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Bill Cosby keeps comedy alive nearly five decades into his career |
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Bill Cosby
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By G. Michael Dobbs
Managing Editor
Since 1963 Bill Cosby has been making people laugh and the iconic comedian told Reminder Publications that he has no intention of stopping anytime soon.
The most famous resident of Western Massachusetts will be appearing for two shows at Springfield's Symphony Hall on Oct. 16. Although known more in recent years as a social commentator and author, Cosby is dedicated to comedy.
His appearances here are part of a lengthy touring schedule that brings him from California to Massachusetts to Florida and Canada.
"I've been doing this [comedy] since 1963. That when I made the commitment," he said in an early morning telephone interview from his home in Shelburne. "It's important that this mind think things and I write them down and I can't help it.
"My wife says I'm being beamed," he added with a chuckle.
The man whose show business career has included Grammy-winning comedy albums, many successful television series and movies as well as being a highly influential stand-up comedian, said his path toward being a comic came out of education,
He explained that he was "born again" when attending college not renewing his Christian faith, but rather "in terms of accepting education, of wanting it."
While at Temple University, he said he became serious about writing and read extensively. He also began listening to comedy albums and studied comedians such as Jonathan Winters, Elaine May and Mike Nichols, Shelly Berman and Don Adams.
It was while listening to the Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner album "The 2,000 Year Old Man" that Cosby said he realized, "you don't have to have a joke."
The story and the delivery were more important. He began to write and enjoyed it.
He said that while in his freshman remedial English class, the professor assigned the student to write about a first time experience. The class was full of members of the football team and Cosby said, "The football players wrote about their first touchdown, but I got beamed."
He wrote about the first time he pulled out a tooth as a child.
"There were no computers just a number two pencil and a legal pad," he said. "I had so much fun and I just wrote and wrote and wrote."
He found that he didn't mind revising his work.
"When you're born again, you don't mind going over it," he explained.
In his junior year of college, he said he "began to see things differently," and thought he could sell what he was writing.
In the early 1960s there were no clubs dedicated to comedy as there are today, and Cosby said he went around the nightclubs of Philadelphia. He explained the clubs would feature a singer and a comedian and he would try to sell his work to the comics, but no one bought any of his stories.
"One fellow read it and said, 'This is not funny.' I started to perform for him and he said, 'It's still not funny,'" Cosby recalled.
The manager of the Gilded Cage nightclub finally gave Cosby the chance to perform for 15 minutes.
"There were seven people in the room and they were spread out three, two and two," Cosby said.
The manager didn't care for his act, although the audience laughed and Cosby lost hope momentarily. "That night I took those pages and I threw them down the sewer, but when I woke up I was right back at them," he said.
Cosby said his career started taking off, though, with appearances in clubs in New York City. In 1963 he made his first comedy album, "Bill Cosby is a Very Funny Fellow, Right!" and was booked onto "The Tonight Show."
He said his career was like a slide one could do on a kitchen floor wet with soap and water.
"There was no long suffering," he said.
After all these years of performing, Cosby said, "I still have those thoughts. I'm still being beamed. I still have things to say."
Cosby said that his material today provides a "night of comfort."
"I put a chair on the stage, I sit and talk and tell a story," he said, resulting in the audience and himself "feeling comfortable."
To purchase tickets to see Cosby at Symphony Hall, click here www.symphonyhall.com/. The second part of this interview with Bill Cosby will be featured in the October edition of PRIME.
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