1978, "Give It to Me Baby" in 1981 and "Cold Blooded", released on the fifth of July 1983, which spent six weeks at the top.

He turned down Diana Ross for an unknown

In 1979 James was scheduled to produce Diana Ross, the label's biggest female star, and he changed his plans in order to produce an unknown called Mary Christine Brockert. He made her debut, Wild and Peaceful, together with Art Stewart, released on the thirty-first of March that year; he wrote the bulk of the material, he sings a duet on the track that opens the record, "I'm a Sucker for Your Love", which reached number eight R&B, and it is he who introduces her there as "Lady T", the nickname that stayed with her for the rest of her life. The detail that explains everything is missing: Motown did not put her photograph on the cover. Radio programmers and listeners took her for Black, which was exactly the inverse of what the labels did in the nineteen-fifties, when they left out the photographs of Black artists for fear of frightening off the white buyer. The misunderstanding was undone that same year, when she appeared on Soul Train: she was the programme's first white guest and she ended up going nine times, more than any other white act.

Out of that relationship comes another thing the popular account attributes wrongly. In 1982 Teena Marie went to court with Motown because the label was keeping her under contract without releasing new material, and out of that litigation came what is known as the "Brockert Initiative", after her real surname: the principle that a label cannot hold on to an artist without putting out records and that, in that situation, the artist can sign and release elsewhere. Two clarifications, because it is usually told the other way round. It is not a law: no legislature passed it, it is a precedent born of a private lawsuit. And James had no part in it; it was hers against the label, and she signed with Epic in the autumn of 1982. What he did do for others is in the credits: "Standing on the Top" for The Temptations in April 1982, number six R&B; the creation and production of the Mary Jane Girls, whose "In My House" reached number seven on the Hot 100 in 1985; and "Party All the Time", which he wrote and produced for Eddie Murphy, also playing drums and percussion and singing backing vocals. Murphy had gone to record at his Buffalo studio in January 1985 for a weekend, and the blizzard nicknamed "Six-Pack" left them shut in for two weeks. The song reached number two on the Hot 100 and stayed there three weeks, held off by "Say You, Say Me" by Lionel Richie: it is the highest placing on the Hot 100 reached by any song associated with the name Rick James, far above the sixteen of "Super Freak".

What the jury found proven and what it did not

Here one has to be exact, because the vague version lies in both directions. It was not "an episode of violence": there were two different victims, in two incidents fifteen months apart, and the second was committed while James was free on bail for the first. The first is dated the eighteenth of July 1991, at his Hollywood Hills home. According to the prosecution, James and his partner held Frances Alley, twenty-four years old, tied to a chair for several days —the sources range from more than three to six—, forced her into sexual acts, gave her drugs and burned her some twenty times on the abdomen and the legs with the hot end of a crack pipe. The arrest came on Friday the second of August 1991, when a search warrant was executed at the house at half past seven in the morning: James, forty-three, and Tanya Anne Hijazi, twenty-one, were booked at the North Hollywood station, with bail of one million and of five hundred thousand dollars. James pleaded not guilty. The charges brought against him over that incident —assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated mayhem, torture, forcible oral copulation, false imprisonment and kidnapping, fourteen in all— exposed him to three life sentences.

The second incident is from the third of November 1992, at the St. James's Club hotel in West Hollywood, the Sunset Tower building. Mary Sauger, a music industry executive, testified that James invited her for a drink with him and with Hijazi to talk about a label he was setting up, and that after hours of conversation, alcohol and cocaine Hijazi began to hit her and James joined in; they held her for some twenty hours and left her unconscious. Hijazi pleaded guilty on the eleventh of August 1993, over this incident, to one count of assault with great bodily injury with a deadly weapon, with an agreed sentence of four years in state prison.

On Friday the seventeenth of September 1993, at the Los Angeles County Superior Court, the jury convicted him only in the second case: one count of assault, one of false imprisonment and one of sale of a controlled substance. On the first one, that of Frances Alley, it did not reach a verdict on eight counts of torture, assault and false imprisonment —eleven to one in favour of conviction, according to the court clerk— and it acquitted him of another three counts of assault and torture. He was never found guilty of torture or of sexual assault: the torture count, which was the one that could have left him in prison for life, did not succeed. Over that first incident he ended up pleading nolo contendere —no contest— to assault with a deadly weapon, which for criminal purposes counts as a conviction but is not an admission of the facts. On the seventh of January 1994 judge Michael Hoff imposed five years and four months in state prison, a five thousand dollar fine and compulsory drug rehabilitation. He served at Folsom and was released on parole on Wednesday the twenty-first of August 1996: a little more than two years, not the three that are usually repeated. At the trial, which lasted three weeks, he admitted under oath to having been addicted to freebase cocaine for twenty-five years and denied having assaulted the women.

