Dynomite!: Good Times, Bad Times, Our Times--A Memoir (33 page)

An Italian guy would come up to me at a casino and say, “Eh, we fuckin’ love you, man. We got some business we got to take care of, but we got the girls and the kids here and they want to see you. They want to see you do some of that nigger shit. So you do that, take care of that for a fuckin’ half hour. We’ll come back and give you a thou. But do that colored shit.” He would yell to a friend, “Eh, Joey, come listen to the nigger. He’s gonna do some shit here.”

If one of his friends or family said to him, “Maybe you shouldn’t use that word,” he’d shoot back with “What fuckin’ word? He’s just doin’ nigger shit. What word am I using that’s so bad?” He honestly did not think he said anything wrong.

In 2010 Laura Schlessinger, aka Dr. Laura, said “nigger” several times on her radio show in response to a black caller asking if it was okay to use that word. Dr. Laura’s answer was that it depended, but that black men seemed to call each other “nigger” all the time. She was right. Blacks love to use the n-word to each other. But usually when white people say the n-word, they know not to say it in front of us—even on the radio. Dr. Laura made that mistake, and soon afterward public pressure forced her to move her show to satellite radio.

Just like “dyn-o-mite,” I do not say “nigger” in my act. After my early years in comedy it just no longer was part of my vernacular on stage. But when I hear others use it today, it does not bother me. Most black comics use it a lot. I loved when Paul Mooney said “nigger” a hundred times in his act. I can’t stand that he has stopped.

“Come on, Mooney!” I told him. “That’s your thing, man!”

I have known him since about 1969, and Mooney has always said “nigger.” He is the godfather of that sort of comedy, the man who fed it to Pryor. For him not to say “nigger” is like a day without sunshine. Before he announced his prohibition, when people would tell him, “You’re so talented and funny, you don’t need to say the word ‘nigger,’” he answered, “I’ve been called it enough. I can use it whenever I want to!” Right on, brother!

What caused Mooney to stop was Michael Richards’s rant at the Laugh Factory in late 2006. Responding to hecklers, Richards shouted “He’s a nigger!” several times. The backlash was so severe that he retired from stand-up. Mooney was so distressed by the anger in Richards’s voice that he reacted by saying, “We’re gonna stop using the n-word. I’m gonna stop using it. . . . We want all human beings throughout the world to stop using the n-word.” The next month he tried to give his first “n-free” performance. He made it through an hour before one slipped out. He apologized and has since kept to his pledge, suggesting that instead people substitute “Michael Richards” for the n-word.

For him to ban it from his act is just as wrong as “nigger” coming out of Cosby’s mouth. If it fits who you are as a performer, then say it. If it doesn’t, then don’t. I can only hope that Mooney will once again say “nigger” on stage.

There are some things that are far more racially insensitive than the n-word. If blacks don’t say or do them even among ourselves, then no one else ought to say or do them either. Such things go beyond political correctness and enter the area of just plain offensive.

One such thing happened when I opened for a week at the old school Fontainebleau Hotel on Miami Beach for singer Eddie Fisher and headliner comedian Jackie Mason. The audience was largely Jewish, but that had never been a problem for me. At the first show they applauded when I walked on. But that was it. There was not one laugh in twenty minutes. Not one. I could hear the ocean waves lapping against the shore outside the room. I could not use the excuse of “second show, Friday night” or that people were drinking and eating and talking and not paying attention. They sat there, they looked at me, they knew who I was, they heard what I said. When I was finished, I walked off to silence. Well, I thought, maybe everyone will have a bad show.

Out came Fisher, who had been a teen idol and one of the biggest stars in the world in the ‘50s. He was greeted by wild applause and the crowd loved him.

Near the end of his act he talked about how he grew up a Jewish boy in Philadelphia and about how he was discovered by Eddie Cantor at Grossinger’s in the Borscht Belt. On stage was a full-length mirror with its back angled away from the audience. Fisher sat in front of it as he talked about Cantor, his mentor nurtured in vaudeville, and the other great Jewish singer of that day, Al Jolson. In his hands was a chunk of burnt cork and he began rubbing it onto his face. My mouth dropped open. Was this actually happening?

