Slappy

There was a great to-do in the early 1960s about black comedians working in front of white audiences.

Writers in Esquire,Jet and other publications covered everything from significance to content to Uncle Tom-ism.

It’s not a subject that can be discussed adequately within the confines of a blog post, but I thought I’d pass along this story from the Atlanta Daily World, August 12, 1962, to give you the flavour of the times, especially in the U.S. South. It’s a profile of nightclub comedian Slappy White.

Slappy is pretty complementary in print, but also seems a little hung up on money. Unlike some of the people he mentioned, he never really made a home in television, though things might have been different if the Soul, the black version of Laugh-In, had taken off in 1968 (he was in the pilot).

It appears some words have been dropped by the typesetter, who also has mistaken “velvet rope” for “velvet trope.”

Comic Monologist Slappy White Laughs At Himself And The World
By MARION E. JACKSON
Slappy White loves to laugh at the foibles of himself as well as the rest of the world. He has been doing just that for twenty years and he has no intention of stopping. The mile-a-minute comedian has used the lay ‘em in the aisles philosophy to project himself into the top-salaried brackets of the world’s toughest profession.
Born Melvin White, Sept. 27, 1921 in Baltimore, Md., the funnyman of the velvet trope circuit, boasts of the cleanest material in show business.
Slappy was in Atlanta, Tuesday en route to New Orleans, La., where he will become the first Negro to play the exclusive Playboy Club there. He will do a solo act without musicians or stage props. Under Louisiana law while performers can not appear on stage with Negro entertainers at the same time.
TO OPEN UP WEDGE
Why is Slappy playing under such an arrangement? “I felt I had an obligation to not only myself but my race to open this wedge. I plan to use sophisticated material which will poke fun at much of the segregation which whites have used against my people.
“By playing in New Orleans in an exclusive club for the first time, perhaps I can get the story over regarding the sensitivity of my people in face of the stereotype and myths which they have been used against them by whites.” [sic]
Slappy has been featured in Playboy Clubs in Chicago, Pittsburgh, New York and Miami, but this is his first booking in New Orleans. Elsewhere Playboy clubs are non-segregated, but all operate on a membership basis.
Having just completed an engagement at the 500 Club in Atlantic City, worked for several weeks on his material for his Crescent City engagement with his comic writer, Eugene Perrett.
NO DICK GREGORY GAGS
“I haven’t used any jokes of the Dick Gregory type in years. While I used to bug audiences with jokes along the Gregory line, I have long ago adopted a different line. I tremendously admire Jackie (Moms) Mabley, and I wrote one of the introductions to her records, I do not copy or use any of her material. The same goes for Nipsey Russell, for whom I have tremendous admiration, Redd Foxx, Pigmeat Markham, Flip Wilson, Willie Bryant, Timmy Rodgers, Hattie Noel and others who are making it big, but I am smoewhat [sic] a loner when it comes to material, timing and style.
“I’ve found out that being a comic is a tough business and unless you can crack the exclusive clubs, where the big money is being made, you’re wasting time. There simply aren’t enough Negro clubs and theaters where you can pick up the money that is paid in Las Vegas, Miami Beach, New York, Chicago and San Francisco, to name a few cities where I’ve gone over big.
LAVERN BAKER’S HUSBAND
Slappy was formerly married to commedian [sic] Pearl Bailey. A few years ago, they were divorced and he was re-married to Lavern Baker. Of Pearl Bailey, Slappy tells: “She has a wonderful talent and is one of the few stars in the United States in the $25,000 a week class. Pearl ranks among the 100 highest paid night club stars in the country.
“Lavern Baker was making it big in the rock ‘n’ roll field playing one-nighters throughout the country. She was making money and had several best-selling records on the jukebox. However, I encouraged her to enter the night club field and she’s going over big. She has not had a hit record in several months, but her earnings have doubled since she’s playing the exclusive clubs. That’s where the big money really is, and she’s finding it out. Living on a hit record is a risky business, but you can go on and on in the night club field. Come to think of it, just has [sic] Billy Eckstine, Lena Horne, Sammy Davis, Jr., Billy Daniels and Diahann, Diamita Jo. Carroll and Eartha Kitt had a hit record and make thousands a week?”
JOKED ON ALBANY
Slappy poked fun at the Albany fiasco. He tells: “I was passing through Albany and a cop gave he a ticket for speeding while I was fixing a flat tire—I offered him some money and he said, ‘Do I look like a crooked cop?’ I said don’t know, but there’s no music and you are standing there doing the twist. He said, ‘I am going to take you to jail,’ so off we went. He put me in a cell with 11 beds. I wanted to see which one was the softest, so I tried them all. As I laid down at the head of each bed, I read, ‘Martin Luther King, Jr., slept here, here, here, here, here and so on. If Martin Luther King, Jr. goes to jail one more time they’re going to make him fight Floyd Patterson for he’ll have a better record than Sonny Liston.”
It was as a candy boy at the old Royal Theater in Baltimore that Slappy was first exposed to show business. There, he saw the great acts of the day, including Sandy Burns, Dusty Fletcher, Abbott and Costello and Red Skelton, while working 20 hours a day for $6 a week.
Slappy played his first white night club in 1957, when Dick Gregory was still working in the Chicago Post Office.
His lone Atlanta appearance was in 1950 at the Waluhaje Apartments, where he appeared with Dinah Washington.
RENEWED ACQUAINTANCES
While renewed acquaintances with B.B. Beamon at his Auburn Avenue restaurant and brought him greetings from Lavern Baker. The celebrated comic monologist also clowned with the kitchen staff before eating his favorite salad.
Later, Slappy visited Tommy Tomblestone, Allan McKellar and his Mercury Recording Company outlet in Atlanta. He plans to return to Atlanta following his three-week engagement in New Orleans.
Incidentally, it was in New Orleans that White played his first white club, The club owner hired him sight unseen, because then Slappy had no photographs to send he was believed a Caucasion [sic]. When White showed up the owner wanted to call the whole thing off, but couldn’t reach the agent through whom the comic had been hired.
The sheriff ordered Slappy to have a separate dressing room set up from the white band and the owner provided him with a rented trailer in back of the club. It was so lavish that the members of the band moved in with him.

Slappy went on to appearances on stage in Vegas (for a time, he partnered with Steve Rossi), on TV with former partner Redd Foxx (on both Foxx’s sitcom and variety show) and on turntables (comedy records were still big then). He died of a heart attack in 1995 at age 73.