Name: Redd Foxx on Letterman, November 8, 1983
Uploaded: 2016-07-20T04:40:34.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Redd Foxx on Letterman, November 8, 1983' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-07-20. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Redd Foxx on Letterman, November 8, 1983' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-07-20. Transcript available.

Thank you, Paul.
Thank you, folks.
Welcome back here to the show.
Red Pox is here tonight.
Ken Kesey and all kinds of exciting stuff.
Let me bring out my first guest.
Paul, have you ever worked with this man before anywhere?
Never had the pleasure, no.
Have you ever met him before?
No, looking forward to it.
You excited about this?
Yeah, and I got a request for him, too.
I don't know whether we have time.
Okay, you want to ask me?
A piece of material.
Oh, all right.
Well, just save it for when he comes out here.
All right.
My first guest tonight is the star of this brand-new videotape.
I'm sorry.
I was having trouble getting the impulses across those synapses tonight.
This videotape called Red Fox Video in a Plain Brown Rapper,
please welcome the man for whom it's named the star of this videotape, Red Fox.
Hey, Diane.
Nice to see you again.
How are you feeling?
Oh, boy.
Nice to see you.
It's been a long time since we've actually laid eyes on one another.
Yes, I remember the last time we were being interviewed somewhere with some
newspaper people,
and you said you had 13 weeks, and I said, my goodness.
No, you had 16 weeks.
I had 13 weeks.
And I've been off for five years.
How long have you been on that?
Since 1951?
Early up.
Since the early 50s.
Fantastic.
What did you bring me here?
It's a pomegranate from my yard.
I have a pomegranate bush, a tree.
It's so big, it must be a tree.
But they just started falling off before I came here.
So I figured I'd bring you one.
This grows in your backyard in California?
Las Vegas.
Oh, Las Vegas.
This is pretty exotic stuff, isn't it?
Oh, it is.
And it's a puzzle to eat it.
Yeah.
But it's good.
Yeah, they're very tasty.
Thank you very much, Red.
I appreciate that.
Now, let's talk about this videotape.
Now, is this part of your nightclub act, Red?
That's all of my nightclub act.
All of your nightclub act.
Yeah.
It's good, too.
No, I'm sure it's good.
I saw it last night the first time.
First time you had seen it, huh?
No, the first time I have seen myself, you know, perform that type of material,
and I'm
sort of ashamed, you know.
But I was.
You know what I mean?
Because not dirty is Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor.
Oh, so you feel...
So I tell shame, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
I'm trying to catch up with them.
Is there any material on this show?
How long is this?
It's about an hour, hour and 15 minutes.
Any material on this hour and 15 minutes that you could do on this show right
here tonight?
Yes.
Hello.
It's about here.
No, no.
There's got to be something else you can do.
I'm telling you, I swear, there's nothing else on there I could say from that
album.
No kidding.
I tried to make a good one.
Now, I also read this afternoon that in all of the years you've worked on
television,
variety shows, situation comedies, shows like this, on and on and on,
you've never been bleeped.
That's true.
Never have.
So...
Well, I know I'm on television, you know, and I know that you could edit a
dirty word,
but I would save that for my nightclub act.
Mm-hmm.
So, and this tape, because there's plenty of it in there, so I don't need it
here.
Yeah.
Now, what kind of stuff comes close that you could do on television?
If you were going to give us a sample of this, is there any way you can do it
without, you
know what I'm saying, kind of deleting necessary parts?
The only possible thing I could think of I could do is drop my pants.
Yeah.
I, you know.
Now, now, Red, let me, is the videotape here pretty much what the old party
records were?
Yeah, pretty much so, but not, not quite.
See, I made 55 albums, and none of them...
55?
Yeah.
Oh, that's an amazing amount of work.
Yeah, I wish I'd have got some of the money.
But...
You didn't get paid for these things?
Oh, it's so many crooks.
It's a shame.
But, anyway, 55 albums and 40 of them, I never had a curse word on them.
But before I started cursing, I was already branded a dirty old man.
So, now I'm living up to it.
Let's take a look at a couple of these.
This is an interesting label.
