Sir Mack Rice

Bonny “Mack” Rice was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1933 and moved to Detroit in 1950, where he sang with the Falcons from 1957 to 1963 alongside Eddie Floyd and a young Wilson Pickett. He wrote “Mustang Sally” and cut it himself for Blue Rock in 1965, billed as “Sir Mack Rice”; it climbed to No. 15 on the R&B chart. As a performer he charted only twice — the other was “Coal Man” in 1969 — but as a writer he was formidable, co-writing “Respect Yourself” with Luther Ingram for the Staple Singers. He died in the Detroit area in 2016.