Dynomite!: Good Times, Bad Times, Our Times--A Memoir (34 page)

Sadly, the Balkanization of comedy has grown worse, not better, since then. “Funny is funny” is not a truism anymore. There’s black comedy, black ghetto comedy, black woman comedy, Hispanic comedy, gay comedy, butch gay comedy, and on and on. Today, comics focus in on their own particular crowd with a laser beam. Comedians used to bring us together; now they separate us from each other.

Lot of stuff goin’ on. On television now they have commercials that appeal to the ethnic group that is watching the show. If they have a Hispanic show, they have Hispanic commercials. If they have an Oriental show, they have to have Oriental commercials. I’m watching a black show the other day . . . the Pillsbury Doughboy comes on—and he’s burnt!

When the Store opened its room in Vegas at the Dunes, certain comics were packaged together—there was an all-woman group, a country group, and a black show. I usually led the latter, which also featured Finis Henderson, Joey Kamen, and Roxanne Reese. The Flabu-lous Henderson, as I called Finis (named by his mother because he was the “finest”), did impressions, usually musical, of stars like Sammy Davis Jr. and Michael Jackson. We nicknamed him the “Milkman” because when his act was going well, he would go beyond his twenty minutes and milk the audience for every second of applause.

One night Mooney came in to fill in for someone. He saw that the show was all black and proclaimed, “Oh, I see, it’s the minstrel show, brother!” From that time on, during the several years we played there, that was what everyone called us—the Minstrel Show. I suppose we had made progress—at least we really were black.

Unfortunately, the black community has rarely fully supported black comics—including Cosby—who do humor a level above Niggery Comedy. Cosby’s most dedicated audience has been the white audience. For my post-Panthers stand-up act that has been mine too. Thanks to my more traditional approach to joke telling, my lack of profanity, and the bad vibe in the black community the attacks on J. J. caused, my audience is largely white. I tell club owners who I have not worked with before not to even bother spending money on promoting my shows on local black radio stations or in black newspapers. I am not considered part of the black comedy thang. I am the Johnny Mathis of Black Comedians!

My stand-up has always been very different from Niggery Comedy. I try to have something to say about life, about politics, about society.

More violence in Northern Ireland. Goes to show that in a country without any blacks, Jews, or Mexicans, people can improvise.

Ever notice you never see any black suicide bombers? You ask a black guy to be a suicide bomber, he says, “Can’t do it. I just put new rims on this car!”

Economy is bad. People are willing to take a job doing anything. I know a guy with a master’s degree in electrical engineering just got a job proofreading M&Ms.

Black stand-ups today rarely do political humor. There is truly no black equivalent to a Dennis Miller, Jon Stewart, or Steven Colbert. Having a black man as president has actually hurt political humor from black comedians. Very few—Larry Wilmore, the Senior Black Correspondent on Stewart’s the
Daily Show
is a rarity—feel right about making a joke about one of our own. The black audience just might not like that. But even though I am black, I am a free man, and so . . .

Could be a little buyer’s remorse after electing Barack Obama. How high were we that we elected a black guy as president? I mean, we like the guy. He’s not a Flava Flav kind of black guy, but he is black. Now the country is $14 trillion in debt. I’m happy about that, to tell you the truth. Glad to see a black man can finally get credit.

The black comic today who most reminds me of me is Chris Rock—his frequent use of the n-word aside. He works hard, is aware of all aspects of life, and knows not only comedy but also the history of comedy (which is why I think he cast me in his
Everybody Hates Chris
sitcom as his character’s grandfather). Sometimes if you close your eyes and just listen to him perform, he has the same rhythm in joke telling as I do. More importantly, we both want to appeal to everyone; we strive for universality. That speech Brenner gave me at the African Room in the late ’60s still holds true today: If you don’t mind having a small audience, then only speak to blacks. If you want a large audience, you need to speak to whites: There are more of them than there are of us.