Is that Dudo?
Yeah, that's Dudo.
Now, what is, what does Dudo mean?
I have no idea.
Yeah.
I guess the first part I know, that's do.
Uh-huh, that's right.
Now, this is Red Fox, Naughties But Goodies.
And, oh, I see on the back here, we have Dootsy Williams.
Mm-hmm.
Take a picture of Dootsy.
Do you know this man?
Yeah, I made him once.
This is the America's foremost authority on American humor.
Is that what it says?
That's what it says.
Yeah, foremost authority on American humor.
I'm the foremost authority on this kind of humor over here.
Now, what is Dootsy doing these days?
I have no idea.
All right.
Here's hearty party laughs.
Uh-huh.
I didn't know that was out yet.
Hearty party laughs.
Now, did you help name any of these?
No, I made 55 albums, and now it's over 300 out.
Different titles and stuff, you know, so I sure wish I knew who was putting
them out.
Yeah.
Now, you haven't been on television in a regular program in a while.
No, they always wanted me to be a father or uncle, you know, and I just don't
want to be that father or uncle.
I had to learn to be a father when I did Samford's son, because I don't have
any children, you know, no son, nothing.
So I didn't know how to touch him, you know, unless he might think I was, you
know what I mean?
So I just said, son, so-and-so, and I had to, it was really active.
I had to really act.
Yeah.
Now, how did you, did you develop that character from somebody you knew, or was
that, uh...
My family.
Your family was like...
My mother and my grandfather.
My grandfather walked like Fred Samford, and my mother had a heart attack.
She's had a heart attack every day since 1922.
Now she's 81, and she'll have a heart attack tonight when I mention it.
Yeah.
81, that's amazing.
Oh, yeah.
That's very nice.
She's very active.
Uh, we got to, uh, we got to pause here for a commercial.
We'll be back with, uh, Red Fox.
We got, uh, more stuff back here, Red, we want to talk about.
Red Fox is here.
Look, you know, Barbara Walters was on the show, uh, not so long ago, and she
was mentioning
that one of the, uh, homes that she had visited for an interview, uh, over the
years was yours,
and she said, in fact, it was one of the most unique homes that she had been in.
She said you had monkeys in, uh, in your house?
Yeah, I got monkeys in the front window.
So I put the cage outside, but the window to the house acts as a, like, uh,
window for
the monkey's cage, so you can sit in the house in the wall by the fireplace and
watch the
monkeys do their number.
I'm sorry, do their what?
Number.
Uh-huh.
And, uh, how many, how many monkeys do you have?
I got two now, but, uh, I have rabbits, too.
I have 30 rabbits that, as of the day before yesterday.
Are they, are they running, uh, loose in your house, or you got them in the
backyard?
No, they just run loose in the yard, and they dig down so that they can duck
the dogs,
you know, so.
You got dogs also?
Dogs, yeah.
I have 14 dogs looking for rabbits.
Uh, this is, you apparently have quite a, quite a spread, huh?
Oh, yeah.
Well, I got, uh, five and a half acres, and I got another acre somewhere else.
I had to throw away everything.
You don't know where the other acre is, or you just?
No, I don't remember exactly, but I think it's in Missouri.
Well, that's good to keep a spare acre on hand.
Oh, sure.
You never know when it's going to come.
Everyone should have a spare acre.
You're from Missouri.
Weren't you born in St. Louis?
St. Louis.
Yeah.
4461 Enright, house still standing.
Must be 100 years old now.
Are there, are there people still living in it?
Sure.
It's a brick house.
Do you, do you want to, I mean, you just gave the address.
Yeah, 4461 Enright.
Yeah.
So if they live in there, they can sell tickets to people who want to see where
I was born on
the top floor.
Uh, what kind of kid were you?
Terrible.
Yeah?
No, I had my own way about me.
You know, I had my, I like to leave, and I would like to go places.
So when I was 13, I got on a freight train and, uh, came here to New York to be
on Major
Bo's Am job.
Doing what?
What were you at?
I was singing.
Yeah?
Yeah.
I sang good with a group.
They were four bonbons.
