June 18, 2019 • 49 mins
In this episode, Wayne Federman joins the guys to explore the rise of legendary comedian Dick Gregory, who began life as a boundary-breaking stand-up comic. Tune in as the gang explore's Gregory's evolution, his association with Hugh Hefner, and his later calling as a full-time civil rights activist
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for
tuning in now you know. Also, additionally, I mean it's
just me. I want to thank everyone who has bothered
to chuckle, laugh, snort, laugh through their nose or occasionally
go faw at our jokes because comedy is tough. Him. Hey,
I'm no, and I've never fancied myself a comedian. I
(00:50):
always say I'm a purveyor of dad jokes, and I'm
absolutely fine with that. But straight seahorse teeth seems to
be taking off online like Wildfire Ben. It's true already
say your name? Yes, sorry I said hey second times.
A charm comedy is all about listening, you know what
I mean? Bad Wow, it's true shaming me, you know what?
(01:10):
Is pretty cool though? It's the official return of Can
we get a drumroll? Please? He asked super producer Casey
la bouche Pegrum. I know, Casey uh, when you were away,
did you hear that we kind of developed a mythology
(01:32):
for you based on our knowledge of your French goings on.
I caught wind of this. Yeah, my my sources back
here in the States. We're keeping me uh informed, more relevant.
You know information. You're very tight in very connected spycraft.
You know you gotta you gotta be. You gotta have
your feelers out there. So I have a question, and
you do not, please do not feel obligated to answer
(01:53):
this Casey. First off, this is I say this with
great affection. Uh, there was there was a Casey shaped
whole in my heart and we're gone. Uh. Now that
you are aware, along with all of our fellow listeners
about how your how your alleged double life in France
was portrayed, Uh, would you say that this is accurate, inaccurate,
(02:20):
a seed of truth. I don't know. I don't really
want to blow up my own spot like that, but
you know, UM, I'd say, if it's maybe not true
to the letter, it's certainly true the spirit. So al right, okay,
I can I can accept that. Well played, You've passed
the test, my friend, we have in honor of your return,
we have a not a surprise for you, but a
(02:42):
gift for you and hopefully for all of our fellow
listeners today. While back, I think in his episode one
oh eight or one oh nine, we did a two
part show on the History of stand Up with our
pal Wayne Fetterman, who is who isn't has an encyclopedic
knowledge of the history of comedy and Casey, we waited
(03:07):
until you returned with your US identity to the studio
to have Wayne Fetterman on this show today for you, dude,
I know, and I'm so psyched about this because yeah,
it was like a year ago that I was out
and he was on and it was driving me out
the wall because yeah, I'm a big fan of the
guy and big fan of the history comedy and everything else.
(03:28):
So yeah, it's great to be here for this. Well.
Wayne is an encyclopedic font of comedy knowledge. His podcast
The History of Stand Up on the Podglomerate Network with
his co host Andrew Stephen Um is just a delight.
And last time we had him on we talked about
um Lenny Bruce and kind of some more inflammatory comics
that sort of pushed the envelope of free speech. George Carlin.
(03:51):
George Carlin all would have over many filthy words on
terrible words there are. I think those are the only
two explicit episodes of the show we've ever ad because
we needed to be able to unbleep those words because
they were very important to the story it was about censorship. Luckily, however,
we did with that episode. Uh. Wayne was charitable enough
(04:12):
guy that he came back to hang out with us today,
not to mention that my mic was cut for like
half of one of the episodes, and we still salvaged
it with crack, our crack forensic audio team and made
it at least somewhat listening more. And also Wayne didn't
think were a bunch of hacks and agreed to come
back on which I really appreciate. And this episode is fantastic,
another exploration of some envelope pushing comedy, but in a
(04:35):
slightly different way. So without having uh, without having deep
dive demographics on how many of us are stand up
history buffs, UH, we'd like to introduce you to a
man named Dick Gregory, a pioneer not just in the
world of stand up comedy that we very much was,
but also in the world of civil rights and activism.
(04:59):
So we we hope that you enjoy our conversation here
with Wayne about not just comedy, but about progressive actions
in the United States, about civil rights in the sixties,
about the UH the oddly heartwarming actions of the often
controversial Hugh Hefner. Let's get right to it. The rumors
(05:24):
are true, ridiculous historians. We are joined once again with
a friend of the show and host of the History
of Stand Up podcast, Wayne Fetterman, Friend of the American People,
Wayne Fetterman, friend to our producer Casey pet From Wayne Fetterman,
how you doing, Wayne? I really would rather be speaking
(05:45):
to Casey. That guy is incredible. He made shime in.
But you won't be able to hear him because he's
not piped into the phone. But we will relay any
words of wisdom that he provides on his behalf. Alright,
Is he beaming right now? Because I'm talking about him?
He is, he says, He says that he has he
his face is obscured by a giant computer monitor, so
I can't speak to that person. But his voice in
my ears says that he is okay, and he just
(06:06):
leaned in and give a big smile. Fun story before
we get started, and this is a true story, Wayne.
When we were putting together this episode, Casey actually asked
us to hold and he traveled all the way back
from Paris, France, uh to be here today. Very special trip.
It's true. Yeah, let me just say that's very much
on brand for Casey. So when we previously spoke together,
(06:31):
we looked at the history of what we call stand
up today, not just as the craft or the the
actual performance that we think of with somebody standing with
a microphone and an audience that hopefully loves them, but
not always. We also talked about some of the bigger
social questions that stand up brings to the forefront. And
(06:56):
sometimes those can be uncomfortable questions that people don't typically explore. Uh.
Now they they laugh at it too, but sometimes they
leave thinking. Uh. In our earlier conversations leading up to
today's episode, Uh, you started telling us about someone that
was I think maybe vaguely familiar to us, but someone
(07:17):
we weren't super well acquainted with, which is the comedian
and activist Dick Gregory. Wayne, could you tell us a
little bit about, uh, just for our audience, who Dick
Gregory is. Well, Dick Gregory is famous in the history
of stand up for one specific thing, and that is
(07:37):
he became the first major and there's a caveat we
can go into it. Uh, comedian African American comedian to
play white nightclubs. And how that happened we will tell
you in a moment, I'm sure, but he was just, uh,
you know, it was a funny kid. He was an athlete,
he went to college, he was in the service, and
(07:57):
then he moved from St. Louis to Chicago to pursue
his dream of becoming a stand up comedian and could
only play the black clubs in and around Chicago and
was really struggling. Actually had a day job. He worked
at the post office. He watched cars all trying to
uh subsidize this career of his. And at this point
(08:19):
he's married, he has he has a lot of responsibility.
So leading up to this big moment that we're gonna
get into that involves another kind of historical luminarian, controversial figure,
Dick Gregory was kind of doing his best to get
into the kind of Chicago stand up nightclub scene, and
as you said, it wasn't a very welcoming scene for
people of color. And I want to play this clip
(08:41):
from American Masters on PBS where Gregory kind of describes
this moment where he had to disarm a white audience
at a club. I want to say in Alabama or
something like that, um where someone calls him a racial
slur and he has to take that opportunity to diffuse
the situation rather than make a scene, and you know,
put his career in jeopardy because these were ultimately his
(09:05):
clients who he was there to entertain. So I think
this really is a very teachable moment about the kind
of climate that he was dealing with. So I go
down there and I'm not thinking of anything. I didn't
know at the time that a Negro is not permitted
to work a white nightclub. That's in all of America.
And I remember not knowing that. I used to practice
(09:27):
what do you do when some white person yell something
negative about or embarrass you? And so I used to
practice with my wife, but he didn't work because he
was too nice and kind. And then one night, I
don't know how I got this little job in this
little hick town, little missie Walker, Indiana, so that just
you know what to say, no more. So I'm in Walk,
(09:49):
Indiana and and somebody said, get that nigger off the stage.
Now I was ready for it, and everybody just froze.
And I said, white boy called me, called me, oh Range,
his hearts called me trigger and everybody laugh. I'm out
(10:14):
of it. There's no way you can feel sorry for
me or embarrassed in life. So when I got him back,
now I'm off, you know, and the guy walcome said
thank you, Jesus Christ. I want to hit him myself.
And then the guy walks up and say sorry, and
they're sorry. I don't almost pay you man. I've been
(10:36):
I've been trying to figure out how to get through this.
So Wayne, I wanted to know if if you thought
that maybe this was kind of if he would have
had to deal with similar situations like this leading up
to this moment, And he almost describes it as like
an aha moment where it's like, ah ha, this is
how I can deal with this kind of heckling. Right well,
he I feel like Dick Gregory, especially at that time,
(10:57):
had a very high emotional and comedic i Q on
how to handle crowds. And it's remarkable considering he's not
that experienced other than basically playing these black clubs. But
I just think he had an innate sense of one
had to perform in front of white audiences and to
(11:18):
like how to diffuse these very volatile situations that I'm
sure would come up all the time, right because as
as you had mentioned before, he was he was working.
