Revolution Televised.pdf

Redd Foxx before Sanford: The Chitlin’ Circuit,
the Party Records, and Redd’s Place
This Ain’t No Junk 87
I ain’t gonna do no marching nonviolently. Ain’t no way I’m gonna let
a cracker go upside my head with a stick and do nothin’ but hum “We
Shall Overcome.” I’m going to cut him. I’m from St. Louis, and we wake
up buck-naked with our knife on.
Redd Foxx, in Redd Foxx and Norma Mailer,
The Redd Foxx Encyclopedia of Black Humor
Born in St. Louis and raised there and in Chicago, Redd Foxx moved
to New York in 1939. He performed with a three-man washboard
band, worked as a dishwasher with a young Malcolm Little (X),
and practiced his comedy routines in local Harlem clubs and at the
Apollo. In the late 1940s and early ’50s, he worked the Chitlin’
Circuit in a team act with Slappy White. Within this black-only
space, Foxx observed and learned from comedy legends such as
Moms Mabley and Pigmeat Markham. Foxx removed the rural
black dialect, molded the humor of these acts, and placed it within
a contemporary urban context. As Quincy Jones explains, “He
was the first of the urban black comics, and Dick Gregory and
Flip Wilson and all the others who came later took from him.” 1
However, the team of Foxx and White was never able to cross over
and break into white settings. Although their humor went over well
at the Apollo and in other communal black spaces, when the team
played the Palace on Broadway, they “died like dogs,” to quote
Foxx. “[T]he whole act bombed. That was the first and last time
at the Palace.” 2 His comedy was specifically created for black audiences
and was not easily extricated from that context.
Foxx was not ready to censor his material. “I always say ‘Fuck
convention.’ My bag has always been to talk about things like sex
and everything that most people don’t like to talk about in public.” 3
His style indeed harkened back to some of the African American
comedic traditions. His albums contained many instances of signifying
and traditional African American toasts. 4 His gravelly voice
may have given him the down-home feel of Moms Mabley; however,
he had the attitude of the “Bad Nigger” of African American
folklore. 5
The nature of his material often brought into question the incongruities
of American life. For example, within sexually explicit stories,
he challenged white separatism and the fear of miscegenation.