Episode #220 |02.04.25

Richard Pryor: Stabbing, Shooting, F***ing, Burning, and Freebasing

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In this episode

Richard Pryor was one of the funniest people who ever lived. He elevated stand-up comedy to an art form. But the real life that informed his stand-up – a life of pool halls, brothels, stabbings, shootings, and lots and lots of cocaine – was a source of constant pain. A pain that he managed with a freebase habit so out of control it nearly killed him before he was even 40 years old.

Sources

Pryor Convictions and Other Life Sentences, by Richard Pryor with Todd Gold

Becoming Richard Pryor, by Scott Saul

Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World that Made Him, by David Henry & Joe Henry

Richard Pryor's Widow Jennifer Lee Calls His 1980 Fire Incident a Suicide Attempt: 'He Warned Me' (People)

Pryor’s Inferno (Rolling Stone)

Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip (1982, dir. Joe Layton)

Richard Pryor Live in Concert (1979, dir. Jeff Margolis)

DISGRACELAND is a podcast about musicians getting away with murder and behaving very badly. It melds music history, true crime and transgressive fiction. Disgraceland is not journalism. Disgraceland is entertainment. Entertainment inspired by true events. However, certain scenes, characters and names are sometimes fictionalized for dramatic purposes.