Let's see, his comedic career began in what the mid
to late nineteen fifties, Is that correct? Yes, yes, yes,
that's exactly correct. And at that time there wasn't a
(11:39):
lot of you know, African American comedians on television or
on the Ed Sullivan Show. Is just a few, and
once in a while he'd see somebody and there really
wasn't a big circuit to play. There was big and
white nightclubs, which we called nightclubs at that time, and
but they wouldn't use uh African American comedian. Once in
(12:00):
a while they would, but as a rule that's not
you know, they'd have an act, you know, Sammy Davis
could play there or something like that, or you know,
a team or a singer like Pearl Bailey or something
like that all the time, but not not a stand
up Um. That saw a really interesting clip with the
comedian Paul Mooney, who was another very outspoken comic, a
(12:21):
contemporary maybe a little younger than Gregory, but still kind
of very much like in the same scene as Richard
Pryor so maybe like the next generation. But he talked
about how in Hollywood nothing could ever be too white,
but it was very easy too for something to be
too black. Um, And I think that's a really interesting distinction,
where like you talk about Sammy Davis Jrs. And like
(12:41):
performers of that caliber, they were a little more palatable
to a white audience, but a comic like Gregory who
wasn't pulling any punches that would be a little harder
to take for these folks maybe weren't used to seeing
things like that. Is that would you say that's accurate? Yes,
Mooney is a percent on on Like people would go, okay,
this is this is too much for us. But again,
Dick Gregory, I think, really learned how to thread the needle,
(13:04):
almost like in a Jackie Robinson kind of way, that
he was like able to like take white audiences expectations
of what a black guy would talk about, and he
talked about racial stuff all the time. That was the
centerpiece of his act, but he did it in a
very non threatening, very human way as opposed to an
(13:25):
angry way. In that same NPR PBS clip that we
just heard later on, he talks about that he was
always respectful and that he wasn't bitter, and that he
wasn't angry, and this was all I'm sure underneath. But
that again, I just feel like his emotional, like you,
was throw the roof on how to handle these situations.
(13:47):
So it wasn't like Paul Mooney, who would not you know,
I can't imagine Paul Mooney handling that situation in that
club the same way. It would be way more confrontational. Yeah. Absolutely,
I agree with that statement about emotional I Q no recently,
this this is not a plug. I actually do listen
(14:07):
to the history of stand up Uh. Yeah, has season
two started and in season two, Uh, you guys just
had an episode come out recently about the Playboy circuit
and this was something that I I didn't recognize. This
episode for anybody listening is available now when our episode
comes out, so give it a listen. This brings us
(14:28):
to something that we'd we'd love for you to explore
with us here, which is the interactions between Dick Gregory
and Hugh Hefner, the mastermind behind Playboy Magazine later the
Playboy Empire. No, this is something you were alluding to
in the beginning, right for sure, And this Playboy Club.
(14:48):
I didn't realize, um was a big source of um,
you know, entertainment and huge, massive, you know opportunity for
working comics. If you got a regular gig at the
Playboy Club, which was in Chicago at the time. Um,
that was a massive break for you. Can you tell
us a little bit about how Dick Gregory uh literally
kind of stumbled his way into this massive break. The
(15:10):
story is fantastic. Well, this is I assume, this is
why I'm talking to you guys. This moment is very
important in the big history of stand up and we
covered it briefly in our first season and then went
a little closer. And thank you for the kind words
about the Playboy episode. UM, I appreciate. I appreciate it
for anyone. It's the eight of us that are interested
(15:32):
in the history of stand up. So this is what happened.
February the first Playboy Club opens. You're like, what does
that mean? A Playboy Club. Well, in fifty three, real quickly,
Hefner publishes this magazine December fifty three called Playboy Marilyn
Moan Rose on the cover. There's no date stamped on
it because it might have been the last one and
(15:54):
it's basically has newdy pictures in it, but nothing too graphic.
I hope that's clear what that means. And then like articles,
and he was into literature. And so anyway, this magazine
out of Chicago, this kid who had this dream becomes
this runaway success in the fifties. So he is like
(16:15):
printing money by fifty seven is out selling Time Magazine,
is out selling Esquire. It's like this incredible end has
a big female readership as well. So he three things
happen around this time. One he does this huge indoor
jazz festival called the Playboy Jazz Festival. Two he buys
(16:37):
a mansion in Chicago and who called the Playboy Mansion,
which is like this party house. And three he opens
the Playboy Club. And also for there's another thing I'm forgetting,
he starts this syndicated television show called Playboy's Penthouse, which
is this black and white in the first two years,
and you kind of get sort of presents like this
(17:00):
hardy that you're invited to. So people are sitting around
and they're drinking and they're smoking, and there's a guy
playing piano and suddenly Sammy Davis comes in and sings
and then Lenny Bruce does some comedy. It's it's just
a very incredible like insight into like the world he
wants to create. And that was kind of like a
variety show for him, right, Is that where we get
(17:21):
that idea of him with the pipe and the smoking
jacket in the whole? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's
not it is a variety show, but not on a
precenium stage in like a living room. And then we
let's go over to the dining room and then let's
get some cocktails made over here, and let's listen to
CYCLEM and play Witchcraft, and then it's it's just a
great like promotional tool for the Playboy brand, which was
(17:43):
and we talked about it in the podcast that he
was going for sophistication like that was his Like he thought, God,
if I could make nudy picture, you know, this part
of a sophisticated lifestyle with high fidelity and sports cars
and jazz music and great literature that and that's what worked,
(18:04):
you know what I mean. So it was like suddenly
not a smudgy, behind the counter kind of embarrassing thing
if you wanted to see pictures of beautiful women so
that was that was another genius. Hugh Hefner's so he's
making he's killing he's killing it, killing it. During Eisenhower's administration,
so he opens this Playboy Club February nineteen six, and
(18:26):
the Playboy Club was this. You had to pay twenty
five dollars. You got a key literally a metal key.
It later became a card, and that gave you access
to the Playboggle. You were like a key member and
to serve these men. It was a men's only club,
but you could bring women. They created the Playboy Bunny,
(18:46):
which is different than the Playboy Playmate, which were in
the magazine. And the Bunny, how would you describe it?
If let me, I'm gonna throw it to you because
I feel like I'm talking too much. They were like
cocktail waitresses or they were kind of hostesses. They would
receive eve the gentlemen in their dates when they'd come in,
speak to them by name, make them feel very welcome,
and kind of cater to their their needs. It was
(19:07):
similar to the idea I guess we would an analog
would be a hostess club in Japan. You know, these
people are not necessarily what we would call sex workers.
They hang out with you, they laugh at your jokes,
they converse with you. Uh. There were also there was
also a uniform that changed over time, but that was
like from what I remember. Thanks again, Dad, I'll admit,
(19:30):
if you're listening to the show, that I did steal
some of your playboys from what I remember. With the
advertisements they used to have in the magazine for the bunnies,
there was it was like there were even ears at
some point, a little cotton tal Yeah. And then maybe
I feel like I'm remembering some kind of caller things
(19:50):
right and off the shoulder, almost kind of like boostier
leotard kind of ones thing. Uh. And I believe they're
wearing stockings and high Some of them would have those
cigarette carts that they would carry and you know, sell
cigarettes and get people's drink orders and stuff. But sometimes
they would change it up a little bit for the holidays.
(20:11):
That makes sense. Yeah, you're good, great, you did great?
Did great? Again? I was, I did. I was never
at the Chicago Club, so I only know from the
pictures and such, but yes, that was so that was
the vibe of this club again with the boatie I guess,
sophistication and I'm using quotes around it. And because these
(20:31):
were just young women, but the rule was you weren't
allowed to touch or date these women. He was very
careful to make it not a quasi strip club or
a quasi like you know, you're gonna hook up with
these girls or anything like that. And also they wanted
to make it, you know, get as many women customers
in there as well. So part of this, and this
is an interesting we didn't go into it. The guy
(20:53):
who ran the food and drink concession for this club
and then eventually it became a circuit was Arnie Moore,
who eventually has these famous steakhouses all across the country.
Wait the mort steakhouse guy. Yes, yeah, same guy, same guy.
So this is one of his earliest gigs. And they
(21:13):
had this crazy pricing plan which was everything was a
do this winted over. Everything was a dollar fifty, a
drink was a dollar fifty. Uh, your meal was a
dollar fifty. Pack of cigarettes and a lighter with the
Playboy logo on it was a dollar fifty. Like that
was there kind of thing. And it's like again with
half it's a runaway success. Like thousands and thousands of
(21:36):
people are pouring or paying twenty five bucks to be
a member. Everyone kind of got accepted and then UH
and then could get part of this sophisticated lifestyle surrounded
by these beautiful women. And part of the experience was
there was always two rooms for show business, and those
were usually a singer and a comic. So this is
(21:57):
where Dick Gregory comes into the picture. Now at the time,
it's you know, Chicago has this big nightclub called the
sha Peri, which is run by the Mob, and as
a white nightclub, that was like the big place you
could play in Chicago. So acts from the Shaperi would
(22:18):
also play the Playboy Club and one of these acts
in January, So it's I guess eleven months later UH
is named Professor Irwin Corey or does that name ring
a bell to any either of you? That I gotta
be honest, not to me, not right now? Okay. He
was a very curious, kind of almost experimental, avant garde
(22:42):
comedian who pretended to be professor and then would give
lectures on different topics in a very crazed kind of
remember like the way Einstein had his hair all crazy. Yeah,
that was that was so Irwin Corey for some reason,
is like, I don't want to work seven days a week.
I don't want to work Monday through Sunday. Can I
(23:03):
get Sunday off? You know, I appreciate this gig you're
giving me here at the Playboy Club, but um, I
don't want to do it. So hef who had seen
Dick Gregory he was the host of this club called
the Robert Show Club, which is his black club in Chicago,
and said, well, why don't we give this kid a
(23:24):
chance for fifty dollars. So he hired him that night,
and there were some Southern people in the crowd, and
Dick Gregory got there late, it was snowing, gets on
stage and just kills it, like all of his instincts
are a hundred percent correct on how to handle these crowds,
how to talk about race, how to talk about the
(23:45):
fact that he had been in the South, And he
did the joke you know I spent four weeks there
one night or that kind of thing, and and kills
it and then immediately like, oh, let's hire this guy.
And in a way, that's the first time African American
comedian had been hired in a white nightclub with a
couple exceptions, but that, yeah, but that was a big thing.
(24:06):
But there's more to the story. Can I keep going? Please,
We're on the edge of our seat here actually, So
Dick Gregory starts, you know, he had never heard of
making fifty dollars a night time seven. Like that was
like out of It was mind blowing to him that
he could be making this much money doing comedy, and
words spreads quickly about this kid who is doing great
(24:28):
at the Playboy Club. So the New York Times, luckily
like writes a review of it, and then Time Magazine,
and this is where the story gets really interesting to me.
