The great African-American comedian and actor Richard Pryor died of a heart attack at age 65 in 2005. By then, Pryor - who had mostly retreated from public life after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1986 — had spent his final decade in seclusion.
A generation has come of age unexposed to his comic genius. Shout! Factory, taking a detour from its ongoing Mel Brooks reclamation project, aims to remedy that with “No Pryor Restraint: Life in Concert,” a seven-CD / two-DVD box set that includes Pryor’s three concert films - “Richard Pryor -Live in Concert” (1979), “Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip” (1982) and “Richard Pryor: Here and Now” (1983) — material from his comedy albums from 1968 through 1983, and almost two hours of previously unreleased material, including one of his final onstage performances in 1992.
“No Pryor Restraint” declares Pryor “the greatest comedian who ever lived.” That’s debatable, but certainly he was one of the most influential and groundbreaking comedians of the 20th century. Dave Chappelle, Louis C.K. and Chris Rock are among Pryor’s comedic progeny.
Raised in his grandmother’s brothel in Peoria, Ill., he was the quintessential “brilliant but troubled” performer. Pryor’s demons manifested themselves in drug and alcohol abuse, multiple marriages and at least one suicide attempt. At the height of his fame in 1980, he deliberately set himself on fire, then changed his mind and ran for help. The story became part of his standup act.
It was one of many lemons that Pryor was able to turn into lemonade. Racism, drug addiction, run-ins with the law — he was a comic alchemist, spinning his troubles into onstage gold. The man could take almost any subject and make it funny.
He used racial language that had been taboo in “polite society” (but all too common elsewhere) in his routine, paving the way for rap artists to come. Whether that was a positive or negative development, I’ll leave for others to decide. To these middle-aged white ears, Pryor’s frequent and seemingly casual use of the N-word is almost as startling now as it was 30 years ago.
The University of Southern California’s Todd Boyd, in an essay included in the box set, argues that Pryor “was not simply in search of shock value, but was using the word like a surgeon wielding a scalpel as he sent about dissecting the rhetorical heritage of a nation’s ugly racial past.” (Pryor eventually stopped using the word in his comedy after traveling to Africa, and in 1999 he was awarded the Kennedy Center’s first Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.)
“No Pryor Restraint: Life in Concert” is valuable as a recap of Richard Pryor’s recordings and standup career. But by necessity it’s only a partial portrait of the man, some of whose most memorable work was in television and films.
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