I’ve been thinking about the themes in Richard Pryor’s life and legacy and how they connect to other moments and figures in Black cultural history! I’m putting together a bigger project on that, but for my culture blog, once a month, I want to reflect on his work as I encounter it prepping for this bigger project.
So far, these reflections have been more third-person than my other blog posts—maybe it’s the school in me?
Also, Richard Pryor definitely had some blind spots interpersonally [!], and we’ll get to that in the project, but for now, here are some reflections on his work as I come across it.
Thanks for reading!
re: live on sunset strip
Not too long into his 1982 special Live on Sunset Strip, Richard Pryor pauses the show to ask for some water. He says they told him there would be a stool up here and a cup of water, but maybe it was an April Fool’s Joke. Somebody from the crowd shakily brings him up a glass—Richard says “you’re more nervous than me”—and then he takes it, drinks it. Says he just needs to drink a little water to calm down. He says they all need to calm down, that he can feel their energy, that he can tell they want so badly for this to go well, that he wants it to go well too, but maybe they should all relax, just let whatever’s going to happen happen.
re: live and smokin’
In Richard Pryor’s 1971 special Live and Smokin’, he is not famous yet. He is in fact so not famous that people get up and leave in the middle of his show. He’s so not famous that for most of the show, the crowd is quiet, causing Richard to grow antsy. At one point, he picks his nose and eats the booger. When the crowd presumably looks confused, if not disgusted, he says, “What? It’s my nose!” The quiet goes on as he moves through his set. At one point, he asks, “Any requests?”
re: live in concert
In Richard Pryor’s 1979 special Live in Concert, there’s a part where he talks about his pet monkeys dying. He had somebody watching them while he was traveling, and they weren’t as attentive as they needed to be, and long story short: both monkeys died while he was away. Pryor doesn’t joke about their deaths, so much as what happened after.
re: bicentennial nigger
In Bicentennial Nigger, after talking about the difference between dating Black and White women, shouting out Black celebrities in the audience, and playing his signature persona Mudbone, Richard Pryor ends with a bit that’s much less in time with the audience before him. Instead, for this last joke, the one that the album is named after, Pryor attempts to transcend time and space to comment on America’s racial history. He personifies a character who is alive during slavery and still alive today.