Dick Gregory's dream was to be on the Tonight Show
with Jack Parr. That was the big break that he
was the Carson before Carson of course, so um. He
(24:52):
was friends with this singer named Billy Eckstein, another guy
you're not going to know, but a famous forties fifties singer,
and Billy was like, I don't know if you've noticed this,
whenever there's a black comedian on Jack Parr, he lets
them do their act and that would usually be like
like an impression. It's like he had George Kirby on
(25:13):
that kind of thing, but he would never bring him
over to the couch to sit down like he's just
a normal American person, when in general, getting brought over
to the couch is the dream of any comic doing
the late show, doing a late show like that. Yeah, yeah,
no question, no question, no question. But when this Time
magazine article hits, Jack Parr producer calls Dick Gregory AND's like,
(25:36):
we'd love to have you on the show, and he's like,
I'm not going to do on the show unless you
let me sit down and talk to Jack Barr. Because
he had never even thought of this, He never realized
until he Billy Eckstein pointed it out to him that
this was a thing that Jack Barr was doing, whether
consciously or unconsciously. So the producers like, well, you know
(25:58):
that's not the way it works. You do it, said,
if it goes well, you might come back into another set.
He's like, well, then I'm not doing your show. And
then apparently a couple of day later, the producers like, fine,
you can do the show and we'll talk to you.
And so again I'm keep going back to this emotion,
like you of how to handle this situation and parlaying
(26:18):
what little I mean you can imagine this is he's
just playing the Playboy club, what little power he had
to get what he wanted. And that was also a
breakthrough moment. And then he became, like, you know, a
hero and that's the moment. That's why we're talking on
this to you right now, like that moment and then
everything changed from there. I have a question before because yes,
(26:41):
everything changes from there. But there's one question wanting to
clarify here, especially with the with uh the Tonight Show
with Jack Parr, it sounds like there was an emotional
calculation on his part or at least some very clever diplomacy,
because didn't they invite him more than once and eventually
(27:03):
like par finally called him. Right, That's that's the thing
that got me about it, because, oh, is there more
to that that might be right? You're saying that that
before like par just wanting him on the show. He
eventually part calls him personally and he says to Jack Parr,
who we idolized, I'm not gonna do the show unless
you have me on. Is that correct? That's what That's
what That's what I had heard. I wanted to see
(27:24):
that source because to me if that's if that's what happens.
What's fascinating about that is that it gets to a
point where it's kind of leveraging maybe the ego of
the host of the show, because they're like, you know,
I'm this huge show, what this guy is too good?
What gives you know? Yeah, I I you know, I
(27:44):
will look into that, because I did. We didn't go
into we just more we're talking about the club. And
I do know that he turned down the show. I
don't remember that Jack Parr himself called, but that could
be absolutely correct. And if that is, I mean there's
also if you think about it, there was like this
thing about black people and being pushy and up at
(28:08):
and all like that was like a way to like
marginalize a lot of those So I like that he
was willing to risk that all of that to sit
down on the couch with and part ended up loving
him and having on the show numerous times, and that,
as we like to say on our show, blew open
the gates to having African Americans not only on the show,
(28:33):
but older African Americans finally getting the shots on television
and stuff. Well we've heard Dick Gregory um later in
his life describing this period. Um, but we haven't heard
any of his comedy, and I think we should hear
a little moment of one of the bits that might
have been something he would have performed on the Jack
par Show. You know, I feel so sorry for Willie.
(28:54):
I think any baseball player having troubles. So that's a
great sport for my people. It is the only sport
in the world where Negroes and shake a stick at
a white man and won't start no ride. Because now,
don't get me wrong, now we're doing all right. At
the rate we're going. Ten years from now, you might
(29:15):
have to be my collar to get a job. Keep
me right, I'll get an en raised taxes on you.
I mean, I don't get me wrong. I wouldn't mind
paying my income tax if I knew it was going
to a friendly country. And we have a lot of
racial prejudice up north, but we're so clever with it.
Take my hometown, Chicago. I mean, you can't see it
(29:37):
just just going in there. When Negroes in Chicago move
into one large area and it looked like we might
control the votes, they don't say anything to us. They
have a slum clearance you do the same thing on
the West coast, but you call it three ways. So
what we've done here so far is trace this guy's
(29:57):
evolution to the gates and then when they were blown open,
as you said, he he could have, if we want
to speculate, he could have done what some people decided
to do when they're successful in entertainment and just stayed
in that lane and just you know, worked on comedy
and and honed his craft and then eventually you know,
retired or just exclusively gone on to do Comedy Central,
(30:21):
Roaster something. But he took it a step further. And
you mentioned this earlier, Wayne, when you say everything changed.
So so what changed exactly? What was Dick Gregory's next
phase in life? Well, two things. When I say that
everything changed, I meant that everything changed and stand up,
and that now Americans club owners, TV bookers were interested
(30:45):
in the voices of African American comedians. That's what I
meant by everything changed. So you you now had like
suddenly Nipsey Russell is on television a lot more, and uh,
you know, Slappy White and these old are comedians like
uh moms maybe and pig Meat Markham, like suddenly they
have a resurgence because people are kind of curious about
(31:08):
this world of comedy and and there's you know, this
underground world of dirty records with you know, Red Fox
and Lawanda Page and all of those people. So it's
just it's like kind of like if you go to
the African American Museum at the Smithsonian and they show
you the clips of the comedians from that air, they're
all post nineteen sixty, like they're all post one when
(31:31):
he broke through, like they're all and a lot of
people were getting sets and jobs. So it was just
it was a bit of a a great kind of resurgence.
And then through those doors walks Fhlip Lilson and Bill
Cosby and then Richard Pryort Mitchell Pryor makes a television
debut in nineteen sixty four. That's only three years after
(31:52):
this moment. It's like it's a real like, Okay, now
we're on everything's changed, and comedians and audience is are
ready to accept as Dick Craigory like to say, uh,
just one person talking flat footed on stage to a
white crowd, and then what we're like. He continued to
(32:14):
work as a comic. He was suddenly making a lot
of money. He hired a couple of writers to help
him create more material because he was really in demand.
He put out records. He's like, he's a thing. Is
Dick Gregory is a thing? And then he gets very
involved with the civil rights movement, which don't forget. I
mean this is before the Voting Rights Act and before
(32:37):
the Housing Act and all of that. So this is
before Martin Luther King in nineteen three makes the big speech.
So he starts marching with Martin Luther King and making
speeches and raising money. And what happens is he starts
canceling nightclub dates and basically says like, look, I can
(32:59):
do the jokes, and I can do these jokes these
guys wrote for me, and this is all great, but
there's a bigger wave that I'm involved with now. And
that basically kind of like marginalized his stand up act
and made him this civil rights icon at the at
the time. So we basically canceled tens of thousands of
dollars worth of gigs so he could be involved with
(33:21):
this movement and talk about it, and then he became
sort of identified with that, and because he was doing that,
opened the door again for like the Cosbies and Flip
Wilson and you know, prior and all of those gentlemen.
But then he essentially, you know, so those floodgates were open,
all those folks stepped in to kind of fill that vacuum,
(33:43):
and and he kind of walked away from this career
in a lot of ways. I mean, maybe not entirely,
but he clearly had bigger fish to fry um. He
had higher priorities, a higher calling you could say, no question,
no question, and that really motivated him very much. And
then I think in a way it hurt his career year,
his stand up career. And I also, for some reason,
(34:03):
I just don't know if he was that dedicated to
stand up once he had sort of cracked this code
and I was like, Okay, I can do this, and
I can release these albums. I can make hundreds of
thousands of dollars a year and where I used to make,
you know, five dollars doing this this gig. And he
(34:23):
just he was very much motivated in racial equality, which
is I can understand I can understand that, which jump
sure what he had to endure growing up in that
time period. We followed some of his work in this field.
In in the civil rights movement, he also was advocating
(34:47):
for the rights of Native Americans and uh from gender equality.
We we found a couple of stories. One that one
that really stood out was he even got the attention
of Jagger, who at one point when he ran for
president in nineteen sixty eight, which I had no idea
he actually ran for president. Uh, but the rumor is
(35:10):
from documents that came out later, that j Edgar Hoover
considered Dick Gregory such a threat that he ordered the
Chicago office of the FBI to contact the Mob to
neutralize Yeah, quote unquote whatever whatever that means. Yeah, maybe
maybe it's something less sinister to neutralize him during that race.
(35:33):
And I guess I wanted to ask you, I'm given
what you said earlier about the biggest comedy club or
white nightclub in Chicago being run by the Mob. Was
the Mob still really active in Chicago and the comedy
scene in the in the sixties. Yeah, I mean it
was starting to fade away a little bit as these
(35:55):
other rooms opened up. But basically the nightclub era which
started right you know when after the end of Prohibition
and the and vaudeville dropping. A lot of nightclubs across
the United States south north, southwest, northwest were mob run organizations.
One of the most famous in New York was a
room called the Copa Cabana, which you you know, you've
(36:17):
seen these uh Scorsese movies all the time, but that
was they had the biggest headliners, Martin Lewis and those
guys would perform there, Sammy Davis with the Wilmasson trio
and now these were all mob run. And then mob
ran obviously Las Vegas, and then had their hooks deeply
into Miami, which was also this big scene. I mean,
(36:41):
I guess the only place that mob didn't really run
too much was the uh the Borsch Belt up in
the mountains of the Adirondacks upstate New York, where kind
of like Jewish comedians were performed there during the summers.
Let's move on really quickly to a very important event
UM in the freedom summers are the nineteen sixty four
Freedom Summer in Mississippi, UM, where all these marches took place.
(37:04):
This is a very big, um, kind of high water
mark point for the civil rights movement. UH. There is
a bombing of a church called the Mountain Zion Church,
and three young men are sent to investigate it, Goodman,
Cheney and Schwerner, and they do not come back alive.
