a delicate flower, petals in the wind

i remember my mother and father would listen to richard pryor before my father had his stroke. often company would come over and my sister and i would entertain. my mother would send us to our bedroom. it didn't matter if we fell asleep or not, i learned that the sound of pryor's voice meant is was "adult time." as i got older, i didn't care for richard pryor. in fact, i resented him. there was something that he did on his albums that forced my mother to send me from the room. after my father's stroke, my mother would put on an album to cheer my dad up. it didn't really work. but, i would hear my mother laugh from time to time. that helped me like mr. pryor. . . just a little bit though.

as my sister and i grew older, we were latchkey children. when my sister hit middle school, she would come home and sneak and put a richard pryor record on. when i came home, i promised her i would tell on her. she promptly beat me up. i gave in and listened. i didn't get much. but the laughter of the audiences he performed in front of cued my laughter. and when i laughed with them, i felt sophisticated and clued in to the hellified joke. but, honestly, 95% of pryor's message flew right over my nine-year old "worldly" experiences.

around this time, eddie murphy was on saturday night live. now, that was comedy i understood. i loved murphy's buckwheat to mary gross's alphalfa. i loved james brown rubba-dubbin in the hot tub. i laughed until i cried when eddie murphy admonished, in his best rasta voice, to "kill de white people...but not before dey buy [his] song." once murphy left snl and performed "raw," i must admit i was rather upset with him. many critics hailed eddie as the next richard pryor. murphy, himself, credited his comedic inspiration to richard pryor and redd foxx. i saw "raw" at the tender age of ten with my mother. she didn't think it was going to be nearly as raw as it was. after that, she would play the pryor albums with both my sister and myself in the room. i was usually too focused on the storyline of a book to pay much attention to what pryor was saying. i did, however, get a big kick out of the bit he did on freebasing and catching his curl on fire. that was comedy.


it wasn't until i went away to college that i appreciated richard pryor. i was in a production of "black anthology." one of the cast members had a hardy respect for pryor and performed "bicentennial nigger" in the show. that was my freshman year. spring break, i went home and pulled out all of pryor's albums from my parents' collection. with the technological advances, i was annoyed by having to listen to the the records in the living room. at the time, the record player was a huge unit that didn't move like most of the tape players in the house. i sat and listened, really listened to what pryor was saying.

as much as he was funny, richard pryor was a social critic. he described much of the anguish, disenfranchisement, and anger black people were feeling across the country. he told it how it was. he didn't sugar coat it, but he did allow us to laugh at the race epidemic and every person's individual place in that pandemic. i have developed an appreciation of richard pryor over the years. i have watched and thoroughly enjoyed a number of his films, most of the newer ones. pryor had a wonderful career that enabled a number of years of hard living. those fast times took a toll on his health. however, this is not a critique of how pryor chose to live his life, rather, this is a tribute to the man that richard pryor was.

just days past his sixty-fifth birthday, pryor died december 10, 2005. although pryor's deteriorating health removed him from the spotlight some years ago, his influence on comedians past and present is obvious, far-reaching, ever-sustaining, and truly missed. my thoughts and prayers go out to his family and fans, and to those of us who don't presently see a comedian that can describe the atrocity of living in these racist times with a spoonful of sugar like richard pryor did. thank you, richard pryor. to quote saint peter, "job well done."