They bonbons were like little chocolate candies, and we were four brown skin
dudes, so that was
a good thing.
And you, uh, how far did you get?
All the way to, did you make it to the show?
Oh, yeah.
We made it to the show, and, uh, we won, uh, second prize, and they gave us a
job in New
York, New Jersey for a week.
And, uh, they still, still owe us.
This was when you were 13?
13, yeah.
Did you ever go back to your, uh, folks then?
Well, I went back to, I left home when I was 13.
I went back when I was 31.
Yeah.
You know?
So, uh, I mean, I loved New York, and I stayed here, you know, so it was good
for me.
Uh-huh.
Working, uh, just clubs and, uh...
Clubs.
I worked in clubs.
I worked in the street.
I worked on the street corners for two years, just making money in the street
corners.
Yeah.
What kind of act would you do then?
Still singing?
Comedy and singing.
Comedy and songs, you know, three little fish in the itty-bitty pool and stuff
like that.
They were writing, they were singing those kind of numbers then.
Yeah.
When did comedy take over from the, uh, when did it become all comedy?
When I found out how much money it paid.
Yeah.
I immediately said, this is it for me, comedy, you know, it was good money, so.
So you were done in school by 13?
Well, not exactly.
I wasn't through, but as far as thinking was concerned, I was through.
Yeah.
Because I didn't go in too often.
But I got as far as high school, and I was a genius, you know what I mean?
At 13 years old, I was in high school.
Oh, yeah, well, that's pretty good.
I mean, but I didn't stay too long.
I stayed a year.
Uh-huh.
And then I found out with no money, and then all the coats had been stolen.
So.
Did you ever, did you ever get tossed out of school before you left?
Couple of times I was tossed out.
What for?
Well, a teacher threw a book at me, and I threw it back.
She missed me, and I called her right in the ear.
Well, that's no good.
Brad, let me ask you about this.
You got the, this is New Orleans, how do you say New Orleans?
New Orleans.
New Orleans?
New Orleans.
I said New Orleans.
New Orleans, whatever.
Red Fox, New Orleans, Louisiana-style, all-purpose barbecue sauce.
Yes, that's my business now, is to bring a laugh to your face.
It's so good, you can eat it with a piece of bread.
I'm not kidding you.
Best barbecue sauce on the market today, and I'm not kidding you.
Now, is that your own recipe here?
That's my own recipe.
Nah, you don't even know what's in it, do you?
Are you kidding?
Tell me what's in this.
You name it, and I'll tell you if it's not.
No, no, you name it.
Palm granites.
No, no palm granites in there.
No, there's no palm granites in there.
No.
Well, you got some.
It's tomatoes and peppers.
Tomatoes, right.
Yes, and onions.
Yeah, onions.
Yeah, all right, all right, close enough.
Let me try this, do you mind?
Yes, please.
Don't screw it, because it's on there for tight, tight, you know.
Well, here, Red, there's probably some kind of a trick to that, isn't there?
No, it's not.
It's just here.
Catch it right here.
Oh, I see.
You take off the seal.
It's sealed up because it's safer.
Do you have to shake this or anything?
You don't really have to shake it, because it's ready all the time.
Boy, it smells good.
It smells terrific.
It's crazy, man.
I wish you had a piece of bread.
What?
No.
We had one here a couple of weeks ago.
I guess it's gone, Red.
Yeah.
Whoa.
Whoa.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
Yeah, pour a little of that behind your tires in the winter.
You're having trouble getting traction.
Woo!
Hot!
This is great.
Yeah, this is terrific stuff.
That's very nice.
Hey, I thank you for saying so, because it is true.
I'm like, Kenya, you can pour down a piece of bread, and it's hot, though, isn't
it?
It is.
We have hot, medium, mild, and ooey.
That's actually very tasty stuff.
Where are you working?
Are you still in Atlantic City?
I just finished Atlantic City at Playboy.
Yeah.
I had another engagement in February.
Uh-huh.
And I was 26.
I started in February.
This is my last engagement over there, unless they give me something, you know,
another contract.
Do you think you'll be coming back to television in the near future for
anything?