They are murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan,
and Deputy Sheriff Cecil Ray Price has all proven who
(37:27):
is also a klansman, and basically Dick Gregory Um goes there,
confronts the sheriff and sticks his finger in his face
and says, I know you did this, and we're gonna
pin it on you. And he reaches out to Hugh Hefner,
who puts up twenty five thousand dollars of nineteen sixty
four money, which is no chump change for a reward
(37:49):
for anyone that can lead to the arrest or proof
that these men had something to do with it, and
to find the bodies. Um. There's conjecture that the FBI
already knew where the bodies were. They just didn't want
to create a giant storm um, and so they kept quiet.
And essentially Gregory, with the help of his friend Hugh Hefner,
took these men to task and everyone essentially, I mean
(38:12):
the degrees to which they were punished, you could kind
of argue we're not nearly fitting the crime, but they
were exposed. Um. And that brings us around to Hefner
kind of. I don't know, you think of him as
this kind of impressario of smud or something like that,
But as you said, he was very interested, He was
very progressive. He was all about literature and good writing.
(38:34):
And people joke about, oh, I only read Playboy for
the articles, but there's there's a lot of truth to that.
I mean, some of the greatest writers of all time
have gotten their start writing shorts for Playboy or articles
or having short stories published. So it absolutely has a
place in that kind of cannon. Um. And uh. More recently,
Um Dick Gregory. Unfortunately we lost us several years ago,
(38:57):
but near the end of his life he participated in
the roast of Hugh Hefner and he had a really
interesting quote at two thousand and one, right during the
roast of Hugh Hefner. Uh he he actually he went
beyond the typical insults stuff, right, And I think this
is what this is what you have mentioned earlier, Wayne,
(39:17):
where he says you had a courage when no one
was bringing in black and minorities and let you stand
flat footed in America and just talk. You brought me in,
You didn't give me a lecture, you gave me no instructions.
I come here tonight not to roast you, but to
say that had you not had the guts back then
we black comics, that the world has been able to
look at and understand our genius, we would be in
(39:39):
some pot roasting in debt, knowing we were never going
to make it. And I have to ask because that's
such a powerful statement. Yeah, Yeah, Were they like friends
past the business stuff, past like the giving the start,
because that that's the that's a very personal, sincere statement.
(40:00):
Did they interact throughout the throughout his career in activism
as well as comedy, Well, I know, I know this.
I know in nineteen sixty two when Lenny Bruce Scott
arrested at the Gate of Horn, which was this little
club also in Chicago, that he put up his bail
money and just felt like what Bruce is trying to
(40:23):
do with language, I'm trying to do with you know,
with literature here, like like show you satire and language
and cartoons just sort of elevate this art, not only
the humor but the conversation about American general So I
know he's always been an activist in that. I don't
know how close they were through the years. I know
(40:45):
that there's dozens of Dick Gregory interviews where he thanks
Hugh Hefner for having the courage to put him on
that stage and or the foresight to put him on
that stage. So I know he was like extremely grateful. Obviously,
what happens is, I hate to say this, the Playboy
Clubs were basically like Dick Gregory immediately got bigger than
(41:09):
the Playboy clubs, which was became the circuit. There was
like twenty of them all over the United States. Pick St. Louis,
you know, so Miami, New Orleans, Boston, New York. So
he was already too big to play the Playboy circuit.
So I don't know if that was a thing between
the two of them. I'm not sure, but I've heard
(41:31):
Dick Gregory numerous times thank Hugh Hefner for that moment. Yeah. Absolutely,
I mean he really did kind of go on on
a limb when he you know, he did kind of
have the world, you know, on a platter at that
point because of, like you said, the Playboy magazine just
printing money and having kind of having a sense that
he was untouchable, and that's really important. But also any
other person could have done something completely different with that
(41:53):
kind of success and that kind of power, and he
instead took a chance and went out on a limb
when he didn't have to. And without that moment, Dick
Gregory wouldn't have had the platform to affect such social
change that he did. Not to mention blowing over the
doors wide open for black comics you know around the world. Yeah,
it's it's an incredible story, and it all happens in
this you know, in this little club in Chicago in
(42:17):
the middle of went to January nineteen sixty one. There's
a snowstorm and he takes a bus to the gig
and he gets off on the wrong stop, and the
whole story is just so he's running through the snow
and he's slipping, and he's never been to the Playboy Club,
so he doesn't know exactly where it is. And then
he gets there and uh, yeah, he gets on on
(42:38):
stage and uh does his thing as you just reflect
on like his use of language and the casualness of
his performance, and he is just like this is his moment,
and he absolutely embraces it. And speaking of speaking of
thinking and speaking of moments, you know, we can we
(43:00):
can think Hugh Hefner the way that Dick Gregory did.
But we also have to admit, you know, this wouldn't
have been near as big a moment had Dick Gregory
not been such a talented writer, performer and comics. So
I don't want to get away from how just objectively
good the guy is and and also so savvy. I
(43:21):
think it's it's not to be Um overlooked that he
wasn't rolling over when he kind of did these maybe
a little bit more palatable performances for white audiences. He
was being smart. He was reading the room in a
way that was able to like keep him in the game.
And you know, as his comedy you know, progressed, I guess,
or as his career progress and he had, he was
(43:42):
able to take more risks. Um. You know, he was
very outspoken about race and politics and all of that,
even in his acts. No question, Again, it goes back
to what we were speaking about earlier about your said savvy,
I said, you know, emotional like you like he just
I felt like he had a a really heightened level
of like how to play these situations, and he had seen,
(44:05):
if I'm not mistaken, sometimes they would have like, uh,
I don't know, I don't know if it was Sammy
Davis at this Robert Show club, and he watched Nipsey
Russell play a crowd and sometimes they would get white
crowds coming into the Robert Show Club, which was a
black club, but they would let white people in obviously.
So I think he had seen some other black comedians
(44:28):
like work the room's like, Okay, I think I know
how to crack this this code. I think I know
the combination uh that that will that will make it work.
So this this is a watershed, pivotal moment in comedy
and in American society overall. You know, longtime listeners know
(44:52):
one thing that that I never shy away from NOL.
I don't think you shy away from it either, is
admitting when we need to know more about something. So
thank you so much, Wayne Fetterman for introducing, uh, not
just us, but our audience to Dick Gregory and talking
to us, even though you established pretty early on in
(45:14):
today's episode that you would always rather be talking to
Casey that's fair. We feel the same way. I trusted me.
I want a really quick I just tell a very
very short story. I had an interesting privilege to UM.
I was a reporter for public radio when I lived
in Augusta, Georgia, and I got to cover the funeral
of James Brown. And Uh, Dick Gregory actually spoke and
(45:36):
gave a eulogy at James Brown's funeral, And I was
not aware of him, And that was the very first
time I had ever heard of this man. Uh, and
I really thought of him much more all the research
I did, which wasn't much, um that he was much
more of an activist. So hearing this completed part of
his story is really fascinating. But he gave a really
powerful speech at James Brown's funeral. Um, it was. It
was really interesting to see him kind of in the
(45:58):
flesh and really fascinating man. Very very glad to know
more about him. So thank you Wayne for for hipping
us to this story. Well I'm you know, I'm just
You're welcome. So Wayne, at this point people people have
heard us mentioned uh your podcast that you do with
(46:18):
your co host Andrew Stephen. I just want to let
everybody know that The History of Stand Up Season two
is is coming out now as we speak. It hasn't
all been released yet though, right, that is correct. We
are still editing, interviewing people, putting things together for this season. Yeah. So, uh,
(46:40):
the last the last episode I listened to if you're
interested in hearing more about the Playboy circuit is season two,
episode two, which came out just a few days ago
as we record this, and it explores the story of
Hugh Hefner and Playboy magazine and how they became This
(47:00):
is a quote here from your show, Wayne, how they
became unlikely champions for an era of comedy between nightclubs
and the comedy boom. That's exactly. I can't believe I
came up with something that articulous. That's great, it's very succinct.
You've done good, You've done good way and it's a
great show. Um, where can folks find that? Um? What's
the best way to to to pull that up? I
(47:21):
the classic. Wherever you get your podcast, whether it's you know,
on iTunes or Stitcher, I'm not sure wherever it's it's everywhere,
it's everywhere out there. Just yeah, yeah, it's easy to get.
It's easy to get and thank you very much for
listening to it. I, um, you know this is a
I'm passionate about this, but I just don't know how
(47:43):
many people are really interested in the history of stand
up as opposed to stand ups now you know that,
you know, talk about their careers and stuff. I've actually
have been keeping note here. I'll confess there were a
couple of older comics that you had mentioned in the
course of today episode or is writing them downs? Like,
Oh wait, I've got to look that guy up. I
(48:03):
gotta see if I can hear something. Uh So, I've
got some homework today. Uh and I'll probably be posting
some some stuff about this on our own Ridiculous History
Facebook page or Instagram. You can you can find us there.
You can also find us on Twitter. Uh Wayne, I'm
gonna I'm gonna volunteer you. It looks like you are
also available on Twitter at Fetterman And if you want
(48:27):
to find me and Ben individually. Um, we keep up
a pretty decent Instagram profile. I am at how Now
Noel Brown and you can see me getting kicked into
and out of various countries at Ben Bolan. Yeah, that's true,
that's true. Don't make fun of me, love it? Uh.
So that is our show. Everyone, Thank you so much
for tuning in. We'd love to hear you're taking some
(48:49):
of your favorite comics throughout history right. Absolutely thanks to
super producer Casey Pegram, Thanks to Alex Williams, who composed
our theme. Big thanks to Christopher Hasiotis who is here
in spirit uh and Jonathan Strickland who you know uh
he can take a long walk off a short pier.
Big thanks to Jonathan Strickland, a k. The quister I
know you and I don't see eye to eye on that.
