If you've got a sense of humour you don't think about comedian Richard Pryor's jokes until : YOU Ve left the While you watch him you just laugh until you feel sick.
Pryor is, perhaps, better known in this country as an actor whose films include Blue Collar, Silver Streak and California Suite. In America the other side of his talent - that of a stand-up comedian - has been on display for several years with live performances and LPs like "That Nigger's Crazy' and 'Bicentennial Nigger'.
In this film (now showing at Gate Two, Brunswick Square, WC1), we KOL about 70 minutes haranguing his audience, using only his face, the microphone and his body as props.
He is a brilliant mimic and a superlative mime artist but more than The Blues In July 1978 Buddy Guy appeared at the 'Blues Festival' Hammersmith Odeon.
After patronising cat calls and shouts which behaviour', return until after the concert was scheduled to end and half the audience had left.
Then, to a respectful silence, he announced "this is how it sounds in Chicago' and played the blues until lam, long after the management wanted the event to close.
Blues the most traditional black music. In a society where the marketplace regularly intrudes on culture, it is surprising that the companies should pressure artists into playing the 'blues' they say will sell. This in turn begins to affect what their consumers expect. Clowning The effect of this on white bands is that they stop playing blues. today, both the Rolling Stones and Fleetwood Mac began as blues-only bands.
have responded Although there is pressure on blacks trying to 'make it' to abandon blues for rock and soul, the blues is kept alive.
When Buddy Guy or Junior Wells play at a black club in Chicago, the clowning diminishes, they play more actual blues material, and they retrain from playing short segments of songs. Most of the clowning, pop material, and song snatches are reserved for whites only.
Hammersmith, Guy clowning mood lucky.
John Lomax, a white blues archivist, had a hard time in 1940 getting Blind Willie McTell to play him the real blues, instead of the music he reserved for whites.
'But Big Bill Broonzy, who had been playing with a backing band and an electric guitar for decades, was made to go back to an acoustic guitar by the whites who 'rediscovered' him in the 50s. They introduced him ploughhand although he had been living in Chicago for 20 years.
Chicago These stories, reco book World War Two, more and more important. was, and is, Chicago, which produced Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf and name but a few.
of black COISNA ridiculous, otherwise senious cinema.. making fun of himself.
own affliction you fighting 'cos your quicker foibles of animals and sex.
Animals Pryor of a part would talk.
organised at the thought was 'blues he walked off stage and didn't popular form of (white) record want and Though hard to believe differently.
WaN not in a — and those who stayed were as an exoday. But troletadit The centre of this Buddy Guy to seen. His humour, like most humour, people look extracting, laughs from and So OK, what does he talk about?
Well, his subjects range from heart tale. attacks — a very funny account of his through should run instead ego will heal than a broken jaw' to the His stories about animals are so keenly observed that when he "talks' Great Dane or Doberman Pincher you feel sure that, if they could, this is just the way they It is his sexual comedy that might cause problems with some people.
Thus, what is essential to understanding the blues is appreciating it as a record of the experiences and the dreams of Blacks people for whom sex is so serious that no jokes about it are permitted. This view has its points, but Pryor's sexual skits often start as though they are going to be offensive only to redeem themselves with a cunning twist in the He is also what is sometimes called. foul-mouthed and, judging by his mania for stamping out swearing in the factories, Trotsky would not have approved. But then even Trotsky had the odd loony idea.
Pryor, like Lenny Bruce, and like all real comedians, is a moral and social commentator. When stopped laughing you start thinking Pryor's tical. The nearest he gets though, overtly political. to a stab at politicians is when he is lalking about Diack who are always feeling their pricks.
'Yeh, Even Andy Young does it when he talks to the President. Young Graves pla that appet week wa America.
Even says, "Oh, that's alright Andrew, it's bigger than a peanut!"
Wheaties s His satire is more directed at white middle class America and the police. ("Two codDers are "brother' when one of them drops him and says, "shit", he broke') He also takes several digs at 'Macho man', the kind of guy who says, eight or nine hours, comments: fucking and I need eight hours sleep... you've and a bowl of wheaties.' Anyway, if readers CHOI Challenge offended, I rest. I saw the movie twice so I must be in the company of a good few worthy trendies. Some of them didn t laugh, but I heard not one howl of on the Under $ by the moves to musical assimilation, mirrored the attempt of a layer of urban blacks crack!
roughing up I can fuck for Jack'. Pryor "Three minutes of serious of Socialist are worried about being can put their minds at when soul assimilation.
especially jazz artists.
Jazz
she did sing the blues.
the said "don't you-all Revolutionary Ensemble.
It is no brutally honest, and rebellious. Consider these lyrics Explicit, (Texas Ale "Now some folks say a f (Joey Is Blues what the history of B lyrical self portrait ge last The next appearance of Art Ensemble of Elizabeth Hall, subsequent issue. Socialist Challer So do yourself a favour. If you haven't seen this film yet, take a night off from the revolution, go and see Richard Pryor Live in Concert and laugh. But watch it — your face might THE OTHER BOOKSHOP THE JOYS OF MOTHERHOOD Buchi Emecheta Heinemann £1.25 OUR LIVES YOUNG AUTOBIOGRAPHIES English Centre £1.75 HAMBURG AT THE BARRICADES Larissa Reissner Pluto Press £1.95 to become "middle class'. Motown records, the only major label owned by blacks, will not record jazz, nor does it record blues except artists do a little reverse The blues is the thread which carries the heritage of all black music. And none of the innovators, from jazz to soul, forget that link.
The blues is the foundation of jazz', said the great Charlie Parker. This understanding is as central to the new music as to other eras Billie Holliday was not a blues singer; her publisher forced her to call her autobiography Lady Sings the Blues because blues was more popular in the fifties. She was a jazz singer, bul Not all blues musicians are jazz musicians, but all jazz musicians play the blues.
Lester Bowie, the innovative trumpeter of Art Ensemble of Chicago, encountered Lester ever play the blues more?" and he sat down and plajed with (us)... and we just played the blues until it made recalled a member of the group, the wonder those striving for white acceptance fear the blues. It has always been bring your yo-yo, wind the string around my to Mama knows just how to make the yo-yo hun Bring your yo-yo daddy, and we will have loss of fu (Hattie Hart — Memphis Yo-Yo Bloc unashamed sexual lyrics ril 1980
Socialist Challenge a job.
They know that unemployment has nothing to 'laziness? TORY Chancellor Geoffrey Howe has just slashed social security and unemployment benefits. He says that this is 'an incentive to work'. But nearly two million are unemployed, including hundreds of thousands of young people, many of whom have never had The support they've received has been tremendous, especially from
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Whispering Smith in Baten Rouge, Louisiana in 1973. Photo: Val Wilmer. logies: the uncredited picture of Mitton