Well, I've been on five years, and they ain't said nothing to me, so somebody
must be crazy,
because I'm good on TV.
Yeah.
But they just think I can only be a junk man, or something like that.
But I can be any character they want to.
It's giving me the script.
Yeah.
But somebody ought to try something, some of them dummies up there.
Well, I hope it works out.
I don't care.
Folks would like to see you back.
It's like, oh, we'll go back to armed robbery.
Red Fox, folks.
Nice to see you again, Red.
Nice job.
We'll be back, folks, with limited perspective, and we'll be able to take still.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.

Redd Foxx on Letterman, November 8, 1983

Thank you, Paul.
Thank you, folks.
Welcome back here to the show.
Red Pox is here tonight.
Ken Kesey and all kinds of exciting stuff.
Let me bring out my first guest.
Paul, have you ever worked with this man before anywhere?
Never had the pleasure, no.
Have you ever met him before?
No, looking forward to it.
You excited about this?
Yeah, and I got a request for him, too.
I don't know whether we have time.
Okay, you want to ask me?
A piece of material.
Oh, all right.
Well, just save it for when he comes out here.
All right.
My first guest tonight is the star of this brand-new videotape.
I'm sorry.
I was having trouble getting the impulses across those synapses tonight.
This videotape called Red Fox Video in a Plain Brown Rapper,
please welcome the man for whom it's named the star of this videotape, Red Fox.
Hey, Diane.
Nice to see you again.
How are you feeling?
Oh, boy.
Nice to see you.
It's been a long time since we've actually laid eyes on one another.
Yes, I remember the last time we were being interviewed somewhere with some
newspaper people,
and you said you had 13 weeks, and I said, my goodness.
No, you had 16 weeks.
I had 13 weeks.
And I've been off for five years.
How long have you been on that?
Since 1951?
Early up.
Since the early 50s.
Fantastic.
What did you bring me here?
It's a pomegranate from my yard.
I have a pomegranate bush, a tree.
It's so big, it must be a tree.
But they just started falling off before I came here.
So I figured I'd bring you one.
This grows in your backyard in California?
Las Vegas.
Oh, Las Vegas.
This is pretty exotic stuff, isn't it?
Oh, it is.
And it's a puzzle to eat it.
Yeah.
But it's good.
Yeah, they're very tasty.
Thank you very much, Red.
I appreciate that.
Now, let's talk about this videotape.
Now, is this part of your nightclub act, Red?
That's all of my nightclub act.
All of your nightclub act.
Yeah.
It's good, too.
No, I'm sure it's good.
I saw it last night the first time.
First time you had seen it, huh?
No, the first time I have seen myself, you know, perform that type of material,
and I'm
sort of ashamed, you know.
But I was.
You know what I mean?
Because not dirty is Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor.
Oh, so you feel...
So I tell shame, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
I'm trying to catch up with them.
Is there any material on this show?
How long is this?
It's about an hour, hour and 15 minutes.
Any material on this hour and 15 minutes that you could do on this show right
here tonight?
Yes.
Hello.
It's about here.
No, no.
There's got to be something else you can do.
I'm telling you, I swear, there's nothing else on there I could say from that
album.
No kidding.
I tried to make a good one.
Now, I also read this afternoon that in all of the years you've worked on
television,
variety shows, situation comedies, shows like this, on and on and on,
you've never been bleeped.
That's true.
Never have.
So...
Well, I know I'm on television, you know, and I know that you could edit a
dirty word,
but I would save that for my nightclub act.
Mm-hmm.
So, and this tape, because there's plenty of it in there, so I don't need it
here.
Yeah.
Now, what kind of stuff comes close that you could do on television?
If you were going to give us a sample of this, is there any way you can do it
without, you
know what I'm saying, kind of deleting necessary parts?
The only possible thing I could think of I could do is drop my pants.
Yeah.
I, you know.
Now, now, Red, let me, is the videotape here pretty much what the old party
records were?
Yeah, pretty much so, but not, not quite.
See, I made 55 albums, and none of them...
55?
Yeah.
Oh, that's an amazing amount of work.
Yeah, I wish I'd have got some of the money.