(49:11):
And big thanks to Wayne and thank you so much
folks for listening. We'll see you next time. For more
podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for
tuning in now you know. Also, additionally, I mean it's
just me. I want to thank everyone who has bothered
to chuckle, laugh, snort, laugh through their nose or occasionally
go faw at our jokes because comedy is tough. Him. Hey,
I'm no, and I've never fancied myself a comedian. I
(00:50):
always say I'm a purveyor of dad jokes, and I'm
absolutely fine with that. But straight seahorse teeth seems to
be taking off online like Wildfire Ben. It's true already
say your name? Yes, sorry I said hey second times.
A charm comedy is all about listening, you know what
I mean? Bad Wow, it's true shaming me, you know what?
(01:10):
Is pretty cool though? It's the official return of Can
we get a drumroll? Please? He asked super producer Casey
la bouche Pegrum. I know, Casey uh, when you were away,
did you hear that we kind of developed a mythology
(01:32):
for you based on our knowledge of your French goings on.
I caught wind of this. Yeah, my my sources back
here in the States. We're keeping me uh informed, more relevant.
You know information. You're very tight in very connected spycraft.
You know you gotta you gotta be. You gotta have
your feelers out there. So I have a question, and
you do not, please do not feel obligated to answer
(01:53):
this Casey. First off, this is I say this with
great affection. Uh, there was there was a Casey shaped
whole in my heart and we're gone. Uh. Now that
you are aware, along with all of our fellow listeners
about how your how your alleged double life in France
was portrayed, Uh, would you say that this is accurate, inaccurate,
(02:20):
a seed of truth. I don't know. I don't really
want to blow up my own spot like that, but
you know, UM, I'd say, if it's maybe not true
to the letter, it's certainly true the spirit. So al right, okay,
I can I can accept that. Well played, You've passed
the test, my friend, we have in honor of your return,
we have a not a surprise for you, but a
(02:42):
gift for you and hopefully for all of our fellow
listeners today. While back, I think in his episode one
oh eight or one oh nine, we did a two
part show on the History of stand Up with our
pal Wayne Fetterman, who is who isn't has an encyclopedic
knowledge of the history of comedy and Casey, we waited
(03:07):
until you returned with your US identity to the studio
to have Wayne Fetterman on this show today for you, dude,
I know, and I'm so psyched about this because yeah,
it was like a year ago that I was out
and he was on and it was driving me out
the wall because yeah, I'm a big fan of the
guy and big fan of the history comedy and everything else.
(03:28):
So yeah, it's great to be here for this. Well.
Wayne is an encyclopedic font of comedy knowledge. His podcast
The History of Stand Up on the Podglomerate Network with
his co host Andrew Stephen Um is just a delight.
And last time we had him on we talked about
um Lenny Bruce and kind of some more inflammatory comics
that sort of pushed the envelope of free speech. George Carlin.
(03:51):
George Carlin all would have over many filthy words on
terrible words there are. I think those are the only
two explicit episodes of the show we've ever ad because
we needed to be able to unbleep those words because
they were very important to the story it was about censorship. Luckily, however,
we did with that episode. Uh. Wayne was charitable enough
(04:12):
guy that he came back to hang out with us today,
not to mention that my mic was cut for like
half of one of the episodes, and we still salvaged
it with crack, our crack forensic audio team and made
it at least somewhat listening more. And also Wayne didn't
think were a bunch of hacks and agreed to come
back on which I really appreciate. And this episode is fantastic,
another exploration of some envelope pushing comedy, but in a
(04:35):
slightly different way. So without having uh, without having deep
dive demographics on how many of us are stand up
history buffs, UH, we'd like to introduce you to a
man named Dick Gregory, a pioneer not just in the
world of stand up comedy that we very much was,
but also in the world of civil rights and activism.
(04:59):
So we we hope that you enjoy our conversation here
with Wayne about not just comedy, but about progressive actions
in the United States, about civil rights in the sixties,
about the UH the oddly heartwarming actions of the often
controversial Hugh Hefner. Let's get right to it. The rumors
(05:24):
are true, ridiculous historians. We are joined once again with
a friend of the show and host of the History
of Stand Up podcast, Wayne Fetterman, Friend of the American People,
Wayne Fetterman, friend to our producer Casey pet From Wayne Fetterman,
how you doing, Wayne? I really would rather be speaking
(05:45):
to Casey. That guy is incredible. He made shime in.
But you won't be able to hear him because he's
not piped into the phone. But we will relay any
words of wisdom that he provides on his behalf. Alright,
Is he beaming right now? Because I'm talking about him?
He is, he says, He says that he has he
his face is obscured by a giant computer monitor, so
I can't speak to that person. But his voice in
my ears says that he is okay, and he just
(06:06):
leaned in and give a big smile. Fun story before
we get started, and this is a true story, Wayne.
When we were putting together this episode, Casey actually asked
us to hold and he traveled all the way back
from Paris, France, uh to be here today. Very special trip.
It's true. Yeah, let me just say that's very much
on brand for Casey. So when we previously spoke together,
(06:31):
we looked at the history of what we call stand
up today, not just as the craft or the the
actual performance that we think of with somebody standing with
a microphone and an audience that hopefully loves them, but
not always. We also talked about some of the bigger
social questions that stand up brings to the forefront. And
(06:56):
sometimes those can be uncomfortable questions that people don't typically explore. Uh.
Now they they laugh at it too, but sometimes they
leave thinking. Uh. In our earlier conversations leading up to
today's episode, Uh, you started telling us about someone that
was I think maybe vaguely familiar to us, but someone
(07:17):
we weren't super well acquainted with, which is the comedian
and activist Dick Gregory. Wayne, could you tell us a
little bit about, uh, just for our audience, who Dick
Gregory is. Well, Dick Gregory is famous in the history
of stand up for one specific thing, and that is
(07:37):
he became the first major and there's a caveat we
can go into it. Uh, comedian African American comedian to
play white nightclubs. And how that happened we will tell
you in a moment, I'm sure, but he was just, uh,
you know, it was a funny kid. He was an athlete,
he went to college, he was in the service, and
(07:57):
then he moved from St. Louis to Chicago to pursue
his dream of becoming a stand up comedian and could
only play the black clubs in and around Chicago and
was really struggling. Actually had a day job. He worked
at the post office. He watched cars all trying to
uh subsidize this career of his. And at this point
(08:19):
he's married, he has he has a lot of responsibility.
So leading up to this big moment that we're gonna
get into that involves another kind of historical luminarian, controversial figure,
Dick Gregory was kind of doing his best to get
into the kind of Chicago stand up nightclub scene, and
as you said, it wasn't a very welcoming scene for
people of color. And I want to play this clip
(08:41):
from American Masters on PBS where Gregory kind of describes
this moment where he had to disarm a white audience
at a club. I want to say in Alabama or
something like that, um where someone calls him a racial
slur and he has to take that opportunity to diffuse
the situation rather than make a scene, and you know,
put his career in jeopardy because these were ultimately his
(09:05):
clients who he was there to entertain. So I think
this really is a very teachable moment about the kind
of climate that he was dealing with. So I go
down there and I'm not thinking of anything. I didn't
know at the time that a Negro is not permitted
to work a white nightclub. That's in all of America.
And I remember not knowing that. I used to practice
(09:27):
what do you do when some white person yell something
negative about or embarrass you? And so I used to
practice with my wife, but he didn't work because he
was too nice and kind. And then one night, I
don't know how I got this little job in this
little hick town, little missie Walker, Indiana, so that just
you know what to say, no more. So I'm in Walk,
(09:49):
Indiana and and somebody said, get that nigger off the stage.
Now I was ready for it, and everybody just froze.
And I said, white boy called me, called me, oh Range,
his hearts called me trigger and everybody laugh. I'm out
(10:14):
of it. There's no way you can feel sorry for
me or embarrassed in life. So when I got him back,
now I'm off, you know, and the guy walcome said
thank you, Jesus Christ. I want to hit him myself.
And then the guy walks up and say sorry, and
they're sorry. I don't almost pay you man. I've been
(10:36):
I've been trying to figure out how to get through this.
So Wayne, I wanted to know if if you thought
that maybe this was kind of if he would have
had to deal with similar situations like this leading up
to this moment, And he almost describes it as like
an aha moment where it's like, ah ha, this is
how I can deal with this kind of heckling. Right well,
he I feel like Dick Gregory, especially at that time,
(10:57):
had a very high emotional and comedic i Q on
how to handle crowds. And it's remarkable considering he's not
that experienced other than basically playing these black clubs. But
I just think he had an innate sense of one
had to perform in front of white audiences and to
(11:18):
like how to diffuse these very volatile situations that I'm
sure would come up all the time, right because as
as you had mentioned before, he was he was working.
Let's see, his comedic career began in what the mid
to late nineteen fifties, Is that correct? Yes, yes, yes,
that's exactly correct. And at that time there wasn't a
(11:39):
lot of you know, African American comedians on television or
on the Ed Sullivan Show. Is just a few, and
once in a while he'd see somebody and there really
wasn't a big circuit to play. There was big and
white nightclubs, which we called nightclubs at that time, and
but they wouldn't use uh African American comedian. Once in
(12:00):
a while they would, but as a rule that's not
you know, they'd have an act, you know, Sammy Davis
could play there or something like that, or you know,
a team or a singer like Pearl Bailey or something
like that all the time, but not not a stand
up Um. That saw a really interesting clip with the
comedian Paul Mooney, who was another very outspoken comic, a
(12:21):
contemporary maybe a little younger than Gregory, but still kind
of very much like in the same scene as Richard
Pryor so maybe like the next generation. But he talked
about how in Hollywood nothing could ever be too white,
but it was very easy too for something to be
too black. Um, And I think that's a really interesting distinction,
where like you talk about Sammy Davis Jrs. And like
(12:41):
performers of that caliber, they were a little more palatable
to a white audience, but a comic like Gregory who
wasn't pulling any punches that would be a little harder
to take for these folks maybe weren't used to seeing
things like that. Is that would you say that's accurate? Yes,
Mooney is a percent on on Like people would go, okay,
this is this is too much for us. But again,
Dick Gregory, I think, really learned how to thread the needle,
(13:04):
almost like in a Jackie Robinson kind of way, that
he was like able to like take white audiences expectations
of what a black guy would talk about, and he
talked about racial stuff all the time. That was the
centerpiece of his act, but he did it in a
very non threatening, very human way as opposed to an
(13:25):
angry way. In that same NPR PBS clip that we
just heard later on, he talks about that he was
always respectful and that he wasn't bitter, and that he
wasn't angry, and this was all I'm sure underneath. But
that again, I just feel like his emotional, like you,
was throw the roof on how to handle these situations.
