Pryor Convictions and Other Life Sentences by Richard Pryor Todd Gold

Author:Richard Pryor, Todd Gold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-04-06T16:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

* * *

Back in L.A., I started working out again at Redd Foxx’s club. One night Redd gave me a fedora to wear. It was more than a friendly gesture. I saw it as the passing of a torch. The master had given me his blessing.

I took it seriously. My first concert film, Smokin', filmed at the Improv in New York, in April 1971, contained new bits like “Black Cat with Neat Hair,” “Colored Guys Have Big Ones,” and “Dracula and the Brother.” My second album, Craps After Hours, also explored race, sex, and drugs, but with even more shape and sting.

I knew routines dealing with getting high, fucking my wife’s girlfriend, and rednecks looking for pussy were different from anyone else’s. But I didn’t want merely to shock people. I also wanted to be good. I wanted my stand-up to be like a night at the theater.

Mooney was the one who told me what people thought about me. I was hot in the black community long before I cracked the mainstream. But word spread. Clubs were packed whenever I played. My shows were events, sojourns into territory considered dangerous, taboo, and, as all of us know, true to life.

That’s part of what made it so damn exciting. Me and the audience were breaking new ground.

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