For The St. Louis American
Richard Pryor never did make sense. Born, Dec. 1, 1940, he was a good boy who grew up in his grandmother’s brothel in Peoria, Illinois. He was a member of that class of Americans who constantly amaze, fascinate, attract and sometimes repel nearly ninety-nine percent of the human race. Like Walt Whitman, an obscure Brooklyn, N. Y. newspaperman-poet / self- promoter who published his own work and wrote his own reviews, Emily Dickinson, a cloistered poet / spinster, who never traveled more than fifty miles from here home, Abraham Lincoln, a rail splitter and self-educated country lawyer, who became the political superstar of 19th century America by emancipating an enslaved people and holding a fragile Union together, Jack Johnson, the son of these same ex-slaves, who became the the first black Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the world against a backdrop of American apartheid and murderously enforced racial codes, Pryor was and at the same time represented this strange American phenomenon of persons who powerfully impact a society and a world without seemimg to have much juice, back-up, pedigree or possibility. Somehow they just don’t seem to make sense.
He graduated high school and navigated to and through an undistinguished stint of military service. He cut his comedy teeth in small joints across the country, with the focus being in small mob run midwestern clubs. He would come to use this early gauntlet of work experiences and remembrance of the outrageous characters that peopled his grandma’s brothel as the basis for some of the edgiest comedy ever put on record. This early work was so black it was almost indigestable to the public. There is some suggestion from a fairly accurate historical record that early in his career he was an acolyte of Bill Cosby. This period eveidently passed quickly as Pryor’s career ratched-up and he became the antithesis of Cosby informed comedy. Pryor’s real notice came when he began to burn bridges and icons in a series of furious albums releasd between 1970-1980. There were live pieces that culminated in his glorious, Richard Pryor Live On The Sunset Strip. However , for me, the most serious pieces of work, the ones that define the very essence of his career and propel him beyond comedian into the realm of social satirist and cultural critic are, That Nigger’s Crazy and The Bicentennial Nigger.
The powerful and disturbing element of both of these works are the constant use of the word nigger and his ability to make his growing public hear this word, indeed, hear the entirety of his apparently demented and wildly profane use of language period as a huge and mothering term of endearment. His cursing wasn’t cursing at all, but a hilarious, ingenious and even sweet offering of vulnerability, innocence and tales told – half of which were outright lies (and we knew it) – that we always wanted to tell, but we never had the nerve, genius or opportunity. There was a strange and beautiful intimacy; it was a word that became bond, between he and his audience, for that hour or so that they remained together. You couldn’t stay with him forever, nor could you take him home to your mama, daddy or kids. He belonged to you for that small amount of time and that was enough.
