Read Online Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him by Joe Henry, David Henry - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Joe Henry, David Henry
Tags: nonfiction, Biography & Autobiography, Retail, Entertainment & Performing Arts, Comedian, Richard Pryor
Ads: Link
fooling with you,” he says, “so we’re gettin’ ready to call Bartonville and we’re gonna have you picked up and we’re gonna get that $25 for you.” So Richard’s like, “ WHAT ?” My dad says, “Yeah, because, you know, something’s wrong with you.” And so he says, “Well, I better stop then, hadn’t I?” Daddy says “Yeah.” He says, “Pop, I’m gonna lie down and take a nap.” We didn’t have any more trouble out of him playing crazy after that. But he was just a weird guy. Real weird.
He was real quiet and shy otherwise, though. He had a whole lot of different sides to him, but the majority of the time he would sleep all day and sit up all evening and watch television and chew on paper. But he watched everything around him at all times. That’s how he gathered material, you know.
Patricia delivered their son six months into her pregnancy. Born April 10, 1961, Rodney Clay Pryor weighed just one pound three ounces, “the smallest preemie ever to survive in Peoria at that time,” according to Angie. “He stayed five weeks in the hospital before he was strong enough for Pat to bring him home.”
After his son came home, Richard moved out.
“Why’d I split? Because I could.”
Finding himself once again living under his father’s roof, Richard doubled down on his resolve and began performing at Collins Corner, another notorious black-and-tan club owned by local businessman Carbristo “Bris” Collins. There he was quickly promoted from opening act to emcee at a salary of seventy-two dollars a week.
Stripper-turned-fire-dancer LaWanda Page, then billed as “the Bronze Goddess of Fire,” recalled Collins Corner as the first club she ever played outside of her hometown of East St. Louis. “It was a dump,” she said. “It was the kind of place where if you ain’t home by nine o’clock at night you can be declared legally dead. They all walked around with knives in there. You better had one, too.”
Richard would soon cross paths with Page ** when they played the Faust Club together in East St. Louis. “Me, Richard Pryor, Chuck Berry, and Redd Foxx all worked there around that time,” she said. “Richard was doing an act where he sang along with doing comedy. He was a very quiet, polite person offstage. Onstage he was doing true-to-life stuff even then, and he was very funny.”
Richard later told Rolling Stone ’s David Felton how his army training had served him well when he first started out on the Chitlin’ Circuit. “Like you’d suck a fire-dancer’s pussy in the dressing room, and in her next job she’d try to get you as the emcee. Shit, if I hadn’t been able to give head, I’d probably still be in St. Louis at the Faust Club.”
—————
Given the irregularity of Richard’s club engagements, Buck tried to steer his son toward a more stable career as a pimp and, in Richard’s telling, even threw in a whore to get him started. For a time, Richard thought he had it made: steady work at two clubs and a woman working for him. Plus, he could have all the sex he wanted with her without any messy emotions or romantic strings attached.
Things quickly fell apart, though, when his woman demanded that he beat her. “I had no idea what she was talking about,” he admitted to Sander Vanocur of the Washington Post. “I didn’t know there was any romantic connotation to physical violence.” Richard’s stunned inaction only infuriated her. She began screaming at him to hit her and he went crazy, “fighting as if it were a real fight.” When his father saw the girl, bruised and battered, he blew up. “What the fuck are you doing?” he yelled. “You don’t know how to beat a whore! Get your ass outta here!” He was serious. Buck was so disgusted he banished Richard from his house for good.
The elder Pryor told the story somewhat differently to Jean Budd of the Peoria Journal Star, after his son had made it big. “Richard was beginning to run around with
He was real quiet and shy otherwise, though. He had a whole lot of different sides to him, but the majority of the time he would sleep all day and sit up all evening and watch television and chew on paper. But he watched everything around him at all times. That’s how he gathered material, you know.
Patricia delivered their son six months into her pregnancy. Born April 10, 1961, Rodney Clay Pryor weighed just one pound three ounces, “the smallest preemie ever to survive in Peoria at that time,” according to Angie. “He stayed five weeks in the hospital before he was strong enough for Pat to bring him home.”
After his son came home, Richard moved out.
“Why’d I split? Because I could.”
Finding himself once again living under his father’s roof, Richard doubled down on his resolve and began performing at Collins Corner, another notorious black-and-tan club owned by local businessman Carbristo “Bris” Collins. There he was quickly promoted from opening act to emcee at a salary of seventy-two dollars a week.
Stripper-turned-fire-dancer LaWanda Page, then billed as “the Bronze Goddess of Fire,” recalled Collins Corner as the first club she ever played outside of her hometown of East St. Louis. “It was a dump,” she said. “It was the kind of place where if you ain’t home by nine o’clock at night you can be declared legally dead. They all walked around with knives in there. You better had one, too.”
Richard would soon cross paths with Page ** when they played the Faust Club together in East St. Louis. “Me, Richard Pryor, Chuck Berry, and Redd Foxx all worked there around that time,” she said. “Richard was doing an act where he sang along with doing comedy. He was a very quiet, polite person offstage. Onstage he was doing true-to-life stuff even then, and he was very funny.”
Richard later told Rolling Stone ’s David Felton how his army training had served him well when he first started out on the Chitlin’ Circuit. “Like you’d suck a fire-dancer’s pussy in the dressing room, and in her next job she’d try to get you as the emcee. Shit, if I hadn’t been able to give head, I’d probably still be in St. Louis at the Faust Club.”
—————
Given the irregularity of Richard’s club engagements, Buck tried to steer his son toward a more stable career as a pimp and, in Richard’s telling, even threw in a whore to get him started. For a time, Richard thought he had it made: steady work at two clubs and a woman working for him. Plus, he could have all the sex he wanted with her without any messy emotions or romantic strings attached.
Things quickly fell apart, though, when his woman demanded that he beat her. “I had no idea what she was talking about,” he admitted to Sander Vanocur of the Washington Post. “I didn’t know there was any romantic connotation to physical violence.” Richard’s stunned inaction only infuriated her. She began screaming at him to hit her and he went crazy, “fighting as if it were a real fight.” When his father saw the girl, bruised and battered, he blew up. “What the fuck are you doing?” he yelled. “You don’t know how to beat a whore! Get your ass outta here!” He was serious. Buck was so disgusted he banished Richard from his house for good.
The elder Pryor told the story somewhat differently to Jean Budd of the Peoria Journal Star, after his son had made it big. “Richard was beginning to run around with
Similar Books
