Singer Rick James died on Thursday. The CNN article glosses over what, for many, is the weirdest aspect of his history. The CNN article reads, “James was reported AWOL [from the army], and he fled to Canada, where he continued his musical career. The charges came back to haunt him when his success brought him back to the United States, and eventually he served time.”
What that leaves out is that he “continued his musical career” in a group called the Mynah Birds, with none other than Neil Young as his bandmate. The band signed to Motown, and when Rick and Neil (and others) were driving from Toronto to Detroit, James was arrested. That spelled the end of the band, although there was an album in the can by that point – work that has never been heard by the public. The main question: how would modern music have been changed if the Mynah Birds had released that album and achieved success with it? No Buffalo Springfield, likely no CSNY, and Rick James in the public consciousness as a rocker, not a funkster, about 13 years earlier, overlapping with the career of Jimi Hendrix.
