Revolution Televised.pdf

This Ain’t No Junk 91
policy. In this way, Foxx’s club introduced undiluted private black
comedy to an integrated audience. Although Redd’s Place brought
in the best artists and often did quite well financially, Foxx was not
as shrewd a businessman as a comic. He often let his sympathetic
nature get in the way of running the club. Knowing what it was like
to be a comedian on the road, he often paid more than the going
rate for the artists, even if the act did not draw in the crowds. As
he was often in Las Vegas, he could not manage the day-to-day
running of the club. He had untrustworthy people in some of the
key positions and lost several bartenders and managers because of
major cash extortion. 15 Bill Cosby eventually pulled out because
of its chaotic management, and the club, on its last legs, literally
burned to the ground in the early 1970s.
From Steptoe and Son to Sanford and Son
Considering the nature of Redd Foxx’s humor, a sitcom on network
television may have seemed improbable. However, Foxx came to the
attention of the producers Norman Lear, Bud Yorkin, and Aaron
Reuben with his performance of an older junkman in Cotton Comes
to Harlem (1970). Lear was known as the creator of the controversial
show All in the Family (1971–78), which debuted a mere six
months after The Flip Wilson Show aired. Known for changing the
face of the family-situation comedy by addressing social issues such
as racism, politics, homosexuality, feminism, and abortion, All in the
Family introduced bigot Archie Bunker and his dysfunctional family
to the television audience. 16 One year later, in January 1972, NBC
ran the first episode of Sanford and Son as a midseason replacement.
Redd Foxx used television as a continuation of Redd’s Place. He
brought aspects of the black comedy performed in all-black settings
to this mainstream forum and nuanced the format of the situation
comedy. Through the use of vernacular black comedy, Sanford and
Son thus specifically addressed a black audience familiar with the
tropes of black comedy while crossing over to a wider mainstream
white audience.
He was also able to insert some control over the shaping of
the show. Some of the opportunities to keep the show within the
confines of African American expression came from moments of
clear ad-libbing, observed through many of the episodes. At these
times Foxx was able to slip in lines, humor, or attitudes that he had