Episode Transcript
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0:04
Muhammad Ali and Joe Frasier
0:07
for the first time.
0:08
In Heavyweight Champions Tip Fiftray, we
0:10
have two undefeated.
0:11
Fighters and they are Jimmy Connors
0:13
and Bjorn boor Or.
0:15
Gets broken serve once again and leads
0:17
four to two in the final set.
0:20
The Steelers versus the Raiders,
0:23
good love
0:27
It. The nineteen seventies
0:29
saw some ferocious rivalries.
0:32
But I know what I'd pick as the fiercest
0:35
of them all.
0:36
Oh, Fred, please help us. My church
0:38
is raising monify our youth program.
0:41
We want to buy ween.
0:43
We'll let him have one of yours. Bet what
0:48
it's something.
0:53
The show was sandford AND's son, and
0:56
when junkyard dealer Fred Sandford
0:59
played by Red Fox and aunt Esther,
1:01
his Bible toting sister in law, began
1:04
trash talking, it got ugly
1:07
and hilarious.
1:11
If we were alone on a raft in the
1:13
middle of the.
1:13
Ocean, I'd rather kiss the octopus
1:16
in the knock.
1:19
I wouldn't want you to kiss me. I'd
1:22
rather be kissed by Snaggertude Jagga.
1:26
The character of aunt Esther joined the
1:28
series at the end of season two, and
1:30
for many in the audience, the actress playing
1:33
her Lawanda Page was
1:35
a new face, an overnight sensation,
1:40
but both Red Fox and Lawanda
1:42
Page were veteran comics with
1:45
big followings.
1:46
We'd bring to the floor the young lady that recalled
1:48
the record that was so dirty.
1:49
So rough, built in black nightclubs
1:52
and through adults only party records.
1:54
This record is so rough that you wouldn't even let your own mother in law
1:56
listen to it.
1:57
And let's just say aunt esther would
2:00
not have approved of this material.
2:03
You know what he said to Adam in the gardener
2:05
eaton one day.
2:06
She looked at all his in his hand. She said,
2:09
you got the whole world
2:12
in yon.
2:13
Man saying
2:20
things that weren't said would
2:23
be even more shocked than coming from
2:25
a woman. Lewanda Page wasn't
2:27
seen as a woman comet. You know,
2:29
she was a star. She was funny.
2:31
In her fifties, she became one of the
2:33
most popular people on TV.
2:35
I've come a long ways.
2:37
If it hadn't been for Red, I wouldn't
2:39
be in position that I'm in now. I
2:41
wouldn't have a maid, I wouldn't have a chauffeur,
2:44
I wouldn't have a gardener because
2:46
I couldn't afford it.
2:48
I thought the still he.
2:49
Wasn't in a nightclub, a celebrity
2:51
roasting other celebrities.
2:53
Now, let's see which one is.
2:55
Betty White. Get
3:00
a bunch of you albinos on one days
3:02
and you all look alike.
3:05
She was funny as hell.
3:07
And black women, they will tear you up.
3:10
They will tear you up, they will tell you about yourself.
3:12
But I had one confirmation. I finally
3:15
got.
3:15
That sucker to go to church within and
3:18
child. It was a beautiful tu.
3:23
But if Lawanda Page's life is a
3:25
book, mainstream America only
3:27
knows the last chapter.
3:29
If you went to clubs, you would
3:32
know who she was. And let's just call
3:34
it what it was.
3:35
If you weren't black, you didn't know who she was.
3:37
I can't test.
3:38
I can attest from CBS
3:41
Sunday Morning and iHeart. I'm
3:43
Morocca and this is mobituaries,
3:52
This mobid Lwanda Page.
3:55
Ladies and gentlemen. Here she is the Queen of
3:57
comedy.
3:58
Lorwanda September
4:01
fourteenth, two thousand and two. Death
4:05
of a comedy queen.
4:07
Thank you, thank you.
4:28
I noticed on the platform formerly
4:30
known as Twitter, a picture of
4:33
this beautiful woman in a swimsuit
4:36
and somebody said, does anybody know who this is? And
4:38
I scrolled down because I thought she looked familiar,
4:40
and somebody said, it's it's an estor
4:42
from Sanford, and so I went Hodie smoked.
4:44
Oh yeah, no, that listen. Lwanda
4:47
Page is stunningly beautiful.
4:50
And what ends up happening often,
4:54
particularly with women of color, no
4:57
one knows anything about us because we
4:59
weren't really part of the regular
5:01
world because unless you knew about
5:03
black performers, you didn't know about.
5:05
A lot of folks. I'm talking with comedian
5:08
and actress and Egot winner
5:10
Whoopy Goldberg, and it's true
5:13
Lawanda Page had a long and surprising
5:16
career in showbiz before Sandford
5:18
and Son that white audiences knew
5:20
little about.
5:21
We're a lot better now about
5:24
it, but in the fifties, unless
5:27
you were in the know, you
5:30
were not hanging out in the clubs where Lewanda
5:33
was.
5:33
People didn't know.
5:34
You know, she's like blackfire or something.
5:37
It's just you know, and she was hot.
5:39
Once upon a time, there
5:42
was a little black girl in
5:44
the Brewster projects of Detroit,
5:47
Michigan. At fifteen,
5:50
she was spighted by an ebony fashion
5:52
fair talent scout, and her
5:54
modeling career took on You
5:57
Better work.
6:00
That's Luwanda Page in the intro to
6:02
Rue Paul's nineteen ninety three seminal
6:05
dance hit Supermodel turns
6:07
out Rue Paul is a Lawanda Page
6:09
super fan. Now, Lawanda
6:12
was not born in the Brewster projects
6:14
of Detroit. In fact, she wasn't
6:16
even born Lawanda Page. Her
6:20
name was Alberta Richmond when
6:22
she came into the world in Cleveland,
6:24
Ohio, in nineteen twenty. As
6:26
a kid during the Great Depression, she'd
6:29
dance on street corners for spare change.
6:32
I would dream about being in show business,
6:34
Lawanda would later tell the Black Entertainment
6:37
magazine Roots, like I was
6:39
Cinderella in a storybook. I thought
6:41
I'd reach it through dancing. When
6:45
her family moved to Saint Louis, Lawanda
6:47
went to Banneker Elementary School,
6:50
where she became friends with her future co
6:52
star, Red Fox. He was
6:54
two grades below her. Lawanda
6:57
grew up fast, pregnant,
6:59
and married at fourteen. Her son
7:01
died in infancy.
7:03
At sixteen.
7:04
She had a daughter. By nineteen Lawanda
7:07
was widowed. By then, she was
7:09
already working the clubs as
7:11
she later told one reporter she made
7:14
thirty six dollars a week as a shake
7:16
dancer. The shaking part had to
7:18
do with the fringe she wore. I
7:20
shook the fringe, she said, My did
7:23
I shake that fringe. By
7:25
this time, she'd taken the name Lawanda,
7:28
perhaps to keep her religious mother from
7:30
finding out what she was doing. When
7:35
the club owner decided that Lawanda
7:37
needed to shake up her act, she had
7:40
a flash, so to speak. I
7:42
was sitting in the dressing room and my lighter
7:44
fluid spilled on my hand, she recalled.
7:47
When she proceeded to light a cigarette,
7:50
her hand caught fire, so
7:52
did her imagination. Lawanda
7:55
was going to do a fire act at
7:57
a club in East Saint Louis called the
8:00
Blue Flame. Yes, the Blue
8:02
Flame. A drag queen named
8:04
Taboo showed her the ropes. It's
8:07
in the breathing. Lawanda remembered
8:09
being taught, when you put the torch in
8:11
your mouth, breathe out. If
8:13
you don't, you're done like a roast.
8:16
And always keep moving. As long
8:18
as you keep moving, the flames don't
8:20
burn you. That's how I became
8:22
the Bronze Goddess of fire,
8:26
swallowing flames walking on
8:28
hot coals. She even brought a snake
8:30
into her act. It was perilous
8:33
work. She burned herself and
8:35
merely burned down a few clubs, but
8:37
the act was good enough to take on the road.
8:40
There's this quote from a drummer who worked with
8:42
her at the New Deli Cabaret
8:44
in Vancouver. She'd light her finger
8:47
and go around lighting guy cigarettes in the
8:49
club. Then the lights would go off and she'd
8:51
light up the tassels on her pasties
8:53
and spin them like propellers
8:55
in opposite directions.
8:56
It was wonderful.
8:58
You gotta have a give.
9:02
It got ave a gammick.
9:04
Now.
9:05
Lawanda never wrote a memoir, but
9:07
in her later stand up work she talked
9:09
about her early days. Here she
9:11
is from her nineteen seventy nine album
9:14
Sane Advice, talking about
9:16
the first time she saw a certain pioneering
9:19
black star of the silver screen.
9:22
All the pretty women in the movies in magazine
9:24
were white, and when
9:26
a pretty girl came on the screen, the
9:28
white men they were allowed to pap and
9:31
whistle, but the black food
9:33
sat tight and kept quiet.
9:35
Had to hunt it.
9:36
They had to do it.
9:38
Then came nineteen forty three, nineteen
9:41
forty three. Baby, I remember the day
9:44
the movie was Kevin in the Sky and
9:47
the pretty woman was Lena Home
9:53
and Honey, when Lena came on the screen, all
9:56
them black southerns Honda they screen, they
9:58
whistle. How they taught tell
10:00
the buffet the popcorn machine.
10:02
Oh man, they throw down to ricks.
10:04
The theater in Saint Louis. They
10:06
say, we don't want to sit down, we want
10:09
to get down.
10:16
And I don't blame him, honey, because Leedom
10:19
was bright light and damn
10:21
near white.
10:28
She was a black beauty.
10:30
And right then I made up my mind
10:32
I was going into show business. I
10:34
went straight down town and got me a job
10:36
dancing. Yes
10:39
did.
10:43
Born in Cleveland, growing up in Saint Louis.
10:45
And she wants to be a star. She wanted
10:47
to be a Hollywood star. Can you just
10:49
even relate or imagine like what
10:52
that burning desire is or
10:54
yeah.
10:55
Because you're watching these movies and
10:57
it doesn't occur to you that
11:00
that's not going to be you.
11:02
It doesn't occur.
11:03
To you because I mean, I
11:06
loved all those movies that they made
11:08
in the thirties and the forties and the fifties.
11:10
I had no idea you know. I'm thinking
11:12
of the letter in.
11:13
Particularly Danny Davis.
11:14
Where she comes down and says,
11:18
shooting the guy.
11:21
But all I hut, I still love
11:23
the lad I killed.
11:25
And I'm thinking that's what I want to do. And
11:27
no one ever said, no, You're never
11:30
going to be Benny Davis. My mother
11:32
said, yes, of course, sure,
11:34
just don't shoot anybody.
11:35
But you could do that.
11:37
God bless your mother.
11:38
But that's such an interesting point because that's what dreaming
11:40
is, right, a suspension of disbelief, right,
11:43
Yes.
11:43
And so I'm sure it never
11:45
occurred to Lawanda that
11:48
she wasn't going to be one of those women.
11:51
Never ocurred to her, and never
11:53
occurred to me either, till someone said.
11:56
Oh, you know you're black, don't
11:58
you.
11:59
It's like, yeah, of course, I know.
12:02
Was that I have to do with this, with wanting
12:04
to be the starter And what my mother would say
12:07
is it has nothing to do with it. They
12:09
might not understand everything, but they'll get it.
12:12
Somebody will get it if you're good
12:14
enough.
12:16
Of course, Lawanda's path was limited
12:19
by legalized segregation. She
12:21
worked at the informal network of black
12:23
nightclubs and theaters known as the Chitlin
12:26
Circuit. Here she is again from
12:28
Saint Advice.
12:30
I was one and excited girl,
12:32
but I had no idea what was ahead of me.
12:36
It was August child and hot hot
12:38
hop hop hop, hunted
12:40
forty people, best costumes.
12:43
All it was riding and living in the same
12:45
booth. Before
12:47
we got out of Saint Louis, my sixth day, daughter,
12:50
my pet had died.
12:58
Time traveling on a show is
13:00
like no trip you ever took the cover.
13:03
Maybe if you hear loud noise in the back,
13:05
it's the luggage trying to get.
13:07
Out and
13:10
child.
13:11
I open my window and the fumes
13:13
from that bus till the whole proper meat
13:15
in camp.
13:19
You know, visually, in my mind, I could
13:21
see her on the bus with you know, nine
13:23
thousand people, all performers,
13:26
playing cards, smoking cigarettes, just
13:28
because they could only stop at specific
13:30
places and they could only stay in
13:33
specific places.
13:34
That's of a time. That's
13:36
of a time.
13:38
You of course know what this is like.
13:40
It's not easy to get up there and
13:42
hold an audience like that and
13:45
not rush it.
13:46
Yeah, well, you know, she is breathing,
13:49
do you know what I mean? She's up there and she's breathing.
13:52
She's like and then this habit. Can
13:55
you believe it?
13:56
Oh?
13:56
Wait a minute, and then this happened.
13:59
It's a stop of patter that
14:01
you don't hear often,
14:04
but you hear with black
14:08
comics, particularly
14:11
female black comics. You have
14:13
a little bit of the South, and you just telling
14:16
what happened.
14:16
And I love that you said just breathing, because
14:19
that's a big deal because people who don't
14:21
know what they're doing, they're not breathing, they're
14:23
just going right through.
14:24
They're nervous.
14:25
She's in no rush.
14:26
She'd tell the story the stage of hers who
14:29
she is, and it's kind of fabulous.
14:34
But Lawanda hadn't even tried to
14:36
stand up comedy until the mid
14:38
nineteen fifties, when she was in
14:40
her mid thirties and had settled
14:42
in South Los Angeles. She was
14:44
still the Bronze Goddess of fire dancing
14:47
at a club called the Brass Rail when
14:49
some of her fellow performers noticed
14:52
how funny she was. As she later
14:54
told Jet Magazine, when I got
14:56
too old to dance, I turned to
14:58
comedy. She started working
15:00
with comedic duo Skillett and Leroy
15:03
Records.
15:04
But that's the very fabulous
15:06
Lerii skillet and Lwanda.
15:10
Many of Lawanda's bits were drawn from
15:12
her own life. She'd been widowed
15:15
three times before she even started
15:17
doing comedy.
15:18
I should have known it never work out for old John
15:20
and me honey, because it was written in the stones.
15:23
I was a Burgo and that sucker
15:26
was a line of honey,
15:28
can take no kind of John. That's the
15:30
only man I know that ever went to the unemployment
15:33
office and lost his place in land.
15:38
Lawanda would work black comedy clubs
15:40
for the next two decades. Her
15:43
humor was as fiery as her
15:45
dancing had been. Coming up
15:47
after the break Lwanda Page
15:50
Red Fox and The Age of
15:52
the Party Record. Well,
15:54
now, some of those albums, especially
15:57
Lawanda's earlier ones, they're
15:59
really blue. I don't think I'm a shrinking
16:01
violet, but they're blue even for today.
16:03
They are dirty as hell.
16:06
Yes, yes, our
16:19
next guest is dubbed the King of
16:21
the Party Records. Basically that means
16:23
they're intended for laughs in the living
16:26
room. He's made thirty four albums and they
16:28
have sold in the millions. He's
16:30
kind of a stranger to television and a stranger
16:32
to me, frankly, but I'm very anxious
16:34
to meet him. He's got an enormous cult
16:37
of admirers. Here is Red Fox.
16:42
In nineteen sixty six, talk show
16:44
host MERV Griffin. Welcome to
16:46
comedian Red Fox. We're
16:48
all party records.
16:50
You're playing in a party. You have never been a party.
16:51
Put the records on when it's kind of dull, and
16:54
then wait, yeah, are
16:56
the body starts naughty?
16:59
Yes.
17:01
In this act, we're going to talk about party
17:04
records and the role they played,
17:06
not just in Lawanda Page's career,
17:09
but in the careers of many major
17:11
black comics. Now, these records
17:14
were not for kids, as Red Box
17:16
all but said in that clip we just heard. In
17:18
fact, many of the albums came
17:20
wrapped in brown paper.
17:22
It's so funny now to look back,
17:25
because we're not talking that long ago. But America
17:27
has always had this kind of false morality,
17:30
like, oh, we don't do that. You know, it's like
17:32
porn. It's like, oh, there's a fifty
17:34
billion dollar business that no one buys.
17:39
That's what these records were.
17:42
I'm talking to my friend, comedian Alonso
17:44
Boden.
17:45
Got a new iPhone. Got a new iPhone
17:48
costs somewhere between twelve hundred
17:50
and fifteen thousand dollars.
17:52
I don't
17:54
know how much it costs because Siri body.
17:58
Alonso broke through after winning
18:01
NBC's Last Comic Standing.
18:03
I've had the great pleasure of being a panelist
18:06
on NPR's comedy quiz show Wait
18:09
Wait, Don't Tell Me with Alonso for
18:11
over a decade. Alonzo
18:13
has faint but fond memories
18:15
of the Party record era.
18:17
Everybody knew about them, and people
18:19
loved them, and it was really the only
18:21
way you heard these comics. Right, we
18:23
didn't have the internet. Someone got
18:25
the record. They told you about
18:27
the record, You told someone else about the
18:29
record.
18:30
As the name would suggest, these records
18:33
became big at parties.
18:35
My father had a bar in the
18:37
basement, and this is how they socialized,
18:39
you know. They had bars in the house
18:41
or pool table or something like that, and
18:43
they put the kids to bed, and this.
18:45
Is part of what came out at
18:48
that later night party.
18:49
Okay, I need you now, of course, to set
18:51
the scene. This is the Alonso Boden biopic.
18:54
You're a kid. I mean, set
18:56
the scene. Your dad's bar is downstairs.
19:00
What's going on?
19:04
So my dad's bar is downstairs.
19:06
He has friends over.
19:09
They might be a couple from the neighborhood,
19:11
and then some probably from work. We
19:14
had to go to bed. Of course, the funny
19:16
thing about me and my brother's room. It was
19:18
also in the basement, so we weren't
19:20
too far away.
19:24
You could hear the laughter, you could hear the glasses
19:26
tinkling. You know, you
19:29
know it was a party, really,
19:32
I know.
19:33
I said, you ought to be careful at night time and
19:35
pull your shades down. I said, because last night I saw
19:37
you and your wife making love.
19:39
He said, you kidding all I went to You'm home.
19:42
How important is Red Fox to
19:45
this whole party record scene?
19:47
He was the man. He was probably
19:49
the biggest star in that genre.
19:53
Red Fox's stand up was almost
19:56
all on these party records.
19:58
The party started in eighteen fifty
20:00
five when Los Angeles doo wop
20:03
producer Dootsey Williams visited
20:05
the Oasis nightclub and saw
20:08
Red Fox's set. Williams
20:10
ran a tiny label called Duto
20:12
Records, known for recording Earth
20:15
Angel by the Penguins.
20:17
Earthing Joo, Earthingjoo.
20:22
Will You Be Minde?
20:25
But the label had recently started
20:27
releasing novelty records. About
20:30
Red Fox. Williams said he
20:32
was so outrageous in such
20:34
a way that nobody would ever think of putting
20:37
him on a record. But I thought this
20:39
guy can sell. There
20:42
was no doubt that Fox was funny.
20:45
In his late teens, he had worked in a New
20:47
York City restaurant alongside
20:49
a future civil rights leader. Years
20:52
later, in his autobiography, Malcolm
20:54
X would refer to Fox as Chicago
20:57
Red, the funniest dishwasher
20:59
on Earth. Red Fox
21:01
would go on to become one of the first
21:04
black comedians to headline Vegas.
21:06
He would open his own La nightclub.
21:09
But back in fifty five, Red was
21:11
skeptical about this whole party record
21:13
idea. He later recalled it
21:16
was a black thing in a sense. So
21:18
I said I'd go ahead and record for
21:20
my black brother because nobody
21:22
else had offered me anything. For
21:25
the first album, Dootsey Williams
21:27
sat in the club with a tape recorder
21:30
and recorded Red's raunchy act.
21:32
In nineteen fifty six, Laugh of the
21:34
Party Volume one came out.
21:37
The Good Housekeeping Bureau has just released
21:39
some vital statistics very important
21:41
to all smokers. Do you know
21:43
that out of four hundred and forty six
21:46
doctors that switched to camels only two
21:48
of them went back to women.
21:52
The Low Fi recording was a big
21:54
fat hit. Box was the first
21:57
stand up comedian black or white
21:59
to release album, and according
22:01
to comedy historian Cliff Nesteroff,
22:04
after Fox, it became abnormal
22:06
if a comic didn't put out records.
22:09
Bob Newhart, Mort Sahl, Jonathan
22:12
Winters, they all came after
22:14
Red Fox. Over the next
22:16
six years, Dudo released approximately
22:19
twenty five Red Fox party records.
22:22
In just the first two years they
22:24
sold more than a million units.
22:27
They did a record with Red Fox and
22:29
they sold a ton of records, and they
22:32
said, wait a minute, we're on
22:34
to something. Who else you got, you
22:36
know? And they started recording these
22:38
other comedians.
22:40
Black comedians like George Kirby,
22:42
Sloppy Daniels, even a ventriloquist
22:45
and dummy act known as Richard
22:47
and Willie.
22:48
Huggin Yeah, Peason, Yeah, Kiss
22:51
in sixth All Candoise, Yeah, good gouda
22:53
man who are going to be there?
22:54
Yes, you and me?
23:00
And then in the late nineteen sixties,
23:02
Laugh Records entered and soon
23:04
dominated the party record scene.
23:07
One of the biggest names in comedy ever
23:10
would find his voice on the new label
23:13
A lot.
23:13
Of people don't know this that Prior
23:16
initially was a clean comic
23:18
and he was following in Cosby's
23:21
footsteps.
23:22
Yes, prior to the nineteen seventies,
23:25
Richard Pryor was g rated. Here
23:27
he is on the Murph Griffin Show in nineteen
23:30
sixty six.
23:31
People worry about everything about offending with the breath.
23:33
You worry about it, right.
23:34
You can tell when somebody's worried about because they talked
23:36
through their fingers.
23:41
But then Pryor had a kind of awakening.
23:45
And he basically had a breakdown.
23:47
He basically kind of snapped, and
23:50
he came out talking and cussing
23:53
and being who he really was, and
23:56
the audience immediately grasped.
23:58
The audience immediately loved
24:01
the honesty and how raw
24:03
he was and who he really was. And
24:06
from there, you know, he never looked back and
24:09
he became Richard Pryor.
24:11
It was on nineteen seventy one's Craps,
24:13
a blockbuster for Prior and for
24:16
laugh Records, that audiences heard
24:18
the real raw Richard Pryor
24:22
started starting Cocaine.
24:25
Had goodness too, because I.
24:26
Wake up in the middle of night state.
24:27
Whoy Is
24:32
it fair to say then that his party record
24:34
phase helped Richard Pryor
24:36
become Richard Pryor.
24:38
Well, yeah, because where else were you going to
24:40
hear it. The only place you were going to hear Richard
24:43
Pryor was on the records. But
24:45
the records became so insanely
24:48
popular through word of mouth, one
24:50
hundred percent word of mouth. There was no there
24:53
were no TV commercials for Richard
24:55
Pryor records.
24:56
You know.
24:57
Now, it wasn't just the content that raw.
25:00
It was also the sound quality. And
25:03
some of these albums the sound
25:06
quality is not great.
25:08
Is that fair?
25:09
Yeah, sound quality was horrible, But.
25:11
I'm wondering if that added to the experience
25:13
of listening at home when you've got friends
25:15
over.
25:16
Absolutely, absolutely,
25:18
there's a raw element to it. Also, it's
25:21
the inside stuff, right. These
25:26
records weren't Red Fox
25:28
in Las Vegas, you know what I mean?
25:31
And these were Lawanda
25:33
Page before she was famous, when she
25:35
was just in the club. So
25:38
the feel of being an insider
25:41
definitely added to it.
25:43
Lawanda Page recorded five solo
25:45
albums with Laugh Records. The material
25:48
is funny and especially
25:51
on those early records, downright
25:53
filthy. We'd have to bleep so much
25:55
of it for this podcast. We can't
25:57
do it justice. Let me put it
25:59
this way. Bands of the late Bob
26:02
Sagett know how different his stand up
26:04
material was from the character he played
26:06
on Full House. Well the Lawanda
26:09
you hear on her nineteen seventy seven
26:11
album Watch It Sucker is so
26:13
blue it would turn aunt esther
26:16
every shade of red. Do not miss
26:18
her bit about the nurse and the woman in the mental
26:21
ward who demands a certain remedy.
26:24
My goodness. Here's one
26:26
bit from her first album, nineteen seventy
26:28
one's mother is half a word, where
26:30
a their dwell husband has tried to cover
26:33
up his drinking by eating sardines.
26:36
And you can guess where this is headed.
26:38
So she says, you've been dragging?
26:41
No, may I swear damn I ain't been dragging
26:43
night, Blow your breath to the keyhole, blows
26:46
the bread to the keyhole. First, thank she smells
26:48
them sartines. She said, you know good
26:50
and asking mother fuck?
26:52
She says, though out breaking in one headed,
26:54
you go and pick up a mother.
