When Rick James Dropped a Yacht Rock Album

The new HBO film Yacht Rock: a Dockumentary looks at the sometimes mocked, often misunderstood genre of music called yacht rock, focusing on a prominent group of white musicians who borrowed from Black artists to create polished blue-eyed soul. The film notes that Black stars were largely absent from the yacht rock phenomenon, but leaves out a fascinating footnote: that time Rick James released a yacht rock album.

As the documentary (or "dockumentary" — good one, guys) notes, "yacht rock" was not considered a genre at the time it flourished in the '70s and early '80s. The label was only applied more than two decades after the genre's height, thanks to a Channel 101 video series that celebrated the exploits of yacht rock icons like Steely Dan, Toto, The Doobie Brothers, Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald.

As many of those artists note in Yacht Rock: a Dockumentary, they were standing on the shoulders of Black musicians who had come before them. As Eric Steuer and Jason Betrue note in the latest episode of the Actual Facts podcast, Earth Wind & Fire's music has many similarities with the songs often considered yacht rock, and heavily influenced them, with their shimmering blend of jazz, R&B, soul, funk, disco and pop, but they are nonetheless left out of the genre. You can listen here:

Perhaps the most obvious example of the genre is Christopher Cross' glorious "Sailing," the title track of his 1979 album of the same name, a massive hit that won Cross five Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist.

Cross says on his website that "Sailing" uses the "liquid metaphor of sailing in a boat. ... to express the transformative power of art."

He didn't write it while actually sailing.

Rick James: The Forgotten Album

The purest distillation of the yacht rock concept may come from Rick James — an artist absolutely no one considers part of the genre. In 1980, James made an album of literal yacht rock — with some songs written on an actual yacht.

James was riding high after three albums — 1978's Come Get It!, and 1979's Bustin' Out of L Seven and Fire It Up. He had struggled mightily to reach his level of success, including joining a band with Neil Young that got and lost a Motown deal, and, according to James, just barely avoiding the Manson murders.

As if releasing two albums in 1979 wasn't exhausting enough, James started 1980 by going on tour with rising star Prince as his opener — which meant he had to work extra hard to avoid being upstaged, night after night. So at the end of the tour, in the late spring and early summer of 1980, James decided to take a break.

In his posthumous 2014 memoir Glow, which David Ritz completed after James' death in 2004, James recounted his decision to hold off on making another record and to instead take his band to Florida for some well-deserved R&R. They rented a mansion on the Florida Keys, with the Bee Gees next door, according to Glow.

"When Miami got too hot, we went looking for some of those trade winds you find in the Caribbean," James wrote. "With my acoustic guitar in hand, I hired a captain, and drifted around St. Croix to St. Thomas, St. Maarten, and Martinique. ... The songs I wrote reflected my relaxation. Instead of my usual nine of ten songs, I recorded only six. Motown insisted I give them more. I refused. I wanted this album to be sparse, not crowded. The stories coming through me were all about the sea and the sand and the beauty of the islands."

The album was called Garden of Love, and included songs that featured the "sound of the waves," according to James, including "Island Lady," "Summer Love," and "Gettin' It On (In the Sunshine)."

Why You Have Never Heard of the Rick James Yacht Rock Album

Fans did not embrace the new Rick James. As he recounted in Glow: "The album barely went gold. ... One day I was on top and then, with one underperforming record, the bottom fell out."

Worst of all, his tough-as-nails mother, a former numbers runner for the Buffalo mob, told him he'd gone soft. Glow recalls him telling her: "I love everything you do, James, but I can see why it wasn't as popular as the others. ... You've been off the streets for a while."

She added that while it's "fun to go sailing around those islands.... you don't ever wanna forget the streets."

He took the advice to heart. His next album, 1981's Street Sounds, was James' biggest hit, and included the singles "Superfreak" and "Give It to Me Baby." While Toto and Michael McDonald turned out blue-eyed soul, James made gritty funk the industry and fans apparently preferred to his softer side.

As Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary notes, the term yacht rock is often used as a pejorative for watered-down, unchallenging music. We don't feel that way about any of the artists we've referenced here. But we bet Rick James wouldn't mind being left out of the genre.

James' yachting excursion is such a minor footnote in his career — and music history — that it is left out not only of Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary, but also Showtime's terrific documentary Bitchin’: The Sound and Fury of Rick James, which is entirely focused on him.

Main image: Rick James in Bitchin'. Showtime