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Born James Johnson Jr., the third oldest child in a family of eight in Buffalo, N.Y., on February 1, 1948, Rick James is credited with establishing the "punk-funk" style. "It was my mother who raised us," he said. "She was a small elegant woman of great dignity and strength. She always had two jobs. Sometimes she worked as a maid, but her main income came from running numbers for the Italian mob. She raised us as strict Catholics."

An early 80s icon of rebelling against the establishment, Rick James started early by joining the navy at age fifteen and going AWOL soon after. He fled to Canada, and it was there, in Toronto, that he founded his first group, the Mynah Birds. Other members of the group included Neil Young and Bruce Palmer (who later formed Buffalo Springfield), and Goldie McJohn (who later joined Steppenwolf). It was at this point that he became known as Rick James.

Being the nephew of the Temptations' Melvin Franklin,...