The momentum continues with 1979’s Love Gun and 1980’s Big Time, but Rick really steps up to the plate with Street Songs in 1981.

In September ’78, “You And I” crosses to the Top 20 of pop charts, as do Rick and his Stone City’s Band first two Motown albums, Come Get It! and Bustin’ Out Of L Seven.

As for the R&B best-seller lists, “You And I” puts some funk on their ass. “If I had to do disco, I was going to give them a piece of it,” he declares in his autobiography, Memoirs of a Super Freak, “then put some funk on their ass.” The result is “You And I.” Producer Jeffrey Bowen at Motown shows an interest, and James Ambrose Johnson signs a new deal there in March 1978. Rick is recording new material to get a deal. Of the last of these, he says, “Some people thought it had something to do with cocaine, but it didn’t.” Their album for Lion Records does not roar, saleswise.

Rick woodsheds with rock bands in Canada and the US, such as Salt ’n’ Pepper, Heaven & Earth and White Cane.

(“Time” eventually comes out in 2006.) Neil Young and Bruce Palmer make tracks for Los Angeles, to make history later in Buffalo Springfield. Rick sings lead on “It’s My Time,” which he co-writes, but it’s not released – in part because he gives himself up for deserting the Navy, and goes to jail. He sings with various rock groups, one of which becomes the Mynah Birds his band mates include a young folkie, Neil Young, and bassist Bruce Palmer. Navy, then goes AWOL and moves to Toronto.

More disregard for the rules: Ricky Mathews, as he calls himself, joins the U.S.

Thanks to his mother’s record collection, Rick’s childhood soundtrack includes Billie Holiday, Billy Eckstine, Sarah Vaughan. Little surprise he becomes a musician: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Wes Montgomery, Etta James and many more play his hometown.

Buffalo, New York, is the birthplace (on February 1, 1948) of James Ambrose Johnson Jr.

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