There remains the civil action, which is also a matter of record. On Friday the ninth of December 1994, after a four-week trial and two days of deliberation, a Los Angeles jury awarded Mary Sauger one million seven hundred thousand dollars. James and Hijazi were ordered to pay around one million, and the St. James Club and the security firm BGM Securities close to seven hundred and fifty thousand for negligence: a former hotel employee testified that Sauger asked him to rescue her when he took food up to the room, that he alerted a guard and the manager and that nobody did anything. There is also an accusation made after his death, which has to be named for what it is and for nothing more: in February 2020 a woman from Erie County, in New York, sued his estate under the state's Child Victims Act, alleging that James had raped her in the spring of 1979, when she was fifteen, and claiming fifty million dollars. The suit was dismissed in early 2021, with no ruling on the merits of the matter. There is no conviction and no judicial finding on those facts.

The sketch, the BET Awards and the coroner's report

On the eleventh of February 2004, Comedy Central aired the fourth episode of the second season of Chappelle's Show with the sketch "Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories: Rick James": Charlie Murphy, Eddie's brother, giving a first-hand account of his run-ins with James in the eighties, and Dave Chappelle playing him with the line that stuck, "I'm Rick James, bitch!". What almost never gets said is that James is inside it. The programme filmed interviews with him to cut into the account, and the other line that passed into common speech, "Cocaine's a hell of a drug", is said by him in person, talking about his own behaviour. Nor did he take offence: on the twenty-ninth of June 2004, at the fourth BET Awards, he used it himself on his return, and he sang "Fire and Desire" with Teena Marie. It was his last public performance. The one who got sick of the line was Chappelle, who in June of that same year walked out of a show in Sacramento because the audience was shouting it at him.

He died five weeks later. On the sixth of August 2004 his carer found him in the morning at his apartment in the Oakwood Toluca Hills complex, in Los Angeles; he was fifty-six. The toxicology analysis detected nine substances —alprazolam, diazepam, bupropion, citalopram, hydrocodone, chlorpheniramine, digoxin, methamphetamine and cocaine—, and this is where the press usually ends the sentence too soon. The Los Angeles County coroner expressly ruled out an overdose: none of those substances, and none of their combinations, was at a level that was in itself lethal. He set the main cause as acute cardiac dysfunction from idiopathic cardiomyopathy —the enlarged heart— and listed focal pneumonia and the effects of multiple drugs as contributing conditions. The death was classified as an accident. The coroner's spokesman, David Campbell, said it in so many words: he did not die of an overdose. James was carrying diabetes, a stroke, a pacemaker and a heart attack behind him.

What to remember

The only Grammy of his life came out of a lawsuit. They gave it to him on the twentieth of February 1991 as the writer of "U Can't Touch This", a song by MC Hammer, after his claim over the riff of "Super Freak" was settled out of court with a writing credit. For what he recorded himself he won none. And the song that got him the award is credited jointly with Alonzo Miller, a radio DJ who got into the credits for softening the lyric for him. The records, on the other hand, are his from top to bottom: Street Songs, written and produced by him, twenty weeks at number one on the R&B albums chart and a Platinum dated the seventh of July 1981, which is the whole of the certification that exists; "You and I", "Give It to Me Baby" and "Cold Blooded" at number one on the R&B chart; and a producer's craft that turned Mary Christine Brockert into Teena Marie and a comedian into number two on the Hot 100.

From the court record it is worth remembering the distinctions in full, because they are the difference between reporting and defaming: two victims, two incidents fifteen months apart, conviction in the second one and on three counts, eight counts with no verdict and three acquittals in the first, no conviction for torture or for sexual assault, a sentence of five years and four months and a little more than two served at Folsom, and one million seven hundred thousand dollars in the civil action. And from the ending, that the coroner ruled out the overdose, by name. When that bass line from "Super Freak" plays and a whole dance floor recognises it in two notes, there is what he left behind: a handful of songs that do not need anybody to touch up the biography alongside them. If you or someone you know is facing problem drug or alcohol use, in Chile you can call SENDA's Fono Drogas y Alcohol free of charge and in confidence on 1412, twenty-four hours a day.