The problem is that white comics don’t have to be white, but black comics have to be black. I took a lot of criticism about J. J. being ridiculous. What about Steve Martin and his wild and crazy guy? Was he any less ridiculous? If a black comic had done the same routine, he would have been crucified for “cooning it up.” But Steve was white. He did not—nor did he have to—represent anyone or anything. He even made a movie about a white man thinking he was black.
The Jerk
opened with him saying, “I was born a poor black child . . . ” It was stupid, and there is no problem with stupid in comedy—unless you are black and in front of a white audience.

Which is why white audiences rarely see Niggery Comedy. If you have seen Michael Epps, Earthquake, D. C. Curry, Adele Givens, Cheryl Underwood, and Joe Torry, you have been “ghettosized.” None of these funny people have been seen on late-night network TV in any meaningful way. They have almost exclusively appeared on shows expressly aimed at black audiences.

There is a vicious circle: Because minority comedy acts are rarely seen on late-night, they find themselves on segregated venues—BET’s
Comic View
, HBO’s
Def Comedy Jam
and
Loco Slam
, and so on—and that labels them as comics for only a certain audience. Because of that, they do not get gigs at white comedy clubs, which means they are not booked on late-night TV. Afraid of losing their core audience, they stay with Niggery Comedy, which ensures that they will never broaden their act to include the white audience. They want to but they can’t break out of the comedy ghetto. And so the cultural segregation continues—on TV we have BET and TV One for blacks, Telemundo and Galavi-sion for Latinos, CMT for rednecks.

I received an invitation to the BET Awards. The information e-mail from Black Entertainment Television was a bit different from the invite to the TV Land Awards. I paraphrase, but not much:

Please let us know if you have a police record so we can clear you to get in. . . . If you have a posse, please only bring two of them. . . . If you have any weapons, please let us know in advance because everyone will be going through metal screening and searches.

After the pat down I entered the lobby of the theater, ready to partake of the food. But there had been a problem and the caterer had yet to arrive. The organizers ordered an emergency fast food delivery—buckets of Popeyes fried chicken and biscuits. I was surprised they did not order watermelon too! When I stuck my hand into a bucket, a production assistant stopped me with “That’s Snoop’s chicken!”

I had been invited to the BET Awards because the rap world of Snoop Dogg had rediscovered J. J. thanks to late-night reruns of
Good Times
on TV Land. “Dyn-o-mite!” was sampled for various rap songs, from “Pass the Mic” by the Beastie Boys to “Dynamite Beats” by Bomb the Bass and “Going Postal” from Rhymefest. I’m still waiting for the checks, people!

Nas also name-checked
Good Times
in his 2001 track “Ether”: “J. J. Evans gettin’ gunned up and clapped quick.” I didn’t know what that meant or that the song dissed superstar rapper Jay-Z, but at least they remembered me. Years later I still did not realize there was a feud when rapper Cam’ron asked me to portray Jay-Z in his video for “Touch It or Not / Wet Wipes.” It too dissed Jay-Z. All of a sudden the former Official Comedian for the Black Panthers in the East was in the middle of a gangsta rap war. Thankfully, peace broke out.

This is not rocket science, people. Black comics have had the most success when they have appealed to the most people.

Which brings us back, as always, to Cosby.

When Pryor first got on stage, he was doing nothing more than a Cosby impersonation. With help from Mooney, he would later find his own voice and style. But it says something that Pryor, who had very little in common personally with Cosby, thought Bill was the best stand-up comic there was.

No one has come close to what Cosby has done. Yes, nearly every black comedian today, from Rock to Chappelle—and many white ones too, like Dane Cook—tries to be like Pryor in terms of language and rawness. But you never see anyone try to follow in Cosby’s footsteps—because they can’t. You would have to work clean and work up observational routines, not just three-beat jokes. You would have to reflect real life, not a caricature of real life. You would have to command the stage effortlessly, so much so that you could sit down for an entire set of stand-up. Oh, and you would have to make everyone—black, white, whatever—laugh big time.