(13:47):
So it wasn't like Paul Mooney, who would not you know,
I can't imagine Paul Mooney handling that situation in that
club the same way. It would be way more confrontational. Yeah. Absolutely,
I agree with that statement about emotional I Q no recently,
this this is not a plug. I actually do listen
(14:07):
to the history of stand up Uh. Yeah, has season
two started and in season two, Uh, you guys just
had an episode come out recently about the Playboy circuit
and this was something that I I didn't recognize. This
episode for anybody listening is available now when our episode
comes out, so give it a listen. This brings us
(14:28):
to something that we'd we'd love for you to explore
with us here, which is the interactions between Dick Gregory
and Hugh Hefner, the mastermind behind Playboy Magazine later the
Playboy Empire. No, this is something you were alluding to
in the beginning, right for sure, And this Playboy Club.
(14:48):
I didn't realize, um was a big source of um,
you know, entertainment and huge, massive, you know opportunity for
working comics. If you got a regular gig at the
Playboy Club, which was in Chicago at the time. Um,
that was a massive break for you. Can you tell
us a little bit about how Dick Gregory uh literally
kind of stumbled his way into this massive break. The
(15:10):
story is fantastic. Well, this is I assume, this is
why I'm talking to you guys. This moment is very
important in the big history of stand up and we
covered it briefly in our first season and then went
a little closer. And thank you for the kind words
about the Playboy episode. UM, I appreciate. I appreciate it
for anyone. It's the eight of us that are interested
(15:32):
in the history of stand up. So this is what happened.
February the first Playboy Club opens. You're like, what does
that mean? A Playboy Club. Well, in fifty three, real quickly,
Hefner publishes this magazine December fifty three called Playboy Marilyn
Moan Rose on the cover. There's no date stamped on
it because it might have been the last one and
(15:54):
it's basically has newdy pictures in it, but nothing too graphic.
I hope that's clear what that means. And then like articles,
and he was into literature. And so anyway, this magazine
out of Chicago, this kid who had this dream becomes
this runaway success in the fifties. So he is like
(16:15):
printing money by fifty seven is out selling Time Magazine,
is out selling Esquire. It's like this incredible end has
a big female readership as well. So he three things
happen around this time. One he does this huge indoor
jazz festival called the Playboy Jazz Festival. Two he buys
(16:37):
a mansion in Chicago and who called the Playboy Mansion,
which is like this party house. And three he opens
the Playboy Club. And also for there's another thing I'm forgetting,
he starts this syndicated television show called Playboy's Penthouse, which
is this black and white in the first two years,
and you kind of get sort of presents like this
(17:00):
hardy that you're invited to. So people are sitting around
and they're drinking and they're smoking, and there's a guy
playing piano and suddenly Sammy Davis comes in and sings
and then Lenny Bruce does some comedy. It's it's just
a very incredible like insight into like the world he
wants to create. And that was kind of like a
variety show for him, right, Is that where we get
(17:21):
that idea of him with the pipe and the smoking
jacket in the whole? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's
not it is a variety show, but not on a
precenium stage in like a living room. And then we
let's go over to the dining room and then let's
get some cocktails made over here, and let's listen to
CYCLEM and play Witchcraft, and then it's it's just a
great like promotional tool for the Playboy brand, which was
(17:43):
and we talked about it in the podcast that he
was going for sophistication like that was his Like he thought, God,
if I could make nudy picture, you know, this part
of a sophisticated lifestyle with high fidelity and sports cars
and jazz music and great literature that and that's what worked,
(18:04):
you know what I mean. So it was like suddenly
not a smudgy, behind the counter kind of embarrassing thing
if you wanted to see pictures of beautiful women so
that was that was another genius. Hugh Hefner's so he's
making he's killing he's killing it, killing it. During Eisenhower's administration,
so he opens this Playboy Club February nineteen six, and
(18:26):
the Playboy Club was this. You had to pay twenty
five dollars. You got a key literally a metal key.
It later became a card, and that gave you access
to the Playboggle. You were like a key member and
to serve these men. It was a men's only club,
but you could bring women. They created the Playboy Bunny,
(18:46):
which is different than the Playboy Playmate, which were in
the magazine. And the Bunny, how would you describe it?
If let me, I'm gonna throw it to you because
I feel like I'm talking too much. They were like
cocktail waitresses or they were kind of hostesses. They would
receive eve the gentlemen in their dates when they'd come in,
speak to them by name, make them feel very welcome,
and kind of cater to their their needs. It was
(19:07):
similar to the idea I guess we would an analog
would be a hostess club in Japan. You know, these
people are not necessarily what we would call sex workers.
They hang out with you, they laugh at your jokes,
they converse with you. Uh. There were also there was
also a uniform that changed over time, but that was
like from what I remember. Thanks again, Dad, I'll admit,
(19:30):
if you're listening to the show, that I did steal
some of your playboys from what I remember. With the
advertisements they used to have in the magazine for the bunnies,
there was it was like there were even ears at
some point, a little cotton tal Yeah. And then maybe
I feel like I'm remembering some kind of caller things
(19:50):
right and off the shoulder, almost kind of like boostier
leotard kind of ones thing. Uh. And I believe they're
wearing stockings and high Some of them would have those
cigarette carts that they would carry and you know, sell
cigarettes and get people's drink orders and stuff. But sometimes
they would change it up a little bit for the holidays.
(20:11):
That makes sense. Yeah, you're good, great, you did great?
Did great? Again? I was, I did. I was never
at the Chicago Club, so I only know from the
pictures and such, but yes, that was so that was
the vibe of this club again with the boatie I guess,
sophistication and I'm using quotes around it. And because these
(20:31):
were just young women, but the rule was you weren't
allowed to touch or date these women. He was very
careful to make it not a quasi strip club or
a quasi like you know, you're gonna hook up with
these girls or anything like that. And also they wanted
to make it, you know, get as many women customers
in there as well. So part of this, and this
is an interesting we didn't go into it. The guy
(20:53):
who ran the food and drink concession for this club
and then eventually it became a circuit was Arnie Moore,
who eventually has these famous steakhouses all across the country.
Wait the mort steakhouse guy. Yes, yeah, same guy, same guy.
So this is one of his earliest gigs. And they
(21:13):
had this crazy pricing plan which was everything was a
do this winted over. Everything was a dollar fifty, a
drink was a dollar fifty. Uh, your meal was a
dollar fifty. Pack of cigarettes and a lighter with the
Playboy logo on it was a dollar fifty. Like that
was there kind of thing. And it's like again with
half it's a runaway success. Like thousands and thousands of
(21:36):
people are pouring or paying twenty five bucks to be
a member. Everyone kind of got accepted and then UH
and then could get part of this sophisticated lifestyle surrounded
by these beautiful women. And part of the experience was
there was always two rooms for show business, and those
were usually a singer and a comic. So this is
(21:57):
where Dick Gregory comes into the picture. Now at the time,
it's you know, Chicago has this big nightclub called the
sha Peri, which is run by the Mob, and as
a white nightclub, that was like the big place you
could play in Chicago. So acts from the Shaperi would
(22:18):
also play the Playboy Club and one of these acts
in January, So it's I guess eleven months later UH
is named Professor Irwin Corey or does that name ring
a bell to any either of you? That I gotta
be honest, not to me, not right now? Okay. He
was a very curious, kind of almost experimental, avant garde
(22:42):
comedian who pretended to be professor and then would give
lectures on different topics in a very crazed kind of
remember like the way Einstein had his hair all crazy. Yeah,
that was that was so Irwin Corey for some reason,
is like, I don't want to work seven days a week.
I don't want to work Monday through Sunday. Can I
(23:03):
get Sunday off? You know, I appreciate this gig you're
giving me here at the Playboy Club, but um, I
don't want to do it. So hef who had seen
Dick Gregory he was the host of this club called
the Robert Show Club, which is his black club in Chicago,
and said, well, why don't we give this kid a
(23:24):
chance for fifty dollars. So he hired him that night,
and there were some Southern people in the crowd, and
Dick Gregory got there late, it was snowing, gets on
stage and just kills it, like all of his instincts
are a hundred percent correct on how to handle these crowds,
how to talk about race, how to talk about the
(23:45):
fact that he had been in the South, And he
did the joke you know I spent four weeks there
one night or that kind of thing, and and kills
it and then immediately like, oh, let's hire this guy.
And in a way, that's the first time African American
comedian had been hired in a white nightclub with a
couple exceptions, but that, yeah, but that was a big thing.
(24:06):
But there's more to the story. Can I keep going? Please,
We're on the edge of our seat here actually, So
Dick Gregory starts, you know, he had never heard of
making fifty dollars a night time seven. Like that was
like out of It was mind blowing to him that
he could be making this much money doing comedy, and
words spreads quickly about this kid who is doing great
(24:28):
at the Playboy Club. So the New York Times, luckily
like writes a review of it, and then Time Magazine,
and this is where the story gets really interesting to me.
