Stand Up! Records News

Richard Pryor contained multitudes, each fully inhabited character funnier and more
insightful than the last, so it’s no wonder when he took the stage at The Comedy Store in
Hollywood in 1973, it’d be a full 15 minutes before he spoke to the adoring audience as
himself. No, he needed to start where he started, on the streetcorner, with all the wit,
wisdom, and general jackassery of Wino & Junkie. Throughout a set full of hard jokes and
detailed character sketches (including the men of the Saturday night police lineup in his
hometown of Preoria, Illinois—the first and riskiest stage he knew), the audience has the
chance to get caught up in the silliness so inherent to Pryor while never losing sight of the
issues America had yet to face (and hasn’t still). There are sex jokes that hit so hard the
women in the audience take an audible refractory period, drug advice that has you weighing
the relative trip-laden merits of dope and acid, and a call-and-response on sandwiches that
proves the irresistibility of zealous Black midwestern preachers; there’s a litany of celebrities
whose names and projects have blurred in Pryor’s mind, but whose faces and friendship so
clearly light him up; there’s even fighting advice (don’t fight Italians, their mothers get
involved, and try to avoid a paternal cowboy whuppin’, because no one wants to get hit with
a chair). And then you get hit with the hardest punch: Pryor reaching out from 50 years past
to make the truth plain. You never hear about civilians accidentally killing cops, so why is it
that cops are always “accidentally” killing Black men? As it turns out, 1973 and 2023 aren’t so
far apart that the legendary Richard Pryor can’t bridge the gap.

“The crown prince of comedy.” That’s how Richard Pryor was introduced at The Redd Foxx
Club—and how he was known throughout the world. Was he also a righteous fool? No
doubt. Was he a king among kings? That, too. And did he sire generations to follow in his
comedic dynasty? You’re goddamned right he did. “'Craps' (After Hours)” finds Pryor at
perhaps his most carnal, deeply ruminating upon (when not absolutely enjoying) all the ways
fleshly pursuits from fighting and fornicating to drinking and drugging distract us, destroy us,
and make us utterly human. Along the way, we get classic Pryor character studies, from the
men enjoying the stage that was a Saturday night police lineup to the unfailingly polite white
clientele of the whorehouses in his childhood environs, fathers ready to defend their
daughters’ long-since departed honor, preachers enlivened by their personal relationships
with God, tricks plying their trade while lying through their teeth, and, of course, Wino &
Junkie, those staples of the streetcorner. Perhaps the most astounding thing is realizing that,
in 2023, not a moment of these records feels out of date or distant; it’s all right there, the
troubles of our times, unfolding then as they unfold now. At least then we had Richard Pryor
to guide us through.

A legend. Electric. Transformative. The greatest of all time. There’s no superlative that
Richard Pryor hasn’t already earned, and with good reason. From the very start, his voice was
both singular, truly unmatched, and plural, containing multitudes. In a breath, he embodies a
full swath of humanity, dropping his audience into the raucousness of Hank’s Place,
becoming everyone from the streetwise handyman to the lecherous farmers, beautiful black
Irma who loved to tell people to kiss her ass to Weasel who spent all the time he wasn’t
signifying on negging potential marks. He dances between pimps Coldblood and Smooth,
dips into the persona of Tarcy the cop, and transforms into tight-lipped Jesse, the basketball
beast. In another, he paints an entire scene-within-a-scene with “Prison Play.” He’s everyone
(a not uncomfortable feature of his existence: having grown up Black in a Jewish tenement
in an Italian neighborhood, he jokes that the general attitude among the local toughs was
“Get him! He’s all of ‘em!”), everything, everywhere. Along the way, Pryor punctuates every
laugh with a jab, sharply rebuking all the social ills that seek to divide and conquer, all the
filthy, inhumane -isms that offend the senses (or rightly should). And he does it all while
assuring his audience they have nothing to fear from the Black man—except his thoughts.