Before there could be Ice-T or Chris Rock--maybe even before there could be Barack Obama--there had to be Richard Pryor. A skinny black kid born in Peoria in 1940, Pryor was raised in a brothel by his grandmother after his parents divorced. He did his first standup comedy for his sixth-grade classmates, punctuating the jokes and stories he'd heard around the whorehouse with the dynamic facial and body expressions that became his trademark style for the rest of his over-the-top career. Years later, brothers David and Joe Henry taped Pryor off their television, laughing along to the voice and attitude that gave them the confidence to get out of Akron and follow their own dreams in the film and music industries.
While the Henrys acknowledge Pryor's genius was not his words but how he presented them, Furious Cool quotes extensively from his films, records, memoirs and TV appearances. And though his comedy was rife with obscenity, sex and drugs, it was the frequent use of one word that made white audiences squirm and black audiences cheer, and, perhaps, propelled Pryor to fame (and infamy). As the Henrys point out, the reason today's "audiences and middle American hip-hop listeners are well versed in the N-word's variant spellings and nuanced meanings" can be traced back to Pryor's routines--"[but] no matter how much white people might praise or pay him, Richard Pryor knew that, behind his back, he would always be a n****r."
We forgave Richard Pryor's profanity, addictions and womanizing because he made us laugh--and made us think. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.