“I would now like to do a song for you dedicated to Eddie Cantor and Al Jolson.”

Completely in blackface, just like his mentor had done in the early twentieth century, Fisher sang “My Mammy.” He strolled into the audience, went down on one knee and, in front of an elderly Jewish woman, belted out, “I’d walk a million miles / For one of your smiles / My Mammy!”

The audience loved it! They gave him a standing ovation. The guy really with a black face bombed and the white guy who painted his face black was a hit. Go figure.

Mason followed him onto the stage.

My grandfather always said, “Don’t watch your money; watch your health.” So one day while I was watching my health, someone stole my money. It was my grandfather.

The audience loved Mason too.

In an earlier time doing blackface minstrel shows was okay. I have no problem with presenting history accurately either. Mark Twain used the word “nigger” in
Huckleberry Finn
and no one should change that. But to recreate something such as a minstrel show for entertainment purposes, well, it’s a free country—but be prepared for the consequences.

The review in the
Miami Herald
the next day noted Fisher’s blackface routine but without any other comment. That morning I took a call from the local NAACP. “Did he really do that?” they asked. I told them it was true. The next night they picketed in front of the hotel. I believe that put a damper on Fisher ever performing again in blackface.

Once the public accepted black entertainers, there was no longer any excuse for having whites pretend to be black by putting on blackface. That acceptance, however, has taken some time. Just because
Good Times
and other black sitcoms were on the air in the ’70s did not mean that all was well in race relations.

When Franklin Ajaye and I were the only black comics on the TV series
Playboy after Dark
, the director would have a camera only on the black people in the audience for reaction shots to our jokes. One time there was a black guy who would not laugh, and he was the one they kept going to. Finally, the director told the cameraman, “Fuck that black guy! Get me another black guy!”

For the
Dean Martin Celebrity Roast
series I was occasionally the only black guy on the dais—they had to have one. But Greg Garrison, from my
Rowan & Martin
experience, was the show’s producer and director, and he still did not think I was funny.

“The only reason you’re on the show,” he said, “is that the network told me to put you on the show.” Though the roasts were on NBC and
Good Times
was on CBS, my Q Score (which measures public appeal and is important to advertisers) was so high that even a competing network wanted me to make an appearance.

But Garrison made sure I rarely told many jokes. Instead, to fulfill his orders I was mostly shown sitting on the dais during the tapings. When viewers saw the shows, there I’d be, howling with laughter at a terrible joke from Charo. In fact, Garrison taped my reaction shots before the roast. I had no idea what joke I would be laughing at!

The dictatorial Garrison also insisted that all of the men wear a tuxedo or suit and tie. But when we passed on the way to the set for the first show, I just had on my usual jacket.

“Where’s your tie?” he asked.

“In my dressing room,” I told him.

“Don’t lie to your fuckin’ idol!” he shouted.

He was right. I never did have a tie—and I never wore one on the show either.

The business of comedy continues to be segregated today thanks largely to another color: green, as in cash money. The bottom line is that black audiences, unfortunately, do not spend as much money at comedy clubs as white audiences.

As a result, most comedy clubs prefer white comedians. That may come as a shock to you if you believe we have become a color-blind society. But comedy clubs would rather have a white comic—or a black comic with a largely white audience—than a black comic who caters to a black audience. Because the black comic just doesn’t bring in the paying customers who shell out the cash once they are inside the door.

Black folks, we’re much different than y’all. Y’all go out on an evening like tonight, spend thirty or forty dollars and say, “Hey, no problem at all.” But black folks, we go out and spend thirty or forty dollars in the evening and we WILL turn over a table. Black folks like to take home souvenirs!

Because of the handful of high-profile black comedy stars, many people assume there is a long line of black stand-ups in the wings. In truth, there were not many black stand-ups at the Store or Improv back in my day. For a long time Pryor, Redd Foxx, Franklin Ajaye, and I would be the only ones to get on the marquee. And there are not many now.