But...
You didn't get paid for these things?
Oh, it's so many crooks.
It's a shame.
But, anyway, 55 albums and 40 of them, I never had a curse word on them.
But before I started cursing, I was already branded a dirty old man.
So, now I'm living up to it.
Let's take a look at a couple of these.
This is an interesting label.
Is that Dudo?
Yeah, that's Dudo.
Now, what is, what does Dudo mean?
I have no idea.
Yeah.
I guess the first part I know, that's do.
Uh-huh, that's right.
Now, this is Red Fox, Naughties But Goodies.
And, oh, I see on the back here, we have Dootsy Williams.
Mm-hmm.
Take a picture of Dootsy.
Do you know this man?
Yeah, I made him once.
This is the America's foremost authority on American humor.
Is that what it says?
That's what it says.
Yeah, foremost authority on American humor.
I'm the foremost authority on this kind of humor over here.
Now, what is Dootsy doing these days?
I have no idea.
All right.
Here's hearty party laughs.
Uh-huh.
I didn't know that was out yet.
Hearty party laughs.
Now, did you help name any of these?
No, I made 55 albums, and now it's over 300 out.
Different titles and stuff, you know, so I sure wish I knew who was putting
them out.
Yeah.
Now, you haven't been on television in a regular program in a while.
No, they always wanted me to be a father or uncle, you know, and I just don't
want to be that father or uncle.
I had to learn to be a father when I did Samford's son, because I don't have
any children, you know, no son, nothing.
So I didn't know how to touch him, you know, unless he might think I was, you
know what I mean?
So I just said, son, so-and-so, and I had to, it was really active.
I had to really act.
Yeah.
Now, how did you, did you develop that character from somebody you knew, or was
that, uh...
My family.
Your family was like...
My mother and my grandfather.
My grandfather walked like Fred Samford, and my mother had a heart attack.
She's had a heart attack every day since 1922.
Now she's 81, and she'll have a heart attack tonight when I mention it.
Yeah.
81, that's amazing.
Oh, yeah.
That's very nice.
She's very active.
Uh, we got to, uh, we got to pause here for a commercial.
We'll be back with, uh, Red Fox.
We got, uh, more stuff back here, Red, we want to talk about.
Red Fox is here.
Look, you know, Barbara Walters was on the show, uh, not so long ago, and she
was mentioning
that one of the, uh, homes that she had visited for an interview, uh, over the
years was yours,
and she said, in fact, it was one of the most unique homes that she had been in.
She said you had monkeys in, uh, in your house?
Yeah, I got monkeys in the front window.
So I put the cage outside, but the window to the house acts as a, like, uh,
window for
the monkey's cage, so you can sit in the house in the wall by the fireplace and
watch the
monkeys do their number.
I'm sorry, do their what?
Number.
Uh-huh.
And, uh, how many, how many monkeys do you have?
I got two now, but, uh, I have rabbits, too.
I have 30 rabbits that, as of the day before yesterday.
Are they, are they running, uh, loose in your house, or you got them in the
backyard?
No, they just run loose in the yard, and they dig down so that they can duck
the dogs,
you know, so.
You got dogs also?
Dogs, yeah.
I have 14 dogs looking for rabbits.
Uh, this is, you apparently have quite a, quite a spread, huh?
Oh, yeah.
Well, I got, uh, five and a half acres, and I got another acre somewhere else.
I had to throw away everything.
You don't know where the other acre is, or you just?
No, I don't remember exactly, but I think it's in Missouri.
Well, that's good to keep a spare acre on hand.
Oh, sure.
You never know when it's going to come.
Everyone should have a spare acre.
You're from Missouri.
Weren't you born in St. Louis?
St. Louis.
Yeah.
4461 Enright, house still standing.
Must be 100 years old now.
Are there, are there people still living in it?
Sure.
It's a brick house.
Do you, do you want to, I mean, you just gave the address.
Yeah, 4461 Enright.
Yeah.
So if they live in there, they can sell tickets to people who want to see where
I was born on
the top floor.
Uh, what kind of kid were you?
Terrible.
Yeah?
