Richard Pryor

Richard Pryor is the debut album of comedian Richard Pryor. It was recorded live in 1968 at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, California. The album cover, designed by Gary Burden, was nominated for a Grammy Award. History Richard Pryor, like his other early-1970s albums Craps (After Hours) and Live At The Comedy Store, 1973, captures Pryor during his most transformative period as a comic, when he evolved from a family-friendly comic in the mode of Bill Cosby into the challenging, politically aware comedian of his most famous albums. He had felt creatively stifled until, at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas in 1967, he walked offstage mid-performance after exclaiming, "What am I doing here?" The incident hurt his career, but only temporarily; his film and TV work grew, and his new stand-up material was more true to his own voice. Although Pryor resisted overtly linking his comedy with radical politics, he could not ignore events such as the civil rights movement, and took time off for a period of intense self-education in black history and culture. Biographer Scott Saul, in the book Becoming Richard Pryor, wrote that Pryor's new work "invented a style that was as far-out as Frank Zappa and as defiant as H. Rap Brown", fueled by both countercultural irony and Black Power militancy. However, Pryor had trouble getting that new voice on his new record. Reportedly, producer Robert Marchese and Pryor’s manager Bobby Roberts clashed over Pryor's obscenity and frankness, which Roberts felt would not sell to white audiences. Frustrated at having what he felt was his best work excised, Pryor would later say he was prouder of the album's cover than its contents. Nevertheless, as University of Michigan cultural studies professor Bambi Haggins has noted, the first signs of Pryor's mature, "uncontainable and unpredictable" comic style are readily apparent on Richard Pryor—most obviously on the cover art, but also in the contentious point of view in routines like "Super Nigger."