27:00
Sidebar. Laugh Records didn't only
27:02
produce black comedy acts. In
27:04
nineteen seventy eight, a young Allison
27:07
Arngrem, best known as Nelly,
27:09
on Little House in the Prairie impersonated
27:12
first daughter Amy Carter on a Laugh
27:14
Records album, Dad, Where
27:16
did I come from?
27:18
Plains? Georgia Hunne?
27:19
You know that, No, Daddy, I
27:21
mean, where do babies come from? I
27:24
asked Uncle Billy.
27:25
He said, babies come nine months after you've
27:28
had too much bear.
27:30
Alison Armgrim's mother, voice
27:32
actress Norma McMillan had
27:34
played Caroline Kennedy on the hit First
27:37
Family Comedy album back in nineteen
27:39
sixty two. That's the album that starred
27:42
von Meter as JFK. Check
27:45
out the von Meter obituary for more
27:47
on his story. One
27:50
of Laugh's last records was a song
27:52
full of fish ponds called Wet
27:54
Dream by white comedian Kip Adatta.
27:57
I walked over to a place called the Oyster Bar
28:00
a real time, but I knew
28:02
the owner who used to play for the Dolphins.
28:05
I said, I Gil, you
28:07
have to yell.
28:08
He's hard at herring.
28:10
But the label will always be best known
28:13
for releasing black and blue
28:15
material. Any thought on
28:17
the legacy of these party records.
28:20
I think the legacy of these party records
28:23
now is I would
28:25
say more YouTube than Netflix,
28:28
because it's more the self
28:30
produced it's the clips from the
28:33
comedy club versus the polished
28:36
production show. And we've seen comics
28:38
get famous. We've seen it happen where
28:41
people go viral on YouTube
28:43
or some other platform and become
28:45
famous. I think that's the legacy
28:48
of the party record.
28:51
Coming up next, the King and Queen
28:54
of underground party records land
28:57
squarely in the mainstream.
29:02
Oh you call me the.
29:04
How did not call you?
29:05
Dear?
29:05
It is like Bambi's father.
29:10
You Oh we the lad he the door.
29:27
In the early nineteen seventies, Lawanda
29:29
Page was caring for her ailing
29:32
mother in South Los Angeles when
29:34
she got an offer that would take her career
29:37
to a whole new level. NBC's
29:40
Sanford and Son was the first network
29:43
TV show with a predominantly black
29:45
cast since Amos and Andy in
29:47
the early nineteen fifties. In
29:49
its second season, the show was already
29:52
a hit, starring Red Fox
29:54
as junk dealer and widower Fred
29:57
Sandford. In real life, Red Fox's
29:59
bo Thurs name was actually Fred
30:01
Sandford. Lawanda
30:04
was being called in to read for the role
30:06
of Fred's Holier than Thou sister
30:08
in law aunt esther. Here's
30:11
Lawanda herself explaining what
30:13
happened to interviewer Bobby Wygant.
30:16
Well, what actually happened. I
30:18
was working in a nightclub in Los Angeles
30:21
with a comedy team Skirt and Leroy
30:23
that we've been together for twenty years, and
30:27
Aaron Rubin, the producer, he
30:29
happened to be in the club that night.
30:31
The producer was impressed by Lawanda
30:33
and unaware of her shared history
30:36
with Fox.
30:36
So he goes back and he tells Red. He says, that
30:39
girl that you
30:41
know I saw with Skirterton Leroy.
30:43
He says, I think she'll be the girlfriend
30:46
esther.
30:47
So radas, oh, that's Lawanda.
30:48
I know. Well, I know Redd all my life
30:50
because we went to school together.
30:54
Red Fox wasn't just bringing the comedy
30:56
he'd honed on the Chitlin circuit to network
30:59
television. He brought many of his
31:01
fellow comics along with him too. Aaron
31:04
Ruben, the Sanford and Son producer
31:06
who'd seen Lawanda in the club, said,
31:08
quote, Fox comes up with names
31:11
like Tangerine, Sublet and Leroy
31:13
and Skillett, consummate performers
31:16
he worked with in the twenty five dollars a week
31:18
nightclub days. The names
31:20
befuddle the NBC casting department
31:23
where they are totally unknown.
31:25
Yeah.
31:26
Yeah, that is somebody who
31:29
understands that
31:31
if he doesn't do it, it's not going to get done.
31:34
I'm sure Red said I need this character.
31:36
I know exactly who can do it. This is
31:38
what be Goldberg again, because he knew.
31:41
No one was going to call her unless he did. And
31:44
that's kind of how it's always been. You
31:46
call the folks, you know, and if
31:48
somebody's having a hard time, you do the best. That's
31:50
sort of bring them along.
31:53
TV was a change of pace for Lwanda
31:55
Page, who was fifty two. Once
31:58
she showed up on set. She was nervous
32:00
the first week on the job, as she later
32:02
told Sally Jesse Raphael, I.
32:05
Had never read a script before.
32:07
That's my first parent and I was reading
32:09
the directions along with the lions.
32:15
Yeah, that's right for you to say. I
32:17
say, watch it, Trucker, if you walk out the
32:19
door.
32:26
The producers were planning to fire and
32:28
replace Lawanda, but Red
32:31
intervened. He reportedly said,
32:33
if she goes, I.