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Sources

Rick James, born James Ambrose Johnson Jr. on 1 February 1948 in Buffalo, New York, and died on 6 August 2004 aged 56 at his apartment in the Oakwood Toluca Hills complex, Los Angeles, where his carer found him. Singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist (vocals, bass, guitar, keyboards and clavinet, drums and percussion). As a teenager he enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve to avoid being drafted by the Army; called up to active service in August 1964, he did not report and fled to Toronto, where he used the alias Ricky James Matthews, the origin of his stage name. The Mynah Birds formed in Toronto in 1964 and were active until 1967; the line-up of the 1966 Motown sessions was Ricky James Matthews (vocals), Neil Young (guitar), Bruce Palmer (bass), John "Little Johnny" Taylor (guitar) and Rickman Mason (drums); Goldy McJohn and Nick St. Nicholas, later in Steppenwolf, also passed through the group. Only commercial single: "The Mynah Bird Hop" / "The Mynah Bird Song", Columbia Records' Canadian division, early 1965. Sessions at the Motown studios on West Grand Boulevard, Detroit, on 19 and 21 January 1966 and at the end of February 1966, with Smokey Robinson and R. Dean Taylor as producers; the single "It's My Time" / "Go On and Cry" (V.I.P. label, catalogue 25033) was cancelled when Motown discovered that the singer was absent without leave from the Naval Reserve. Young and Palmer later founded Buffalo Springfield. James turned himself in to the FBI in May 1966: court martial, 5 months of hard labour, escape after 6 weeks, 6 months on the run and release from Portsmouth Naval Prison in August 1967; the recordings appeared in 2006 in the box set "The Complete Motown Singles, Vol. 6: 1966". In 1977 he signed with Gordy Records, a Motown subsidiary, together with the Stone City Band. "You and I" (26 March 1978): no. 1 R&B 2 weeks, no. 13 Hot 100, no. 3 Disco. "Come Get It!" (20 April 1978): no. 13 Billboard 200, certified Gold. "Mary Jane" (autumn 1978): no. 3 R&B on 25 November 1978, no. 41 Hot 100. "Bustin' Out of L Seven" (1979): no. 2 R&B albums. "Fire It Up" (1979), with Prince and Teena Marie as tour support. "Garden of Love" (1980): no. 83 Billboard 200. "Give It to Me Baby" (20 February 1981): no. 1 R&B 5 weeks, no. 1 Dance, no. 40 Hot 100, no. 47 in the United Kingdom. "Street Songs", recorded between December 1980 and January 1981 and produced by James, released on 7 April 1981: no. 3 Billboard 200 and no. 1 R&B albums for 20 weeks; sole RIAA certification, 1× Platinum of 7 July 1981, never updated (the figures of 4 million worldwide are not certified). On that album, harmonica by Stevie Wonder on "Mr. Policeman", drums by Narada Michael Walden, saxophone and flute by Gerald Albright and backing vocals by The Temptations. "Super Freak" (August 1981), credited to Rick James and Alonzo Miller, a DJ at the Los Angeles station KACE who collaborated by softening the lyric for radio: no. 16 Hot 100, no. 3 R&B, no. 1 Hot Dance Club Play, certified Gold by the RIAA; MTV refused to air the video in 1981, and the channel's head of acquisitions, Carolyn Baker, justified it afterwards by the half-naked women in the video. Nomination for the 1982 Grammy for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for "Super Freak": he did not win. "Fire and Desire" (1981, 7:19), a duet with Teena Marie, was never released as a single. "Standing on the Top", by The Temptations (April 1982), written, produced and co-sung by James: no. 6 R&B, no. 66 Hot 100. "Throwin' Down" (1982): no. 13 Billboard 200, Gold. "Cold Blooded", single of 5 July 1983: no. 1 R&B 6 weeks, no. 40 Hot 100; the album of the same name, no. 16 Billboard 200 and Gold. Mary Jane Girls, created and produced by James: "All Night Long" no. 11 R&B (1983) and "In My House" no. 7 Hot 100 (1985). "Party All the Time", by Eddie Murphy (23 September 1985), written and produced by James, who plays drums and percussion and sings backing vocals, recorded at his Buffalo studio in January 1985 during the "Six-Pack" blizzard: no. 2 on the Hot 100 for 3 weeks, behind "Say You, Say Me" by Lionel Richie, the highest Hot 100 placing associated with the name Rick James. Teena Marie, born Mary Christine Brockert: James gave up producing Diana Ross in order to produce her debut, "Wild and Peaceful" (31 March 1979, with Art Stewart), no. 18 soul, with the duet "I'm a Sucker for Your Love" at no. 8 R&B; Motown left her photograph off the cover and the public took her for Black, a misunderstanding undone in 1979 with her appearance on "Soul Train", where she was the first white guest and to which she returned