I saw his show in Long Beach many years ago, I have never seen anyone better.
I think " live and smoking" was his first ( or one of his first) gigs in 71, as I say I was at the Long Beach gig and I have never laughed as much in my life he was brilliant.
Also thanks for that documentary link, I will watch that later. On the subject of writers, Pryor also had some help. A guy called Paul Mooney wrote some stuff for him, I did have a gig of his (it's prob on youtube) and he was very funny.
Indeed, in fact he was the head writer on the tv show that Pryor did.
I never really liked that show, the odd sketch aside. But I don't think Pryor or his team were allowed to make the show they wanted to make, it had to be watered down coz yank TV was very conservative at that time iirc (I think that's what they said on an old documentary I watched about Richard Pryor).
Here it is if any one wants a laugh
Thanks for posting. Good memories, forgotten how many times we watched that back in the day. 1:24:00 to 1:26:00
Pryor was an absolute genius.
parklane1, I am actually a tad jealous ;-)...I would've LOVED to have seen that set in person. I saw Eddie Murphy's RAW in 87 live, and whilst great, no American comedian matched Pryor. The only one today who has his guile and gumption (IMO) is Dave Chapelle (who ironically used Mooney on his shows). If you have not seen Chapelle, I wholly encourage it; a properly dangerous comic.
But yeah...Pryor...my favorite. The 'dipped my cookie in the milk' riff is absolute genius.
As a side note, Hear No Evil, See No Evil's first hour has me in tears every single time...
A comedian I rated above Eddie Murphy (in their prime). Thought this was an interesting piece: