Activist and comedian headlines Gateway Classic comedy show Sept. 22
By K. Curtis Lyle
For the St. Louis American
As the Gateway Football Classic Weekend (Sept. 22-24) nears, the American asked its culture critic K. Curtis Lyle to meditate on local icon Dick Gregory, who annually hosts a comedy show aboard the President Casino to kick off the festivities.
A musical revolution reared its beautiful head in America in the 1940’s. It was called be bop. Like today’s hip-hop revolution, it spawned transformations that made the entire society look at itself in new and revelatory ways. The idea of having an intensely personal style became the core meaning for the development of American culture.
The arrival of be bop gave the larger culture a superfueled injection of blackness accompanied by an heroic mythology with style at its center. Style encompassed the idea of almost overbearing individuality anchored in a deep communion with others.
Simultaneously, there were great personalities, like Paul Robeson, A. Philip Randolph, James Weldon Johnson, Joe Louis and finally Jackie Robinson, who visibly represented black culture’s advancement and conscience. But they petitioned the world from the outside. They wanted in. The musical magi of be bop saw themselves as already existing at the center of the world. All worlds. Their ethic was not petition, but challenge. Check the expression that most clearly defines their spiritual position. Can you dig it?
The jazz drummer of the be-bop period no longer drove the ensemble with a steady 4/4 beat. He accented, implied, created percussive moments for the soloist to react to and then escape from or transcend. Ebb and flow became the name of the game. The drummer’s secret influence were the dancers of the previous generation, preferably the intense, regal and aloof tap dancer, sometimes called the soloist of wood and sand. They had only their feet against floor boards; sometimes a handful of sand gave these austere circumstances a grainy and hissing aura.
The frontline players in be bop, usually playing saxophone or trumpet, had a new role, also. Their lead was now based not on group harmony, but on the physical endurance developed in the jam session and the constant oneupmanship of brilliant and outrageous ideas.
The compliment to this new leader, the musical competitor, was the stand-up comedian. The comedian of the ‘40s was a kind of verbal martial artist. His position was even more lonely than that of the tap dancer. He had nothing but his mouth to convey the new core idea of the culture. His was the ultimate naked action.
Of all the great stand-up comics to emerge from this seminal period, none remotely rivaled Dick Gregory. His clarity of purpose and knowledge of the oppressor that he challenged, and still challenges to this day, is unrivalled. He came at a time when color was an issue that could either be confronted openly or simply ignored. Bill Cosby, Flip Wilson, George Kirby – all great comedians – chose to go around it. The arrival of his genius in the late ‘50s and his true arrival as a spokesman for black consciousness in the turbulent ‘60s doesn’t in any way negate or even alter his connection to the be-bop soloists from the ‘40s.
Gregory was born in St. Louis, in 1932. He went to Sumner High School, where he was a track star and a person obviously chosen, by the community and the gods, to represent his people in a way that no one had before.
I’ve seen him on stage dealing with every subject from his childhood disbelief in Santa Claus – “I knew no white dude was gonna be walking through my neighborhood” – to how things really work: “Just don’t mess up the money. That’s right, the President of the U.S. of A. can mess up anything, but the money. When you see the heads of General Motors, Ford, Chrysler and I.B.M. kicking down the gate of the White House and dragging LBJ on to the front lawn, whipping his head with an ugly stick, kicking his ass, and calling him a barbeque-licking cowboy, then you know that he’s messed up the money.”
The amazing thing about Gregory’s long solo flight is that he chose to withdraw, in a sense, from an incredible run on fame and fortune. He became a person so deeply imbued with a sense of community that he transcended the whole idea of category; he became a citizen of the world. His commitment to tranforming health through intelligent nutrition and his demand that civil and human rights be put on the front burner of our institutions made his appeal reach from Japan to Zimbabwe to Brazil to Harlem.
He has become, in this new century, a strange and rare bird. He flies alone, and yet he belongs to everyone. He’s intensely private and world-renowned.
He can march in Zurich one day; the next day he might fly to St. Louis for the Gateway Classic, or maybe to check and see if Nelly can now go into Union Station with his do-rag on.
He began as a track star. Amazingly, he’s still running. For Dick Gregory, there’s no such thing as a long distance.
The Gateway Football Classic Weekend will get underway at 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 22 with the Dick Gregory Comedy Show, featuring Gregory and Arvin Mitchell, aboard the President Casino. Tickets are $25. Call (314) 621-1994.