nine times. The so-called "Brockert Initiative" is not a law but the precedent arising from Teena Marie's 1982 lawsuit against Motown for keeping her under contract without releasing material; there is no record of Rick James taking part. She signed with Epic Records in the autumn of 1982. "U Can't Touch This", by MC Hammer (Capitol, April 1990), built on the riff of "Super Freak" without authorisation: no. 1 Hot Black Singles, no. 8 Hot 100. The copyright infringement claim was settled out of court with a writing credit for James, and on 20 February 1991 the 33rd Grammy edition gave the award for Best R&B Song to M.C. Hammer, Rick James and Alonzo Miller: it was the only Grammy of Rick James's life. Frances Alley case: incident charged as of 18 July 1991 at James's house in Hollywood Hills; arrest on Friday 2 August 1991 at 7:30 with a search warrant, James (43) and Tanya Anne Hijazi (21) booked in North Hollywood on suspicion of assault with great bodily injury, with bail of 1,000,000 and 500,000 dollars; plea of not guilty; 14 counts, among them assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated mayhem, torture, forcible oral copulation, false imprisonment and kidnapping, with exposure to 3 life sentences. Mary Sauger case: incident charged as of 3 November 1992 at the St. James's Club hotel in West Hollywood, with James free on bail; detention of some 20 hours. On 17 September 1993 the Los Angeles County Superior Court convicted him in the Sauger case on 1 count of assault, 1 of false imprisonment and 1 of sale of a controlled substance; in the Alley case the jury did not reach a verdict on 8 counts of torture, assault and false imprisonment —11 to 1 in favour of conviction, according to the court clerk— and acquitted him of 3 counts of assault and torture. He was never found guilty of torture or of sexual assault; in the Alley case he pleaded nolo contendere to assault with a deadly weapon. Sentence of 7 January 1994, judge Michael Hoff: 5 years and 4 months in state prison, a 5,000 dollar fine and compulsory rehabilitation. He served at Folsom State Prison and was released on parole on Wednesday 21 August 1996, after a little more than 2 years. At the trial, of 3 weeks, he admitted under oath to 25 years of freebase cocaine addiction and denied the assaults. Hijazi pleaded guilty on 11 August 1993 to 1 count of assault with great bodily injury with a deadly weapon, with an agreed sentence of 4 years. Civil action: on 9 December 1994 a Los Angeles jury awarded Mary Sauger 1.7 million dollars after a 4-week trial and 2 days of deliberation; James and Hijazi ordered to pay close to 1 million, and the St. James Club and BGM Securities some 750,000 for negligence. In February 2020, a woman from Erie County, New York, sued James's estate under the Child Victims Act alleging a rape in the spring of 1979, when she was 15, and claiming 50 million dollars; the suit was dismissed in early 2021 with no ruling on the merits, and there is no conviction and no judicial finding on those facts. "Urban Rapsody" (1997) was his album after prison. The sketch "Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories: Rick James" was broadcast on "Chappelle's Show", season 2, episode 4, on 11 February 2004 on Comedy Central, with filmed interviews with Rick James himself, whose line it is, "Cocaine's a hell of a drug"; the line "I'm Rick James, bitch!" is said by Dave Chappelle in his role. On 29 June 2004 James performed at the 4th BET Awards, where he used the line from the sketch and sang "Fire and Desire" with Teena Marie: it was his last public performance. Cause of death according to the Los Angeles County coroner: acute cardiac dysfunction from idiopathic cardiomyopathy, with focal pneumonia and the effects of multiple drugs as contributing conditions, and classification as an accident; the toxicology analysis detected alprazolam, diazepam, bupropion, citalopram, hydrocodone, chlorpheniramine, digoxin, methamphetamine and cocaine, none at a lethal level. The coroner's spokesman, David Campbell, expressly ruled out an overdose. James had a history of diabetes, a stroke, a pacemaker and a heart attack. Profile compiled for Rebobinados with fact-checking; interpretations of the meaning of the work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from the UPI archives (2 August 1991, 11 August and 17 September 1993, 7 January and 9 December 1994), the Tampa Bay Times, NPR, CBS News, Billboard, NME, The Globe and Mail, The Buffalo News, Black America Web, the RIAA's official Gold & Platinum database, Billboard's chart histories, Songfacts, uDiscover Music, Classic Motown, the Nicholas Jennings press archive, Encyclopedia.com and Wikipedia.