32:35
Go well, because he knew
32:37
what she could do, and it
32:39
was meaningful if he said
32:41
he was gonna leave you, because he would.
32:43
Leave about Lawanda Page. Red
32:46
Fox reportedly said, you never
32:48
heard of the lady, But the night that first
32:50
show goes on the air, there'll be dancing
32:53
in the streets of every ghetto
32:55
in the United States.
32:57
Down not again, Hufrey, you
32:59
would I beat today.
33:00
My sister married you, and you still
33:03
a dead beat today. This
33:05
nest now you know good and will today I married
33:07
your sister. I was loaded, Yeah, you was
33:09
loaded, all right. You were so drunk you fell
33:11
on the preacher.
33:14
The sanctimonious aunt Estor quickly
33:17
became a fan favorite at the height
33:19
of her fame on Sanford and Son, though Lawanda
33:22
Page was still living in South
33:24
LA. The money is nice,
33:26
she told reporters. It goes
33:29
to mama, and.
33:30
I'm gonna take care of mama, and I don't
33:32
care what happens. I'm taking care of mama. And
33:35
God just fixed it. So he just opened the door for
33:37
me for Safin's son. You know how to walk
33:39
right in, and Red put my feet in the door. So it's
33:41
up to me to keep it there.
33:43
In nineteen seventy six, Lawanda's
33:45
mother died. The next year, the
33:47
Sanford and Son series ended with
33:50
the departure of Red Fox, but
33:52
by then, Lawanda Page was a regular
33:55
face on TV.
33:56
A lovely lady, one
33:58
of them moms.
34:04
I loved her on the Dean Martin celebrity
34:07
roasts. These roasts were
34:09
like the Variety pack of entertainment
34:12
comedians like Don Rickles, Ruth
34:14
Buzzy and Nipsey Russell sharing
34:17
a dais with Frank Sinatra,
34:19
Jaja Kahboorr, Senator Barry
34:21
Goldwater. Here is Lewanda
34:24
roasting Red Fox.
34:26
Been after me since I was a kid, back
34:28
in Saint Louis.
34:29
Honey, he was there the night I want a beauty
34:32
contest.
34:33
Remember that red They gave me
34:35
a silver cup.
34:37
Yeah, they gave you a silver cup. All right,
34:39
give your teeth in.
34:51
You just keep quiet.
34:52
Your old fish had food. You
34:55
ain't going to beauty. You
34:58
should have seen his first wife, hon That
35:01
woman was herdly.
35:05
Musy.
35:08
Honey. She was thought early if her picture was on a
35:11
stamp, nobody.
35:11
Would live her.
35:19
The thing that I think about those
35:22
roasts, those roasts were
35:24
done with love.
35:25
You know, she was there roasting her buddy,
35:27
her childhood friend.
35:29
But she also took shots at celebrities
35:32
she didn't grow up with, like George
35:34
Burns and Milton Burrell.
35:37
Hey, what you say at Milton burh.
35:40
Yeah, you lift the television. If
35:43
you can steal her caps like you do jokes,
35:46
you'd be a star in my neighborhood.
35:50
I asked Alonso Bowden if he thought
35:53
Lawanda might have been intimidated in
35:55
that company.
35:56
She came from clubs where you had to talk
35:58
smack to the audience, where you had Heckler's,
36:01
where you had trust me. She was fine,
36:04
She had no problem.
36:06
She let them have it. They weren't ready for her.
36:09
She was battle tested like nobody
36:11
else.
36:12
Yeah.
36:12
Absolutely, you think she's going to be afraid
36:15
of a Beverly Hills ballroom.
36:21
This is a woman who had literally eaten
36:23
fire for a stretch of her career.
36:25
Exactly exactly.
36:28
And it wasn't just that, it was also, you know,
36:30
riding the bus from city to city
36:33
and you can't stay at this hotel
36:35
and all of that. She lived
36:38
through and worked through and dealt with
36:41
all of that. And now she's in a ballroom
36:43
in Beverly Hills and she gets to make
36:45
fun of Don Rickles and Milton
36:47
Burrel and you know, Sinatra.
36:50
I don't know, I don't know if anyone was brave enough. Other
36:52
than Rickles, I don't know if anyone was brave enough to
36:54
make fun of Sinatra.
36:55
But outside of that, in
36:58
nineteen seventy nine, age fifty
37:00
nine, Lawanda released her final
37:03
album, Sane Advice. It
37:05
was the cleanest of her party records and
37:08
the most transparently autobiographical.
37:11
On that album cover, she's wearing a
37:14
gown, She's in front of a fancy car.
37:16
She's made it. But now she's got even
37:19
more to say about that experience.
37:21
But Honey Page was alive today,
37:24
he'd be sorry he ever cheated on me,
37:26
Because here I am, Honey, famous,
37:30
famous, Honey, a star. Honey,
37:34
Honey got a wax figure of me on the
37:36
East Coast and the West.
37:37
Coat in the Stars Hall of Fame.
37:43
And I got my foot prints on Hollywood
37:45
Boulevard. At Grumman's Chinese Theater.
37:47
I was sitting on the bus bench in a park.
37:49
This truck ran over my feet.
38:02
Show did her.
38:08
How I made it?
