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