The road to the top starts at the bottom. The education of a stand-up means having to be bad before you can be good. You need a place to learn and develop. But there were—and are—very few black comics in the showcase lineup at the LA Store hoping to rise up. To get noticed, black comics have had to succeed in other venues, from movies and TV to rap and even public parks.

Charlie Barnett found that outdoor stage out of necessity and his story is among the most tragic. Raised by his grandmother in West Virginia, he left home when he was eleven years old to live with his mother in Boston. The next year she kicked him out, and gangs, heroin addiction, crime, and reform school followed. At nineteen he made his way to New York City, where he became a street comic, which is a very hard gig. If you don’t make folks laugh, they won’t throw money in the hat, and you go hungry. But with his energy and his talent for physical comedy, he established himself at Washington Square Park. Unlike the other street performers, he was able to “fill the fountain,” drawing crowds to the park’s amphitheatre-like fountain area.

I like Ronald Reagan ’cause he’s gonna bring back the good ole days—slavery. But at least I’d be workin’.
(Charlie Barnett)

Besides performing on the street, Charlie began to play clubs, which is where I first saw him. We worked together many times. He was screwed up and unreliable, but he was also a great guy, a nice guy. After Dave Chappelle was booed off the stage during the Apollo’s Amateur Hour, Barnett was the one who helped restore Chappelle’s confidence and get him going again.

The folks from
Saturday Night Live
heard about Charlie, brought him in for an audition, and were blown away. But on a show like
SNL
there is constant rewriting. New lines are immediately put on cue cards and fed very fast to the performers. The producers and writers noticed during rehearsals that Charlie was having trouble keeping up. I’m not sure that Charlie actually could read. If he could, his reading comprehension was very weak. The producers had to hold a last-minute audition to replace him. His spot was taken by a young kid named Eddie Murphy.

Charlie would appear in the comedy
D.C. Cab
and became a regular on the
Miami Vice
TV series. But in his personal life he was a lot like Pryor—if he made $500 that day, he would spend $500 that night. After
Miami Vice
went off the air, he was back living on the streets. In 1996, at age forty-one, Charlie died of AIDS.

The desperation that brought Charlie to Washington Square Park and was felt by many black stand-ups helped launch the Comedy Act Theater. Located in the Crenshaw district of infamous south central LA, the club was opened in 1985 by show business entrepreneur Michael Williams. The venue nurtured an entire generation of black stand-ups, from Robin Harris, who was a regular emcee, to Jamie Foxx, D. L. Hughley, Damon Wayans, Chris Tucker, Martin Lawrence, Steve Harvey, Bernie Mac, and on and on. In the early ’90s a second club opened in Atlanta, where Cedric the Entertainer, Mike Epps, and Bruce Bruce worked, and another also opened in Chicago.

Few white people went to the Comedy Act Theater—especially not to that neighborhood in LA—and that was the point. These were black comedy clubs for black audiences. The comics could work “black” and not worry about offending white people or about having a wider audience. It was not surprising that many of the best acts that grew up at the Comedy Act Theater found their way into the Def Jam comedy machine and the Kings of Comedy tours. The Def Comedy Jam series on HBO in the ’90s offered an enormously important springboard for black stand-ups, sending them into movies and their own TV shows. Most of those comics would never have had a shot, never been seen, if they had not first had the Comedy Act Theater stage to work.

A negative aspect, however, is that the style that the audiences encouraged there was what I call “Niggery Comedy”—gutter level, racial, laced with profanity, and solely for blacks. Let me be clear: I laugh at that too at times, and I admire many of those comics. Katt Williams might be the closest we have today to a Richard Pryor, both onstage and off. But there should be more black comics who want to do more. There should be some diversity.

In an
Ebony
article in 1975 I said, “I go for universality, to do what everybody can understand; black, white, green, whoever the hell it is. . . . A lot of people are getting hung up onto the black-white thing. . . . I’m not into any of that. . . . It’s not relevant to the world as it is. And that’s what I’m into, the world as a whole, full being. I’m not into just one little area because that’s the way I grew up and I think that’s a bad thing about little black kids now.”