38:09
Baby? A side last,
38:12
A side last, Thank
38:15
God, Almighty.
38:17
I'm a start lest.
38:24
She had become a big star. She was one of the most popular
38:26
people on television at that point. But
38:28
she's still making a joke at her own expense
38:30
there.
38:31
Yeah.
38:32
Yeah, because you want people to know you haven't
38:34
become too big for your bridges.
38:36
And she wouldn't leave Watts.
38:38
She at one point she had a bit where she said people
38:40
thought it said I moved to Beverly Hill. She said, I wasn't
38:42
going to leave Watts and if she made all sorts of jokes
38:44
about.
38:45
Living in Watts, but she wasn't going to leave there.
38:47
No, I ain't even wanted time.
38:49
I know it's the Lost Asses ghetto, and
38:52
I know we got criming watch. Honey
38:54
is so bad. If you ain't home by nine
38:56
o'clock, you can be declared legally dead.
39:02
Listen.
39:03
You stick with what you know and
39:05
you make it work. And nobody
39:08
did that better than she did. I wish
39:10
I had known her, Do you know
39:12
what I mean? I wish I had known her.
39:15
In the nineteen nineties, Lawanda appeared
39:18
on popular TV shows like Family
39:20
Matters in Living Color and
39:22
Martin, I'm.
39:23
The fourth person that's been hit in
39:26
the past two weeks.
39:27
Go dang, well, what did the police say?
39:29
Move.
39:31
She spoofed her church lady image in
39:33
films like Friday, where she played
39:35
at Jehovah's witness. Meanwhile, lines
39:38
from Lawanda's party records began being
39:40
sampled by hip hop legends like
39:42
Chupac Shakur and Wa
39:45
and Two Live Crew. In
39:48
nineteen ninety one, Lawanda Page's
39:51
childhood friend, Red Fox died.
39:54
At his funeral, Lawanda said, Red
39:57
made me the star that I am. If
40:00
it hadn't been for him, I'd probably be
40:02
in the poorhouse. Read lived
40:04
the life he loved, and loved
40:07
the life he lived. By
40:09
this time, Lawanda had been ordained as
40:11
an evangelist in the Holiness Church.
40:14
She was following in the footsteps of her brother,
40:16
a Baptist minister, and her daughter,
40:19
also a preacher. On
40:22
September fourteenth, twenty oh two,
40:24
Lawanda Page died of complications
40:27
from diabetes. She was
40:29
eighty one. Lawanda
40:35
Page was many things. The
40:38
bronze goddess, a fire a
40:40
queen of comedy, and let me repeat,
40:42
you must go listen to some of those party
40:44
records. She was a wife three
40:47
times over, a mother, a devoted
40:49
daughter, a person of deep faith,
40:52
and as RuPaul knew, she was
40:55
fabulous.
40:58
Naoma Christie.
41:04
But I want to end with another musical clip
41:06
of Lawanda. It's Fred Sandford
41:08
and aunt esther enjoying a rare
41:11
moment of warmth. Sort
41:13
of imagine us bringing together
41:16
again after all of these years.
41:18
Seems like only yesterday. Oh
41:21
I remember, where
41:24
was it?
41:27
Down by the old.
41:30
New stream.
41:33
It wasn't a stream, it was a lagoon
41:36
goon.
41:38
Two legends of comedy who
41:41
had come so far, enjoying
41:43
the spotlight together.
41:45
It was.
41:49
New.
41:50
You don't know nothing that
41:53
I loved you
41:56
true.
41:57
I got to throw it. I
42:01
was sixteen.
42:03
Al your shoes, I your
42:08
really is queen Queen
42:11
cong down
42:14
bineyreat.
42:36
Thank you for listening to Season four of
42:38
Mobituaries. We're a very
42:41
small and dedicated team that puts
42:43
this show together. I am grateful
42:46
to work with such smart, creative,
42:48
hard working people, and we're grateful
42:50
to you for sticking with us. It
42:53
would be wonderful if you would spread the word
42:55
about Mobituaries to your friends and family,
42:58
and reading and reviewing our podcasts
43:00
really does help. You can also
43:02
follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram,
43:05
and you can follow me on the social media platform
43:08
formerly known as Twitter at morocca
43:11
and check out Mobituaries. Great Lives
43:13
Worth Reliving, the New York Times best
43:16
selling book now available in paperback
43:18
and audiobook. It includes plenty
43:20
of stories not available on the podcast.
43:25
This episode of Mobituaries was
43:27
produced by Aaron Schrank. Our
43:29
team of producers also includes Hazel
43:32
Brian and me Moroka, with
43:34
engineering by Josh Han. Our
43:36
theme music is written by Daniel Hart.
43:39
Our archival producer is Jamie
43:41
Benson. Mobituary's production
43:43
company is Neon Hummedia. Indispensable
43:47
support from Reginald Bazil and
43:49
everyone at CBS News Radio special
43:52
thanks to Steve Razi's Rand
43:54
Morrison and Alberto Rabina.
43:57
Executive producers for Mobituaries
44:00
include Megan Marcus, Jonathan
44:02
Hirsch, and Morocca. The series
44:04
is created by Yours truly
44:07
and again thank you for
44:09
listening.
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