Vale Richard Pryor

Everyone talks about Lenny Bruce as the godfather of stand up comedy, horse shit I tells you, by the end of his career, old Lenny was smacked to the eyeballs reading his court transcripts. Now laughing Len may have paved the way for stand up to come, but for balls out trailblazing no one holds a candle to Richard Pryor.

Pryor grew up in his grandmother's brothel , where his mother worked, comedy gold already.
He started off as a Bill Cosby type comedian until one night while supporting Dean Martin, got onstage, said "What the fuck am I doing Here?" and promptly walked off again.

What followed was a stream of incendiary stand up routines, and a glut of movie roles and TV shows. With fame came a price however. In 1980 while freebasing he managed to set himself a light, but what did the great man do, well he worked it into his stand up, running across the stage with a lighter above his head screaming "What's this? It's Richard Pryor running down the street". He was later diagnosed with M.S and confined to a wheelchair, but still found the time to put out this gem on his official web site "Sick of hearing this shit about me not talking... Not true... Good days, bad days... But I still am a talkin' motherfucker!"

Pryor died of cardiac arrest at the age of 65 in Encino California. He was pronounced dead at a local hospital at 7:58 a.m. on December 10th 2005. He was brought to the hospital after his wife's attempts to resuscitate him failed. His wife was quoted as saying "at the end, there was a smile on his face."

Quotes from the great man,
I went through every phone book in Africa, and I didn't find one goddamned Pryor!

I'd like to die like my father died... My father died fucking. My father was 57 when he died. The woman was 18. My father came and went at the same time.

Rosa Parks showed us all that one little person can make a whole bunch of noise without so much as a whisper. She showed the world that the color of your skin shouldn't determine what part of the bus you sit in... As you ride through life.

I had some great things and I had some bad things. The best and the worst... In other words, I had a life

I'm not addicted to cocaine... I just like the way it smells.

Rest In Peace you crazy nigger.