photo courtesy of Museum of Broadcast CommunicationsTurned on the 10 O'clock News and one of the first stories in the A Block, comedian Richard Pryor has died. A true sadness hangs over me. He had not been in good health for a long time suffering from MS. You knew it was going to happen, you just didn't know when. But that doesn't soften the blow.
I always liked his comedy. First as a teen, I liked him because he used "dirty" words. A rebellion thing. But as I grew up, I began to see what his comedy was really about and he was always on the mark. You could stand back from his performance and you "got the message."
The first time I heard of Richard Pryor (have you noticed we always use his full name? He was born Richard Franklin Lenox Thomas Pryor, you know.) I was in ninth grade in math class. Several of the guys in the back of the room were reciting lines for this new comedy album by a comedian named Richard Pryor.
What drew them to the album was not the edgy, in your face reality of the Black Experience that Richard Pryor made his bones with (hey, we were middle class white guys, what did WE know of the Black Experience?), but the title of the album, "That Niggers Crazy." This WAS the south you know and in those days (mid 70's), it was white etiquette that the N-word was spoken in hushed tones in the white community when speaking of all blacks, but you didn't just come out and say it any more. Jim Crow was dying, but not as fast as many would have liked back in those days. The title was a flash point for recognizing a fast becoming taboo. Pryor hung it out there for all to see in its pristine ugliness.
It became a word that even Pryor himself stopped using after a visit to Africa. His reasoning was simple, and straight forward, like his comedy. When he made a trip to in Africa in 1980, he saw blacks in positions of high responsibility such as Presidents and Prime Ministers and Chief's of Police, something he admitted he hadn't seen in the US and it had skewed his perception of his own race. In Africa he just saw people with the same skin color as his doing the work of the whites in the US and these people certainly were not "niggers." And so it changed how he saw his own race and from then on he admitted he didn't see any here in the US. And it can be traced from that time period in 1980 forward the accepted use of that word has declined to a point that it isn't used in the lexicon of American English anymore.
The last time that I remember hearing that word on television was in 1977 (and yes, it was used more than you might think) when Richard Pryor guest hosted Saturday Night Live. In a skit that was delegated to the last 30 minutes of the show (actually the LAST skit of that show, I saw it live and have it on beta tape now), the graveyard of skits, the place that the not quite good enough skits go, even to this day on SNL, Chevy Chase is interviewing Pryor for a janitors job and part of the interview is a word association game. It starts out simple enough, Chase says "red", Pryor says "blue" and a laugh comes out from the audience. The game continues with a few more innocent words then Chase says "tar baby" out of the blue and Pryor's character is now beginning to catch on that something isn't right with this "interview." The game continues with Chase saying a few more pointed words and then "spearchucker" and Pryor's retort of "honky." The audience laugher has now become guarded. They aren't sure if this is still part of the skit or not. Pryor's face becomes distorted with anger. Pryor is masterfully raising the stakes of the payoff of the moral lesson he is teaching all of America this Saturday night. Chase then pops the word everyone watching has been thinking of. Chase says with an angry voice, "NIGGER!" The studio goes dead silent. What will Pryor's response be? Is this still part of the skit? Has SNL just derailed itself? Pryor slowly rises up from his chair and plainly states in Chevy Chase's face "DEAD HONKY" and then his face goes into that now recognizable clown distortion of lip quiver and eye brows moving up and down. He has sucked in the audience and got his point across. That is NOT an acceptable word in the American English language. And to this day, I can not think of a single time when that word has been used on American television, some 30 years later. That one skit has become the most remembered skit in SNL history. The power it had reverberates to this day. But for Richard Pryor that was just another day at the office.
He created a universe of characters that transcended all cultures and races with the gut truth of his world as a black man. It was years later as I was watching for the umpteenth time one of his many live act movies that show on HBO and Showtime from time to time that the full impact of Pryor's comedy hit me and I had a new and fresh respect for the man. Not just because he was a funny comedian, but he was a marvelous truth teller. The story he was relating from the time when he was on the "chitlin circuit" in the 50's and 60's playing any club that would take him. He was playing in a club that was run by the Mafia and the characters he used to show how different the world had changed since then was astonishing. He used the accents and gestures of the men, along with his exaggerated black voice he was so famous for to paint a frightening and funny picture of the time in the clubs and just how far we as a society had come to that point in time. Enough time had past since that show that I could see how much further we had come and his story stood and Pryor's true genus stood head and shoulders above it all.
His most remembered character was an old wino named "Mudbone." The last cut on his album, "That Niggers Crazy" Mudbone fore told a future that was to be one Pryor would have to go through himself. Mudbone relates the story of an intelligent young black man on his way up in the world of comedy in the streets of the ghetto and how "narcotic" has made him "null and void." Five years later, Richard Pryor is badly burned after a freebasing binge that some say, including Pryor in his 1995 book, "Pryor Convictions" was an unsuccessful suicide attempt. A few years later, Pryor was diagnosed with MS.
I also didn't realize until I bought the "Blazing Saddles" DVD that the Richard Pryor listed in the writing credits was THE Richard Pryor. Pryor was to have played the Clevon Little role of Black Bart but the studios were leery of Pryor in the role. Mel Brooks was not the name then that he is now and so he had to capitculate to the studios to get the picture made. Pryor did write some of the movie but not the parts you might think. Pryor's contribution, according to Brooks and others was the Mongo parts of the movie. The bean farting, saloon destroying, Bart loving character that Alex Karis played were all Pryor's. Pryor said that was a much more interesting character to write for than Black Bart, the ole' "been there, done that." He also coined the Madeine Kahn line after a night with Black Bart describing the black stereo type of sexual prowes, "It's twue! It's twue!"
My favorite movies of his were the semi autobiographical "JoJo Dancer, You Life is Calling" and my all time favorite, "Harlem Nights" with Redd Foxx and Della Reese and the then up and coming Eddie Murphy.
When MS started to take bit and pieces of Pryor in the 90's, he kept working as much as he could. Doing stand up sitting down and playing a MS patient in a made for TV movie. Just last year, he was celebrated in a special that aired on Comedy Central called, "I Ain't Dead Yet, M*therf@ck%r!" that featured Dave Chappelle, Margaret Cho, Jamie Foxx, Whoopi Goldberg, Steve Harvey, Chris Rock, Denis Leary and Robin Williams to name a few.
So long Richard, thanks for the laughs and the lessons. You will be sorely missed.
The King is dead. Long live the King.
(where is my copy of "Harlem Nights" got off to?)
