In May 1969, Ricky James Matthews and his friend, bass player Greg Reeves, finished up work at Motown’s Hitsville Studio in Detroit and headed for Los Angeles. Matthews soon heard through the grapevine that his old Mynah Birds cohorts Neil Young and Bruce Palmer were rehearsing with Crosby, Stills and Nash for a new project. When Matthews and Reeves turned up, it became clear that Palmer’s playing was not up to scratch and his personality was causing problems with Crosby and Nash.

Sensing an opportunity to help his friend, Matthews stepped in, informing the soon-to-be CSN&Y that Reeves was a kick ass bass player. Reeves proceeded to demonstrate his worth, astounding the group with his playing and a disgruntled Palmer was duly dropped, as Reeves got the nod. But as Ivan Roth, who remained a close friend throughout most of Matthews’ life, recalls, Ricky’s kind gesture towards Reeves was not reciprocated in kind. “CSN&Y made out a cheque [to Greg] for $35,000 on the spot and [he] didn’t give Ricky a dime,” he says. “Ricky was really p****d off at him.”

According to Roth, Matthews never forgot the slight. “When I was down at Ricky’s place in Buffalo after he’d made it, we were outside walking around and he said: ‘You know, I got a call. Greg Reeves is in a jail in Mexico and they need $15,000 to [get him out]’. He said: ‘I thought about it, but then I remembered what happened with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and I said, f*** it’.” 

Left to his own devices, Matthews began to search for musicians to form a band. One day, Ricky was hanging out on the beach in Santa Monica when he ran into an old musical acquaintance from his Toronto days, keyboard player Ed Roth. A veteran of the city’s R&B scene, Ivan Roth’s younger brother had learnt his trade through a succession of local groups – the Just Us, the Tripp and Livingstone’s Journey, all fronted by Jimmy Livingstone, Matthews’ former sparring partner in the early Mynah Birds line up. 

Like many Canadians, Roth had been to drawn to L.A. in search of fame, bringing with him another former Mynah Birds member, Neil Lillie (aka Neil Merryweather) and two relative newcomers, lead guitarist Dave Burt and drummer Gary ‘Coffi’ Hall. With two albums for Capitol Records under their belt, including the super jam record ‘Word of Mouth’, Merryweather, the band, had imploded after Neil had an altercation with the group’s guitarist. 

With no work, the three musicians hooked up with Matthews and soon found a manager in Eddie Singleton, who’d known Ricky when he was working at Motown. Adopting the rather dubious name, Salt ‘N’ Pepper, the group’s vacant bass slot was soon filled by Eugene ‘Chris’ Sarns, the Buffalo Springfield’s former road manager.

Early gigs included a performance at a club in Westwood, and Neil Young’s hangout in Topanga Canyon, the Corral. According to Ed Roth, Neil’s manager Elliot Roberts briefly expressed an interest in signing them but perhaps sensing that “Rick was a handful” decided to pass. Instead, he helped to secure a booking at the bastion of hippie rock, the Fillmore West, where the band opened for English bands Jethro Tull, Fairport Convention and Clouds from April 30-May 3 1970. 

Around this time, the group aroused the interest of Allman Brothers manager Phil Walden, who ran Capricorn Records, a subsidiary of Atlantic, from Macon, Georgia. Walden had been alerted to the group after the gig in Westwood and a recording deal was soon on the cards. Ivan Roth remembers the group driving to a Beverley Hills hotel to sign on the dotted line. “The guy slaps the contract on the table, so I started to read it. Rick says, ‘What are you reading it for?’ So, I said, ‘Let’s see what it’s about’, and he said, ‘F*** it’. I always said negotiate but he’d say, ‘No, sign it. Once you’re popular, you can negotiate it later’. He just wanted to keep the momentum going.” 

