Free Dynomite!: Good Times, Bad Times, Our Times--A Memoir by Jimmie Walker, Sal Manna

alright.” But the kids, both black and white, loved the music, and to some extent that music helped change the attitudes of whites for the better—eventually.
    But after a tour in the South with any of those shows, just like after a summer with Aunt Inez in Birmingham, I was always glad to get back to New York City.
    There, again at the Apollo, I opened for Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. That was such a strange relationship. You might think they were lovers, but they were not. They were just the most amazing best friends—unbelievably tight. They had hits together like “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “Your Previous Love,” and “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing.” Then in March 1970, at the age of twenty-four, she died of a brain tumor. I worked with Gaye about three weeks later, and you could see backstage that he was crushed. He was in such heavy pain. On stage he dedicated a song to her and began to cry. He completely broke down and could not continue. Two years would pass before he would perform again in public.
    Many years after my first Apollo appearance I opened for Gladys Knight and the Pips at the Westbury Music Festival on Long Island. I ordered a limousine to chauffeur my mother to the concert. She came backstage afterward. The first thing she said?
    “You’re still doing the algebra question!”

4
     
    Making It in New York
     
    FROM THE EAST WIND TO THE APOLLO, I WAS PERFORMING IN FRONT of almost wholly black crowds. I was spinning in place so fast that I hardly knew I was not moving forward. Then someone said, “You’re not bad. Maybe you could be a more commercial act. There’s this room downtown run by a guy named Frankie Darrow who puts on comedians. He’d probably love to see what you do.” Appropriately for a black comic, it was called the African Room.
    Near Times Square, on 44th Street between Sixth Avenue and Broadway, the African Room was a nightclub that, despite its name, featured limbo contests and calypso music from a Caribbean steel band led by a singer named Johnny Barracuda. On Monday nights though, Darrow hosted a showcase, attracting upward of twenty acts—singers, comedians, jugglers, dancers, whatever.
    The audiences were still basically black, but there were also whites, and many of the showcase performers were white too. Comedians David Brenner, Steve Landesberg, and Danny Aiello, and singers Bette Midler and Melissa Manchester were a few of the unknowns trying to get on stage to do their thing. One of many acts who would never be heard from again was Three Is Company, a trio of brothers from Long Beach, New York. They tried to be a new Marx Brothers, I guess. Uh, not good. But one of the brothers did go on to fame and fortune, by the name of Billy Crystal.
    Usually you had to audition to get a spot, but I came in with such energy and a different flavor that Frankie put me on right away. It was either that or he was scared I was going to shoot somebody—because I came on very strong and very ghetto.
    I was far more street than the other black comics at the African Room—Stu Gilliam, Scoey Mitchell, Joe Keyes and an older comedian named Jay Bernard. He had an odd opening: “My name is Jay Bernard. That’s J-a-y B-e-r-n-a-r-d. That’s Jay Bernard. Just in case you can’t remember it, it’s Jay Bernard. J-a-y B-e-r-n-a-r-d.” He went on like that for three minutes. If a comic did that today, it would be called deconstructing comedy à la Andy Kaufman. Back then it was just stupid funny, for the first minute anyway.
    Next to the stage in the African Room was a giant, eight-foot mechanical gorilla that slowly rotated back and forth and would growl as its green and yellow eyes rolled around in its head. The gorilla would continue its antics even while someone was on stage. It distracted the audience and annoyed the performer. But Darrow would only turn it off during the most popular acts.
    Here was a new audience for me—the somewhat racially mixed downtown