No, I had my own way about me.
You know, I had my, I like to leave, and I would like to go places.
So when I was 13, I got on a freight train and, uh, came here to New York to be
on Major
Bo's Am job.
Doing what?
What were you at?
I was singing.
Yeah?
Yeah.
I sang good with a group.
They were four bonbons.
They bonbons were like little chocolate candies, and we were four brown skin
dudes, so that was
a good thing.
And you, uh, how far did you get?
All the way to, did you make it to the show?
Oh, yeah.
We made it to the show, and, uh, we won, uh, second prize, and they gave us a
job in New
York, New Jersey for a week.
And, uh, they still, still owe us.
This was when you were 13?
13, yeah.
Did you ever go back to your, uh, folks then?
Well, I went back to, I left home when I was 13.
I went back when I was 31.
Yeah.
You know?
So, uh, I mean, I loved New York, and I stayed here, you know, so it was good
for me.
Uh-huh.
Working, uh, just clubs and, uh...
Clubs.
I worked in clubs.
I worked in the street.
I worked on the street corners for two years, just making money in the street
corners.
Yeah.
What kind of act would you do then?
Still singing?
Comedy and singing.
Comedy and songs, you know, three little fish in the itty-bitty pool and stuff
like that.
They were writing, they were singing those kind of numbers then.
Yeah.
When did comedy take over from the, uh, when did it become all comedy?
When I found out how much money it paid.
Yeah.
I immediately said, this is it for me, comedy, you know, it was good money, so.
So you were done in school by 13?
Well, not exactly.
I wasn't through, but as far as thinking was concerned, I was through.
Yeah.
Because I didn't go in too often.
But I got as far as high school, and I was a genius, you know what I mean?
At 13 years old, I was in high school.
Oh, yeah, well, that's pretty good.
I mean, but I didn't stay too long.
I stayed a year.
Uh-huh.
And then I found out with no money, and then all the coats had been stolen.
So.
Did you ever, did you ever get tossed out of school before you left?
Couple of times I was tossed out.
What for?
Well, a teacher threw a book at me, and I threw it back.
She missed me, and I called her right in the ear.
Well, that's no good.
Brad, let me ask you about this.
You got the, this is New Orleans, how do you say New Orleans?
New Orleans.
New Orleans?
New Orleans.
I said New Orleans.
New Orleans, whatever.
Red Fox, New Orleans, Louisiana-style, all-purpose barbecue sauce.
Yes, that's my business now, is to bring a laugh to your face.
It's so good, you can eat it with a piece of bread.
I'm not kidding you.
Best barbecue sauce on the market today, and I'm not kidding you.
Now, is that your own recipe here?
That's my own recipe.
Nah, you don't even know what's in it, do you?
Are you kidding?
Tell me what's in this.
You name it, and I'll tell you if it's not.
No, no, you name it.
Palm granites.
No, no palm granites in there.
No, there's no palm granites in there.
No.
Well, you got some.
It's tomatoes and peppers.
Tomatoes, right.
Yes, and onions.
Yeah, onions.
Yeah, all right, all right, close enough.
Let me try this, do you mind?
Yes, please.
Don't screw it, because it's on there for tight, tight, you know.
Well, here, Red, there's probably some kind of a trick to that, isn't there?
No, it's not.
It's just here.
Catch it right here.
Oh, I see.
You take off the seal.
It's sealed up because it's safer.
Do you have to shake this or anything?
You don't really have to shake it, because it's ready all the time.
Boy, it smells good.
It smells terrific.
It's crazy, man.
I wish you had a piece of bread.
What?
No.
We had one here a couple of weeks ago.
I guess it's gone, Red.
Yeah.
Whoa.
Whoa.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
Yeah, pour a little of that behind your tires in the winter.
You're having trouble getting traction.
Woo!
Hot!
This is great.
Yeah, this is terrific stuff.
That's very nice.
Hey, I thank you for saying so, because it is true.
I'm like, Kenya, you can pour down a piece of bread, and it's hot, though, isn't
it?
It is.
We have hot, medium, mild, and ooey.
That's actually very tasty stuff.
Where ar