...And It's Deep Too! The Complete Warner Bros. Recordings (1968-1992)

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...And It's Deep Too! The Complete Warner Bros. Recordings (1968-1992) is a compilation of all of Richard Pryor's recordings with Warner Brothers Records. It contains material recorded between 1968 and 1992 and was released in 2000 through Rhino Entertainment and won an award in the Grammy Awards of 2001 for best liner notes.

Background

The collection includes eight CDs released on Warner Brothers between 1968 and 1983, plus a ninth CD of previously unreleased material. These albums include:

Richard Pryor (1968);
That Nigger's Crazy (1974);
...Is It Something I Said? (1975);
Bicentennial Nigger (1976);
Wanted/Richard Pryor - Live In Concert (1979);
Live On The Sunset Strip (1982)
Here And Now (1983)
(bonus CD)

His 1968 self-titled album contains conventional standup material. In contrast, his 1974 album That Nigger's Crazy featured the comedy style which made him famous focusing on racial issues with plenty of swearing. That album was a breakthrough for Pryor, going platinum, and winning a Grammy in the Grammy Awards of 1975 for Best Comedy Performance.

Is it Something I Said was another success critically, topping the Billboard black charts, going platinum and winning another Grammy for Best Comedy performance. Bicentennial Nigger won him his third Grammy award in three years and went top 5 in the black charts. Pryor won a fourth Grammy for Live On The Sunset Strip in 1982.

Pryor's career suffered a major setback in 1980 when he was badly burnt in 1980 while freebasing cocaine and his career never reached the same heights afterwards. In 1986, Pryor announced that he had multiple sclerosis and this eventually led to his retirement as a standup comedian in 1992. This album features some material from his 1992 concerts.

In 1998, Richard Pryor won the first Mark Twain Prize for American Humor from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. This album contains all of the material that earned him that award.

References

[Allmusic.com article on Richard Pryor]

"Richard Pryor." American Decades Gale Research, 1998

Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2005.

"Richard Pryor" in Shirelle Phillips (editor) Contemporary Black Biography, Volume 24 Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2005.

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