Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, November 30, 1993 TAG: 9311300024
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Adrienne Petty STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"I love to eat," he said.
"I go to McDonald's, call Domino's and tell them to meet me at Wendy's."
This raw, sometimes raunchy comedian who helped launch the career of Martin Lawrence, star of the hit series "Martin," said he was delighted to help open one of Roanoke's first black comedy showcases.
"Roanoke is starving for black entertainment," said the Fat Doctor, who would rather be called that than his legal name - Darcel Blagmon.
For the past two weeks, audiences at Lowell's Supper Club and the Roanoke Comedy Club have gotten some of the entertainment they've craved - and they're lapping it up.
If country music is the hottest trend in the entertainment industry, black comedy comes in second. These shows, which were nearly sold out, were a welcome relief to many young black people who have moaned about the lack of night life in the valley.
"This is long overdue," said Maxine King after a recent show at the Roanoke Comedy Club. "That was well worth the money."
One man, who said everybody knows him as Danny, gave the show "thumbs up."
"Black comedy, the way it comes out, is another way for black people to express themselves," he said. "It's a way for blacks to come together."
Both shows had the urban, hard-core flair of such popular black comedy showcases as "Russell Simmons' Def Comedy Jam" and "BET Comic View," even featuring comics who have appeared on these television shows.
But they were done Roanoke-style. Beatty Barnes, a Roanoke native who now lives in Norfolk, brought the house down at the comedy club with his joking impersonation of William Fleming High School cheerleaders.
"Hula, hula, who thinks they're bad," he said, as he stomped out the rhythmic steps and claps.
The Lowell's crowd was treated to another home-grown comic, Howard Tucker, now living in a suburb of Washington.
"Everything black goes to white people," he said. "Now they took the Electric Slide and put it to country music," referring to the Achy Breaky Heart dance.
Shards of laughter filled the room, and heads nodded in agreement.
At times, the gatherings seemed more like class reunions than comedy jams.
"Everybody knew somebody," said Lorenzell Wilson, manager of the Roanoke Comedy Club.
People who hadn't seen each other in ages were hugging, talking and catching up on old times.
King and her friend Jeanette Law reminisced about Barnes, who, they say, was the class clown at Fleming.
"He had Eddie Murphy down to a T," Law said.
For Lowell's, the primary night spot for blacks in Roanoke, starting the weekly "Das-a Comedy Club" (pronounced "That's a") is part of its goal to offer fun, fresh entertainment to Roanoke's black community.
"I came up with it because of the decline of entertainment for mid- to lower-class blacks," said Gerard Grogans, who organized the Lowell's show.
Grogans, who modeled the show after the Def Comedy Jam by playing hip hop music as acts came up to the stage, plans to hold the comedy show every Friday night.
Jimmy Butler, owner of the Roanoke Comedy Club, started promoting the "Black Comedy Jam" along with Wilson because they saw it as a "niche that wasn't being filled."
It's not that blacks aren't welcome at the Roanoke Comedy Club. The club draws a mixed crowd nearly every weekend.
But, as Barnes said, "a lot of blacks don't come to a comedy club, unless it's promoted just for blacks." So the club set aside two shows every other Wednesday night for black comedy.
Also, black comedy is hot. "In the black clubs, the def jam, raw kind of comedy is in," Butler said. "In the mainstream show, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction, away from the Sam Kinison shock comedy to `how clever can I be.' "
"Def comedy" is neither racially exclusive nor entirely raunchy, but it does rely on colloquialisms and traditions such as "playing the dozens," which is banter, that were born in the black community.
Only the bravest souls sit near the stage.
"My sister just got some extensions in her hair, and she refused to sit up front," King said.
A blond woman at Lowell's, who wouldn't give her name because she was too embarrassed, learned the hard way.
Comedian Tucker announced to the audience that she had a hair weave. She didn't. The hair was all hers.
"I'm going to dye my hair tomorrow," she said. "Next time, I'm going to sit in the back."
She looks forward to seeing some black women comics, who have not appeared at either Lowell's or the Roanoke Comedy Club so far.
"Women comics would be great, especially if they're going to pick on men," she said.
White people are prime targets in all-black audiences, too.
"You're the minority tonight," the Fat Doctor said to a white man in the audience.
A white woman who was with her boyfriend, a black man, also caught one comedian's eye.
"You've got jungle fever," he sang. She took it in jest.
Wilson, manager at the comedy club who toured as a comic for eight years, spelled out another difference between def comedy and mainstream shows.
"With a mainstream audience, they'll laugh, but you get a lot of polite laughter," he said. "With black folks, you have to be funny. Period. If you're not funny, you can get the sandman."
by CNB