Edward Regan Murphy is an American actor, comedian, writer, producer, and singer. He rose to fame on the sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, for which he was a regular cast member from 1980 to 1984. Murphy has also worked as a stand-up comedian and was ranked No. 10 on Comedy Central's list of the 100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time.
John Elroy Sanford, better known by his stage name Redd Foxx, was an American stand-up comedian and actor. Foxx gained success with his raunchy nightclub acts during the civil rights movement. Known as the "King of the Party Records", he performed on more than 50 records in his lifetime. He portrayed Fred G. Sanford on the television show Sanford and Son and starred in The Redd Foxx Show and The Royal Family. His film projects included All the Fine Young Cannibals (1960), Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), Norman... Is That You? (1976) and Harlem Nights (1989).
Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor Sr. was an American stand-up comedian and actor. He reached a broad audience with his trenchant observations and storytelling style and is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential stand-up comedians of all time. Pryor won a Primetime Emmy Award and five Grammy Awards. He received the first Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 1998. He won the Writers Guild of America Award in 1974. He was listed at number one on Comedy Central's list of all-time greatest stand-up comedians. In 2017, Rolling Stone ranked him first on its list of the 50 best stand-up comics of all time.
Eric Marlon Bishop, known professionally as Jamie Foxx, is an American actor, comedian, and singer who is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA award, a Golden Globe Award, a Grammy Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. In 1991, he joined the cast as a featured player in the sketch comedy show In Living Color until the show's end in 1994. Following this success, Foxx was given his own television sitcom The Jamie Foxx Show, in which he starred, co-created and produced, airing for five highly rated seasons from 1996 to 2001 on The WB Television Network.
Bernard Jeffrey McCullough, better known by his stage name Bernie Mac, was an American actor and comedian. Born and raised on Chicago's South Side, Mac gained popularity as a stand-up comedian. He joined fellow comedians Steve Harvey, Cedric the Entertainer, and D. L. Hughley in the film The Original Kings of Comedy. After briefly hosting the HBO show Midnight Mac, Mac appeared in several films in smaller roles. His most noted film roles were as Frank Catton in the 2001 remake of Ocean's Eleven and as the title character of Mr. 3000. He was the star of his eponymous show, which ran from 2001 through 2006, earning him two Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. Mac's other films included starring roles in Mo’ Money, Booty Call, Friday, B*A*P*S, Life, The Players Club, Head of State, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, Bad Santa, Guess Who, Pride, Soul Men, Transformers, Old Dogs, and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa.
Damon Kyle Wayans is an American actor, comedian, producer, writer and member of the Wayans family of entertainers. Wayans performed as a comedian and actor throughout the 1980s, including a year long stint on the sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live.
Rudolph Frank Moore, known as Rudy Ray Moore, was an American comedian, singer, actor, and film producer. He created the character Dolemite, the pimp from the 1975 film Dolemite and its sequels, The Human Tornado and The Dolemite Explosion. The persona was developed during his early comedy records. The recordings often featured Moore delivering profanity-filled rhyming poetry, which later earned Moore the nickname "the Godfather of Rap." Actor and comedian Eddie Murphy portrayed Moore in the 2019 film Dolemite Is My Name.
Harlem Nights is a 1989 American crime comedy-drama film starring and directed by Eddie Murphy, who also wrote. The film co-stars Richard Pryor, Michael Lerner, Danny Aiello, Redd Foxx, Della Reese, and Murphy's older brother Charlie. The film was released theatrically on November 17, 1989, by Paramount Pictures. The film tells the story of "Sugar" Ray and Vernest "Quick" Brown as a team running a nightclub in the late 1930s in Harlem while contending with gangsters and corrupt police officials.
LaWanda Page was an American actress, comedian, and dancer whose career spanned six decades. Crowned "The Queen of Comedy" or "The Black Queen of Comedy", Page melded blue humor, signifyin', and observational comedy to joke about sexuality, race relations, African-American culture, and religion. She released five solo albums, including the 1977 gold-selling Watch It, Sucker!. She also collaborated on two albums with comedy group Skillet, Leroy & Co. As an actress, Page is best known for portraying the Bible-toting and sharp-tongued "Aunt" Esther Anderson in the popular television sitcom Sanford and Son, which originally aired from 1972 until 1977. Page later reprised this role in the short-lived television shows Sanford Arms (1976–1977) and Sanford (1980–1981). She also co-starred in the 1979 short-lived series Detective School. Throughout her career, Page advocated for fair pay and equal opportunities for Black performers.
Paul Gladney, better known by the stage name Paul Mooney, was an American comedian, writer, social critic and actor. He is best known for his collaborations with Redd Foxx, Eddie Murphy and Dave Chappelle, his writing for comedian Richard Pryor and the television series Sanford and Son, In Living Color and Chappelle's Show, as well as his acting role playing singer Sam Cooke in The Buddy Holly Story (1978), Junebug in Spike Lee's satirical film Bamboozled (2000) and Negrodamus on Chappelle's Show.
Laff Records was a small American independent record label specializing in comedy and party records originating on the West Coast of the United States during the 1970s. Amongst their artists were Richard Pryor, Redd Foxx, LaWanda Page, George Carlin, black ventriloquist duo Richard And Willie, Kip Addotta, Belle Barth, Rex Benson, and Skillet & Leroy.
Evolution/Revolution: The Early Years (1966–1974) is a two-CD compilation of live stand-up comedy recordings by comedian and actor Richard Pryor, that predates his 1974 mainstream breakthrough album That Nigger's Crazy.
That Nigger's Crazy is the third album by American comedian Richard Pryor. It was recorded live at Don Cornelius' Soul Train nightclub in early 1974. The album's title was derived from a remark made by Pryor himself in Wattstax.
L.A. Jail is the seventh album by American comedian Richard Pryor, allegedly recorded live at P.J.'s in West Hollywood, California.
Bicentennial Nigger is the sixth album by the American comedian Richard Pryor. David Banks produced the album, while Warner Bros. Records released the album in September 1976. It is often considered one of his most influential recordings. The CD version of the album was released on 20 June 1989. It won the 1977 Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album.
A comedy album is an audio recording of comedic material from a comedian or group of comedians, usually performed either live or in a studio. Comedy albums may feature skits, humorous songs, and/or live recording of stand-up comedy performances, but the most common type of comedy albums are stand up, and are often made in conjunction with a DVD with recorded video of a particular comedy show.
Pipe Layin' Dan is the fourth solo release by American comedian and actress LaWanda Page, released under the one-name title of LaWanda, released on Laff Records in 1973.
Walter D. Williams, Jr., known as Dootsie Williams, was an American record producer and record label owner who released early records by Redd Foxx and The Penguins.
Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip is a 1982 American stand-up comedy film directed by Joe Layton. The film stars and produced by Richard Pryor, who also wrote the screenplay with Paul Mooney. The film is released alongside Pryor's album of the same name in 1982, and was the most financially lucrative of the comedian's concert films. The material includes Pryor's frank discussion of his drug addiction and of the night that he caught on fire while freebasing cocaine in 1980.
Lashonda Lester was an American stand-up comedian from Austin, Texas. Her posthumous debut album, Shondee Superstar, was released by Dan Schlissel's Stand Up! Records in 2019, and was critically praised. John-Michael Bond of Paste magazine called her "a rare talent with a preternatural gift for razor-sharp storytelling." Marc Maron called her a "funny, authentic, hard-working comic who had her own voice. ... That’s an honest comic. The best kind."