Ed Roth remembers the group recording a demo for the label shortly afterwards, but cannot recall any of the titles of the tracks. Interestingly, a search of Atlantic Records’ session logs reveals a recording by Salt ‘N’ Pepper called ‘Children of Virtue’, which was cut at Wally Heider’s studio in Los Angeles three days after the final Fillmore West show. 

The recording marked the end of Chris Sarns’ involvement with the group. Matthews apparently was never happy with his playing and a new bass player – Ron Johnson, formerly a member of David Lindley’s group, Kaleidoscope and before that Ike & Tina Turner stepped in that summer. 

The group then flew down to Miami to prepare for the imminent recording sessions. As Ed Roth recalls, noted producer Tom Dowd was earmarked to work with the band, but the sessions never materialised. The day before production was due to start, the group was released from the label after a falling out over money. Though the band had access to all the equipment it needed, the musicians were starving. “This guy from Walden’s office came in and said, ‘I understand you boys aren’t happy. Well, I am prepared to give you your release’,” says Roth, “All of a sudden all of the equipment was gone. All we got was our air fare back to LA.” 

Though nothing came of Salt ‘N’ Pepper’s promised album, Matthews and Johnson did get an opportunity to record that summer. According to Ivan Roth, Ricky and Ron were employed to play congas and bass on a Sam Moore, of Sam and Dave fame, session, including a cover of Sam Cooke’s ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’. 

Returning to Los Angeles, the group briefly hooked up with Gabriel Mekler, Steppenwolf’s former producer, but, says Ed Roth, nothing came of it. “[Mekler] tried to get us a deal, but nobody would sign us at that time.” Salt ‘N’ Pepper drifted apart soon afterwards, and Matthews and Roth played on Bruce Palmer’s lone solo album, ‘The Cycle is Complete’ before going their separate ways. 

In May 1971, Matthews heard about a recording project in Toronto through Ed Roth. Following the Salt ‘N’ Pepper disaster, the keyboard player had reconnected with several former Livingstone Journey cohorts, including guitarist Stan Endersby, who’d recently returned from a two-year stint in England where he’d recorded with former Kinks bass player Peter Quaife in Maple Oak. 

Before leaving for London in April 1969, Endersby had worked with Jim Henson (of Muppets fame) on a TV show for NBC called “The Cube”, which was recorded at Eastern Sound, a studio run by Murray Shields. When Endersby returned to Toronto two years later, Shields told the guitarist that all his engineers were moving over to the newly opened Thunder Sound studios. Eager to help out, Endersby suggested John Stewart, an engineer he’d worked with in London during the Maple Oak sessions. When Stewart was hired, the Englishman told Endersby to bring some friends in the studio and “see what happens”.

Heaven and Earth was initially a democratic group, but like so many ventures, Matthews would soon assert his authority. The line up certainly looked great on paper – besides Endersby and Roth, Heaven and Earth consisted of drummer Pat Little, a former member of respected blues band Luke & the Apostles, bass player Denny Gerrard, a veteran of Toronto’s top folk-rock band, the Paupers and a young guitarist called Gary Holmes who Endersby was helping to get started in the local music scene. 

The group, abetted by various side musicians, including famed blues guitarist Mike McKenna, recorded around eight songs mostly attributed to James Johnson Jr (Ricky’s real name) during June and July. A deal with RCA Victor was struck and two singles were subsequently released – ‘Big Show Down’ c/w ‘Don’t You Worry’ and ‘You Make the Magic’ c/w ‘Rip off 1500’ (the latter, later covered by the Chambers Brothers). 

But the project was doomed and in August, Rick James (as he now called himself) walked with the tapes, taking Roth and Gerrard with him. Searching for a new outlet to rework the Heaven and Earth material, James stumbled across local group Milestone playing at On the Bar, a club in downtown Toronto. 

Bob Doughty, one of the group’s two horn players remembers his first run-in with the charismatic singer: “One night this extremely flashy black guy approached us and asked if he could sing a couple of numbers with us in our last set. We jammed on a couple of blues tunes, Stones tunes and were introduced to this non-stop moving, harmonica playing, wailing fool, the likes no one had seen before. The crowd ate it up!”