Ironically, the best stand-up in comedy has not changed stand-up comedy—because no one can follow Cosby. No one even tries. And he has succeeded without uttering a single “fuck” or “nigger.”

Like Cosby, my act is not black—or blue. In other words, there is no profanity. James Brown, or Mr. Brown as he demanded to be called, had the same rule when I worked as the comic in his show late in his career. That even meant no “hell” or “damn.” I don’t go that far, but my feeling is that if you would not let your ten-year-old kid sit in the front row, then you are doing something wrong.

You might think that working clean would be a good thing. But these days it is not.

I was working in Corpus Christi, Texas, at the Crazy Times comedy club. I was fifteen minutes into my show when I saw a table being kind of restless. Finally, they all got up and walked out. I was stunned. That almost never happens and I feel guilty when it does because these people paid good money to see me and for some reason I had let them down.

I saw them in the back of the club having an animated conversation with the owner. After the show he told me, very unhappily, that “those people who left were regulars.”

“What did I do?” I asked.

“They said you didn’t do any dirty jokes, didn’t use any cuss words. They had to think too much.”

Oh. In that case, I can’t say I’m sorry.

That is one reason why I insist that my opening acts also work clean. With a “blue” comic opening for me, people might expect that I will be the same, and then they will be disappointed.

I called one club a few days before my appearance and asked the assistant if I had a clean opening act. She said, “All of the comics stay at the same hotel, so I imagine they all take showers.”

“No, no,” I said. “Does the opening act use any profanity?”

I heard her ask a person nearby, “Do we have any acts who don’t curse?” A moment later, she came back to me: “I’m sorry, but we’ve
never
had one of those here.”

Sometimes I get an opening act that wants to negotiate. “Please! Can I just have two ‘fucks’? That’s all I need!”

There’s a belief among most comics today that saying “fuck” makes any joke work better. Why then is it that most major comics have had the most success and made the most money not from their oh-so-hip “dirty bits” but from their clean projects? Chris Rock?
Everybody Hates Chris
. Eddie Murphy?
Beverly Hills Cop
,
Coming to America
,
Doctor Doolittle
,
Shrek
. Richard Pryor? His movies with Gene Wilder. It’s not just a black thang either. Bob Saget has always had a very dirty stand-up act—but he made his cash with the oh-so-wholesome
Full House
sitcom and hugely successful
America’s Funniest Home Videos
.

Dick Gregory, my first inspiration, had both black and white audiences. I finally met him for the first time a few years ago. I was anxious to know from a true groundbreaker for all black comedians how he came up with his material, about his life as a stand-up, and how he made the transition from comedy to activism.

“Naw, man, I don’t deal with that anymore,” he said. “None of that means anything. I’m all about love and feeling good. What’s going on with your life?”

“Uh, but . . . ”

“How do you feel? How’s your health?”

I wish my only meeting with him had been more informative. But I will always admire what he did as a comic. He could have stuck to playing black clubs and the chitlin’ circuit, but he wanted to perform in front of everybody.

So did I. I even went country. Renowned country radio and TV host Ralph Emery booked me on his
Nashville Now
show on what was then called the Nashville Network. There are not many black folks who are into country music, but I went on the show anyway. Apparently I did really well because he kept inviting me back and went so far as to arrange for me to appear at the Country Music Association’s Fanfest in Nashville. I briefly thought about repositioning myself as the Charley Pride of comedy! Charley was the biggest black singing star in country music history.

In Vegas I opened for two other country stars, Trace Adkins and Randy Travis. You might think their audiences, completely white, would be put off by a black comic opening their shows. But they were not, and I was proud to be able to work those crowds. Both stars were great to be around too. Randy was especially supportive of me being on the bill with him at the MGM Grand, and I fit right in with his insistence on no profanity. He was very religious too and held a group prayer before every performance.

We did the room’s early show, with me going on at 7:30 p.m. The showroom’s late show began at 11 p.m. and was completely different, starring comic Sandra Bernhard, who loved to drop F-bombs and had a very controversial, sexually charged act.