Wizard of Comedy

With this CD, Richard Pryor demonstrates that an ill-spent youth can yield comedic gold. He introduces the audience to the characters he encountered as a boy in the after-hours clubs of Peoria, Illinois--Black Irma, with her 280-pound butt; the pimps known as Smoov and Cold-Blooded; Pryor's shifty childhood chum Weasel; Torsy the cop; and so on. A grade-school production of "Rumpelstiltskin," with all the characters voiced by Pryor, is the highlight of the disc, showing a sweeter side than usual. The Wizard of Comedy is a solidly funny effort; Pryor's debt to Bill Cosby is evident throughout (on "Heart and Brain," among others), but the more theatrical, more versatile Pryor went places Cosby never dared, or wanted to. --Michael Gerber