After the set, James told the group that he was connected in the record industry. All they had to do was team up with him and the remnants of his former group. Milestone – horn players Bob Doughty and Ian Kojima, guitarist Nick Balkou (aka Sonny Nicholas), organist John Cleveland Hughes and drummer Norman Wellbanks jumped at the chance.

With money from Rick’s lawyer, Stan Weisman, James’ new group, Great White Cane, went into the studio to record some demos. That November, the band relocated to Los Angeles where a deal was struck with Lion Records, a subsidiary of MGM. “Rick started dating Columbia president, Clive Davis’ daughter – that’s how they got signed to the label,” says Weisman. Matched with producer Jimmy Ienner, recording ensued at Village Recorders in Century City in February and March 1972. 

Having nailed the album and with a reworking of ‘You Make the Magic’ catching airplay, Great White Cane set off on a North American tour opening for BB King. The tour, which kicked off in Vancouver on June 5 with such promise, ran into problems on the first night. “I think we did two songs and the crowd loved us. Then all of a sudden Rick wants to do a cappella version of ‘the Times They-Are-A-Changin’ and he wants to get the crowd to clap along with it,” remembers Ed Roth. “So, he says, ‘Put your hands together. I said put your f*****g hands together’. We lost the crowd every time. We pleaded with him to stop doing that, but this went on show after show after show. It was probably the coke.”

James abandoned the group a few weeks later. “Rick got off the bus in New York and we finished the tour without him,” says Ian Kojima, who went on to work with Chris De Burgh. “On our return to Los Angeles, we were faced with numerous lawsuits stemming from multiple management and publishing contracts that Rick signed.” 

Stan Weisman was particularly frustrated by James’ action. “They had all the money behind them, the promotion was going on, the album was about to be released and I think they would have made the top because that was a hell of a band.”

Back in Toronto, James talked his way into American expatriate Bill King’s group.
“We played a few gigs of which he’d take over,” remembers King. “He was there to play percussion and sing background. I never minded. The guy was most entertaining and over the top.”

King, who’d spent a brief spell with Janis Joplin’s Kozmic Blues Band before escaping the draft by moving to Canada, had a great live band, which comprised Ian Guenther (violin), Bill Usher (congas), Chris Vickery (bass), Danny Marks (guitar) and Englishman Malcolm Tomlinson (drums), who’d played with Martin Barre in his pre-Jethro Tull bands, the Motivation, the Penny Peeps and Gethsemane before moving to Canada in 1969. 

Bill King paints an interesting picture of James. “He was loud, a lot of fun, vindictive and to be watched. He lost his temper in a basketball game at the Settlement House, which cost him security in Canada. He suckered punched a guy in the mouth and broke his teeth. The guy was a cop!”

One of James’ first moves was to steal Marks and Tomlinson for his next musical project, the original Stone City Band, formed in late 1972 with Ed Roth and bass player Peter Hodgson, formerly a member of Elektra band, Rhinoceros. Hodgson, who’d known James during his days with the Mynah Birds in the mid-1960s recognised his talent straight away: “He had a musical personality that was very charismatic. He could talk and get his way through doors that other people couldn’t because he was so determined.”

In January 1973, James took the band in to Manta Sound to record a four-track demo, including a song he’d written about Bruce Palmer’s wife, ‘Sally Walker’. Returning to the studio during May and June, the group recorded a dozen tracks, but the material remained in the can. The Stone City Band imploded shortly afterwards when Danny Marks quit, tired of James’ “cult figure image” and strict regime.

Many thanks to the following for photos: Stan Endersby, Bob Doughty and Stan Weisman.

To contact the author with corrections or additional information, email: nick_warburton@hotmail.com

Copyright © Nick Warburton, March 2005