On September 15, 1959, Redd Foxx opened for Nina Simone at our hall on a bill that also included the Horace Silver Quintet and J.J. Johnson’s Quintet. This concert was recorded and would become her first live album. According to a New York Herald Tribune review Foxx, then a nightclub comedian, “took a brief turn that would have startled the more typical Town Hall ticket buyer.” Dr. Jalylah Burrell joins The Town Hall to discuss 1950s nightclub comedy and the pre-Sanford and Son oeuvre of the “King of the Party Records.”
Jalylah Burrell is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies at San José State University. She holds a PhD in American Studies and African American Studies from Yale University and her scholarship was previously supported by postdoctoral fellowships at DePaul University’s African and Black Diaspora Department and Rice University’s Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality as well as visiting research fellowships at the Black Film Center/Archive at Indiana University Bloomington, the Vivian G. Harsh Society, and the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library at Emory University. Her research and teaching are focused on African Diasporic literature and popular culture and enhanced by experience as a pop culture critic, digital producer, oral historian, and deejay. Her current book project is titled “Capacity for Laughter: Black Women and the American Comedic Tradition.”
The Town Hall Laughs: A Series about the History of Comedy at The Town Hall
Over the course of the last century, The Town Hall has been home to groundbreaking live events that have cemented the hall as a historical landmark. The Town Hall’s legacy as a comedy venue is buried under the legacy of America’s Town Meeting of the Air and the hall’s historic concerts such as the debuts of Isaac Stern and Nina Simone. During this special July series, Century of Story and Song will celebrate four important events in the hall’s comedy history. Join The Town Hall this July to learn about Redd Foxx, Will Rogers, Dick Gregory and Nichols and May.