Dick Gregory's dream was to be on the Tonight Show
with Jack Parr. That was the big break that he
was the Carson before Carson of course, so um. He
(24:52):
was friends with this singer named Billy Eckstein, another guy
you're not going to know, but a famous forties fifties singer,
and Billy was like, I don't know if you've noticed this,
whenever there's a black comedian on Jack Parr, he lets
them do their act and that would usually be like
like an impression. It's like he had George Kirby on
(25:13):
that kind of thing, but he would never bring him
over to the couch to sit down like he's just
a normal American person, when in general, getting brought over
to the couch is the dream of any comic doing
the late show, doing a late show like that. Yeah, yeah,
no question, no question, no question. But when this Time
magazine article hits, Jack Parr producer calls Dick Gregory AND's like,
(25:36):
we'd love to have you on the show, and he's like,
I'm not going to do on the show unless you
let me sit down and talk to Jack Barr. Because
he had never even thought of this, He never realized
until he Billy Eckstein pointed it out to him that
this was a thing that Jack Barr was doing, whether
consciously or unconsciously. So the producers like, well, you know
(25:58):
that's not the way it works. You do it, said,
if it goes well, you might come back into another set.
He's like, well, then I'm not doing your show. And
then apparently a couple of day later, the producers like, fine,
you can do the show and we'll talk to you.
And so again I'm keep going back to this emotion,
like you of how to handle this situation and parlaying
(26:18):
what little I mean you can imagine this is he's
just playing the Playboy club, what little power he had
to get what he wanted. And that was also a
breakthrough moment. And then he became, like, you know, a
hero and that's the moment. That's why we're talking on
this to you right now, like that moment and then
everything changed from there. I have a question before because yes,
(26:41):
everything changes from there. But there's one question wanting to
clarify here, especially with the with uh the Tonight Show
with Jack Parr, it sounds like there was an emotional
calculation on his part or at least some very clever diplomacy,
because didn't they invite him more than once and eventually
(27:03):
like par finally called him. Right, That's that's the thing
that got me about it, because, oh, is there more
to that that might be right? You're saying that that
before like par just wanting him on the show. He
eventually part calls him personally and he says to Jack Parr,
who we idolized, I'm not gonna do the show unless
you have me on. Is that correct? That's what That's
what That's what I had heard. I wanted to see
(27:24):
that source because to me if that's if that's what happens.
What's fascinating about that is that it gets to a
point where it's kind of leveraging maybe the ego of
the host of the show, because they're like, you know,
I'm this huge show, what this guy is too good?
What gives you know? Yeah, I I you know, I
(27:44):
will look into that, because I did. We didn't go
into we just more we're talking about the club. And
I do know that he turned down the show. I
don't remember that Jack Parr himself called, but that could
be absolutely correct. And if that is, I mean there's
also if you think about it, there was like this
thing about black people and being pushy and up at
(28:08):
and all like that was like a way to like
marginalize a lot of those So I like that he
was willing to risk that all of that to sit
down on the couch with and part ended up loving
him and having on the show numerous times, and that,
as we like to say on our show, blew open
the gates to having African Americans not only on the show,
(28:33):
but older African Americans finally getting the shots on television
and stuff. Well we've heard Dick Gregory um later in
his life describing this period. Um, but we haven't heard
any of his comedy, and I think we should hear
a little moment of one of the bits that might
have been something he would have performed on the Jack
par Show. You know, I feel so sorry for Willie.
(28:54):
I think any baseball player having troubles. So that's a
great sport for my people. It is the only sport
in the world where Negroes and shake a stick at
a white man and won't start no ride. Because now,
don't get me wrong, now we're doing all right. At
the rate we're going. Ten years from now, you might
(29:15):
have to be my collar to get a job. Keep
me right, I'll get an en raised taxes on you.
I mean, I don't get me wrong. I wouldn't mind
paying my income tax if I knew it was going
to a friendly country. And we have a lot of
racial prejudice up north, but we're so clever with it.
Take my hometown, Chicago. I mean, you can't see it
(29:37):
just just going in there. When Negroes in Chicago move
into one large area and it looked like we might
control the votes, they don't say anything to us. They
have a slum clearance you do the same thing on
the West coast, but you call it three ways. So
what we've done here so far is trace this guy's
(29:57):
evolution to the gates and then when they were blown open,
as you said, he he could have, if we want
to speculate, he could have done what some people decided
to do when they're successful in entertainment and just stayed
in that lane and just you know, worked on comedy
and and honed his craft and then eventually you know,
retired or just exclusively gone on to do Comedy Central,
(30:21):
Roaster something. But he took it a step further. And
you mentioned this earlier, Wayne, when you say everything changed.
So so what changed exactly? What was Dick Gregory's next
phase in life? Well, two things. When I say that
everything changed, I meant that everything changed and stand up,
and that now Americans club owners, TV bookers were interested
(30:45):
in the voices of African American comedians. That's what I
meant by everything changed. So you you now had like
suddenly Nipsey Russell is on television a lot more, and uh,
you know, Slappy White and these old are comedians like
uh moms maybe and pig Meat Markham, like suddenly they
have a resurgence because people are kind of curious about
(31:08):
this world of comedy and and there's you know, this
underground world of dirty records with you know, Red Fox
and Lawanda Page and all of those people. So it's
just it's like kind of like if you go to
the African American Museum at the Smithsonian and they show
you the clips of the comedians from that air, they're
all post nineteen sixty, like they're all post one when
(31:31):
he broke through, like they're all and a lot of
people were getting sets and jobs. So it was just
it was a bit of a a great kind of resurgence.
And then through those doors walks Fhlip Lilson and Bill
Cosby and then Richard Pryort Mitchell Pryor makes a television
debut in nineteen sixty four. That's only three years after
(31:52):
this moment. It's like it's a real like, Okay, now
we're on everything's changed, and comedians and audience is are
ready to accept as Dick Craigory like to say, uh,
just one person talking flat footed on stage to a
white crowd, and then what we're like. He continued to
(32:14):
work as a comic. He was suddenly making a lot
of money. He hired a couple of writers to help
him create more material because he was really in demand.
He put out records. He's like, he's a thing. Is
Dick Gregory is a thing? And then he gets very
involved with the civil rights movement, which don't forget. I
mean this is before the Voting Rights Act and before
(32:37):
the Housing Act and all of that. So this is
before Martin Luther King in nineteen three makes the big speech.
So he starts marching with Martin Luther King and making
speeches and raising money. And what happens is he starts
canceling nightclub dates and basically says like, look, I can
(32:59):
do the jokes, and I can do these jokes these
guys wrote for me, and this is all great, but
there's a bigger wave that I'm involved with now. And
that basically kind of like marginalized his stand up act
and made him this civil rights icon at the at
the time. So we basically canceled tens of thousands of
dollars worth of gigs so he could be involved with
(33:21):
this movement and talk about it, and then he became
sort of identified with that, and because he was doing that,
opened the door again for like the Cosbies and Flip
Wilson and you know, prior and all of those gentlemen.
But then he essentially, you know, so those floodgates were open,
all those folks stepped in to kind of fill that vacuum,
(33:43):
and and he kind of walked away from this career
in a lot of ways. I mean, maybe not entirely,
but he clearly had bigger fish to fry um. He
had higher priorities, a higher calling you could say, no question,
no question, and that really motivated him very much. And
then I think in a way it hurt his career year,
his stand up career. And I also, for some reason,
(34:03):
I just don't know if he was that dedicated to
stand up once he had sort of cracked this code
and I was like, Okay, I can do this, and
I can release these albums. I can make hundreds of
thousands of dollars a year and where I used to make,
you know, five dollars doing this this gig. And he
(34:23):
just he was very much motivated in racial equality, which
is I can understand I can understand that, which jump
sure what he had to endure growing up in that
time period. We followed some of his work in this field.
In in the civil rights movement, he also was advocating
(34:47):
for the rights of Native Americans and uh from gender equality.
We we found a couple of stories. One that one
that really stood out was he even got the attention
of Jagger, who at one point when he ran for
president in nineteen sixty eight, which I had no idea
he actually ran for president. Uh, but the rumor is
(35:10):
from documents that came out later, that j Edgar Hoover
considered Dick Gregory such a threat that he ordered the
Chicago office of the FBI to contact the Mob to
neutralize Yeah, quote unquote whatever whatever that means. Yeah, maybe
maybe it's something less sinister to neutralize him during that race.
(35:33):
And I guess I wanted to ask you, I'm given
what you said earlier about the biggest comedy club or
white nightclub in Chicago being run by the Mob. Was
the Mob still really active in Chicago and the comedy
scene in the in the sixties. Yeah, I mean it
was starting to fade away a little bit as these
(35:55):
other rooms opened up. But basically the nightclub era which
started right you know when after the end of Prohibition
and the and vaudeville dropping. A lot of nightclubs across
the United States south north, southwest, northwest were mob run organizations.
One of the most famous in New York was a
room called the Copa Cabana, which you you know, you've
(36:17):
seen these uh Scorsese movies all the time, but that
was they had the biggest headliners, Martin Lewis and those
guys would perform there, Sammy Davis with the Wilmasson trio
and now these were all mob run. And then mob
ran obviously Las Vegas, and then had their hooks deeply
into Miami, which was also this big scene. I mean,
(36:41):
I guess the only place that mob didn't really run
too much was the uh the Borsch Belt up in
the mountains of the Adirondacks upstate New York, where kind
of like Jewish comedians were performed there during the summers.
Let's move on really quickly to a very important event
UM in the freedom summers are the nineteen sixty four
Freedom Summer in Mississippi, UM, where all these marches took place.
(37:04):
This is a very big, um, kind of high water
mark point for the civil rights movement. UH. There is
a bombing of a church called the Mountain Zion Church,
and three young men are sent to investigate it, Goodman,
Cheney and Schwerner, and they do not come back alive.
They are murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan,
and Deputy Sheriff Cecil Ray Price has all proven who
(37:27):
is also a klansman, and basically Dick Gregory Um goes there,
confronts the sheriff and sticks his finger in his face
and says, I know you did this, and we're gonna
pin it on you. And he reaches out to Hugh Hefner,
who puts up twenty five thousand dollars of nineteen sixty
four money, which is no chump change for a reward
(37:49):
for anyone that can lead to the arrest or proof
that these men had something to do with it, and
to find the bodies. Um. There's conjecture that the FBI
already knew where the bodies were. They just didn't want
to create a giant storm um, and so they kept quiet.
And essentially Gregory, with the help of his friend Hugh Hefner,
took these men to task and everyone essentially, I mean
(38:12):
the degrees to which they were punished, you could kind
of argue we're not nearly fitting the crime, but they
were exposed. Um. And that brings us around to Hefner
kind of. I don't know, you think of him as
this kind of impressario of smud or something like that,
But as you said, he was very interested, He was
very progressive. He was all about literature and good writing.
(38:34):
And people joke about, oh, I only read Playboy for
the articles, but there's there's a lot of truth to that.
I mean, some of the greatest writers of all time
have gotten their start writing shorts for Playboy or articles
or having short stories published. So it absolutely has a
place in that kind of cannon. Um. And uh. More recently,
Um Dick Gregory. Unfortunately we lost us several years ago,
(38:57):
but near the end of his life he participated in
the roast of Hugh Hefner and he had a really
interesting quote at two thousand and one, right during the
roast of Hugh Hefner. Uh he he actually he went
beyond the typical insults stuff, right, And I think this
is what this is what you have mentioned earlier, Wayne,
(39:17):
where he says you had a courage when no one
was bringing in black and minorities and let you stand
flat footed in America and just talk. You brought me in,
You didn't give me a lecture, you gave me no instructions.
I come here tonight not to roast you, but to
say that had you not had the guts back then
we black comics, that the world has been able to
look at and understand our genius, we would be in
(39:39):
some pot roasting in debt, knowing we were never going
to make it. And I have to ask because that's
such a powerful statement. Yeah, Yeah, Were they like friends
past the business stuff, past like the giving the start,
because that that's the that's a very personal, sincere statement.
(40:00):
Did they interact throughout the throughout his career in activism
as well as comedy, Well, I know, I know this.
I know in nineteen sixty two when Lenny Bruce Scott
arrested at the Gate of Horn, which was this little
club also in Chicago, that he put up his bail
money and just felt like what Bruce is trying to
(40:23):
do with language, I'm trying to do with you know,
with literature here, like like show you satire and language
and cartoons just sort of elevate this art, not only
the humor but the conversation about American general So I
know he's always been an activist in that. I don't
know how close they were through the years. I know
(40:45):
that there's dozens of Dick Gregory interviews where he thanks
Hugh Hefner for having the courage to put him on
that stage and or the foresight to put him on
that stage. So I know he was like extremely grateful. Obviously,
what happens is, I hate to say this, the Playboy
Clubs were basically like Dick Gregory immediately got bigger than
(41:09):
the Playboy clubs, which was became the circuit. There was
like twenty of them all over the United States. Pick St. Louis,
you know, so Miami, New Orleans, Boston, New York. So
he was already too big to play the Playboy circuit.
So I don't know if that was a thing between
the two of them. I'm not sure, but I've heard
(41:31):
Dick Gregory numerous times thank Hugh Hefner for that moment. Yeah. Absolutely,
I mean he really did kind of go on on
a limb when he you know, he did kind of
have the world, you know, on a platter at that
point because of, like you said, the Playboy magazine just
printing money and having kind of having a sense that
he was untouchable, and that's really important. But also any
other person could have done something completely different with that
(41:53):
kind of success and that kind of power, and he
instead took a chance and went out on a limb
when he didn't have to. And without that moment, Dick
Gregory wouldn't have had the platform to affect such social
change that he did. Not to mention blowing over the
doors wide open for black comics you know around the world. Yeah,
it's it's an incredible story, and it all happens in
this you know, in this little club in Chicago in
(42:17):
the middle of went to January nineteen sixty one. There's
a snowstorm and he takes a bus to the gig
and he gets off on the wrong stop, and the
whole story is just so he's running through the snow
and he's slipping, and he's never been to the Playboy Club,
so he doesn't know exactly where it is. And then
he gets there and uh, yeah, he gets on on
(42:38):
stage and uh does his thing as you just reflect
on like his use of language and the casualness of
his performance, and he is just like this is his moment,
and he absolutely embraces it. And speaking of speaking of
thinking and speaking of moments, you know, we can we
(43:00):
can think Hugh Hefner the way that Dick Gregory did.
But we also have to admit, you know, this wouldn't
have been near as big a moment had Dick Gregory
not been such a talented writer, performer and comics. So
I don't want to get away from how just objectively
good the guy is and and also so savvy. I
(43:21):
think it's it's not to be Um overlooked that he
wasn't rolling over when he kind of did these maybe
a little bit more palatable performances for white audiences. He
was being smart. He was reading the room in a
way that was able to like keep him in the game.
And you know, as his comedy you know, progressed, I guess,
or as his career progress and he had, he was
(43:42):
able to take more risks. Um. You know, he was
very outspoken about race and politics and all of that,
even in his acts. No question, Again, it goes back
to what we were speaking about earlier about your said savvy,
I said, you know, emotional like you like he just
I felt like he had a a really heightened level
of like how to play these situations, and he had seen,
(44:05):
if I'm not mistaken, sometimes they would have like, uh,
I don't know, I don't know if it was Sammy
Davis at this Robert Show club, and he watched Nipsey
Russell play a crowd and sometimes they would get white
crowds coming into the Robert Show Club, which was a
black club, but they would let white people in obviously.
So I think he had seen some other black comedians
(44:28):
like work the room's like, Okay, I think I know
how to crack this this code. I think I know
the combination uh that that will that will make it work.
So this this is a watershed, pivotal moment in comedy
and in American society overall. You know, longtime listeners know
(44:52):
one thing that that I never shy away from NOL.
I don't think you shy away from it either, is
admitting when we need to know more about something. So
thank you so much, Wayne Fetterman for introducing, uh, not
just us, but our audience to Dick Gregory and talking
to us, even though you established pretty early on in
(45:14):
today's episode that you would always rather be talking to
Casey that's fair. We feel the same way. I trusted me.
I want a really quick I just tell a very
very short story. I had an interesting privilege to UM.
I was a reporter for public radio when I lived
in Augusta, Georgia, and I got to cover the funeral
of James Brown. And Uh, Dick Gregory actually spoke and
(45:36):
gave a eulogy at James Brown's funeral, And I was
not aware of him, And that was the very first
time I had ever heard of this man. Uh, and
I really thought of him much more all the research
I did, which wasn't much, um that he was much
more of an activist. So hearing this completed part of
his story is really fascinating. But he gave a really
powerful speech at James Brown's funeral. Um, it was. It
was really interesting to see him kind of in the
(45:58):
flesh and really fascinating man. Very very glad to know
more about him. So thank you Wayne for for hipping
us to this story. Well I'm you know, I'm just
You're welcome. So Wayne, at this point people people have
heard us mentioned uh your podcast that you do with
(46:18):
your co host Andrew Stephen. I just want to let
everybody know that The History of Stand Up Season two
is is coming out now as we speak. It hasn't
all been released yet though, right, that is correct. We
are still editing, interviewing people, putting things together for this season. Yeah. So, uh,
(46:40):
the last the last episode I listened to if you're
interested in hearing more about the Playboy circuit is season two,
episode two, which came out just a few days ago
as we record this, and it explores the story of
Hugh Hefner and Playboy magazine and how they became This
(47:00):
is a quote here from your show, Wayne, how they
became unlikely champions for an era of comedy between nightclubs
and the comedy boom. That's exactly. I can't believe I
came up with something that articulous. That's great, it's very succinct.
You've done good, You've done good way and it's a
great show. Um, where can folks find that? Um? What's
the best way to to to pull that up? I
(47:21):
the classic. Wherever you get your podcast, whether it's you know,
on iTunes or Stitcher, I'm not sure wherever it's it's everywhere,
it's everywhere out there. Just yeah, yeah, it's easy to get.
It's easy to get and thank you very much for
listening to it. I, um, you know this is a
I'm passionate about this, but I just don't know how
(47:43):
many people are really interested in the history of stand
up as opposed to stand ups now you know that,
you know, talk about their careers and stuff. I've actually
have been keeping note here. I'll confess there were a
couple of older comics that you had mentioned in the
course of today episode or is writing them downs? Like,
Oh wait, I've got to look that guy up. I
(48:03):
gotta see if I can hear something. Uh So, I've
got some homework today. Uh and I'll probably be posting
some some stuff about this on our own Ridiculous History
Facebook page or Instagram. You can you can find us there.
You can also find us on Twitter. Uh Wayne, I'm
gonna I'm gonna volunteer you. It looks like you are
also available on Twitter at Fetterman And if you want
(48:27):
to find me and Ben individually. Um, we keep up
a pretty decent Instagram profile. I am at how Now
Noel Brown and you can see me getting kicked into
and out of various countries at Ben Bolan. Yeah, that's true,
that's true. Don't make fun of me, love it? Uh.
So that is our show. Everyone, Thank you so much
for tuning in. We'd love to hear you're taking some
(48:49):
of your favorite comics throughout history right. Absolutely thanks to
super producer Casey Pegram, Thanks to Alex Williams, who composed
our theme. Big thanks to Christopher Hasiotis who is here
in spirit uh and Jonathan Strickland who you know uh
he can take a long walk off a short pier.
Big thanks to Jonathan Strickland, a k. The quister I
know you and I don't see eye to eye on that.
(49:11):
And big thanks to Wayne and thank you so much
folks for listening. We'll see you next time. For more
podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.