Barbara P. Moss
The role of black comedians as storytellers in fostering and reflecting a sense of community is well illustrated in the career of Jackie “Moms” Mabley which spanned most of this century. Born Loretta Mary Aiken in North Carolina around the turn of the century, Moms Mabley began her career at the age of fourteen as a performer on the black vaudeville circuit. In 1923 she went to Harlem, where she appeared for several years at Connie’s Inn and then spent the remainder of the 1920’s and the following decades touring Negro theaters in black urban centers. In the late 1950’s and 1960’s she was at the peak of her career; a career which despite performances at Playboy Clubs and on televisions, was still largely confined to black audiences. The extent of her popularity in the black community can be gauged by the fact that during the 1960’s seventeen albums of her comedy routines were recorded and at least two of them sold more than a million copies each. Bill Cosby has testified that as a youngster in Philadelphia he went to the Uptown Theatre to see Moms Mabley whenever he could afford it, sometimes sitting through four shows: “It was over for me the minute she ambled on stage in her chic, early American castoff outfit. When she started talking about her young men, I knew she was peeping at me, but I was cool. Then she would go into that weird ‘Moms Shuffle’ and that was it. I was here forever.”
The appeal of Mabley’s humor was precisely its degree of folkishness. Her antique clothing, her easy manner, her sense of kinship with her audiences by her references to them as her “children”her lack of pretentiousness, the easy familiarity of—her language, her movements, her dialogue, were at the core of her vast popularity. Sitting on a chair on stage, she would often begin her routine saying confidentially and conversationally, “I got somethin’ to tell you!” In most of her appearances she lost no time establishing bonds of identity with her listeners. “Thank you, thank you, children, and home folks, and kin folks,” she greeted an audience in Washington, D.C., assuring them, “I’m telling you I’m glad to be at home. And I had my first real meal in months [laughter]. My niece cooked me some hog mawwws [laughter], and some cracklin’ corn bread [laughter], and a few greens on the side [laughter]. Thank the Lord I’m talking to people that know what I’m talking about [prolonged laughter and applause]. Traditional foods were often the vehicle she chose to create an air of community and familiarity. She told a Philadelphia audience that her folks down South had sent her something during hog killing time: “They shipped me some of that meat, you understand what I meeean. They shipped me some of them back bones with a whole lot of meat on it. Not like these neck bones you get up here. When they say neck bone, they mean neck bones.”
Recognition was the focal point of Moms Mabley’s humor. Many of her jokes were familiar. In her routines a widow again reminds those who criticize her for having a fifteenyearold child when her husband has been dead for twenty years that “He’s dead, I ain’t.” A southern sheriff again assures his black prisoner, “I’m gonna get you a good lawyer and see that you get a fair trial. And then I’m gonna hang you.” A black customer demonstrates his prowess with a switch blade knife peeling and coring an apple in mid air forcing a southern white gas station attendant to treat him with respect and call him “mister.” An old lady (in this case Moms Mabley herself) again responds to the question of what denomination she wants her stamps or traveler’s checks in by saying, “Baptist.” An expectant Negro voter in the South is again confronted with a “literacy test” consisting of a headline in a Chinese newspaper. As important as the retelling of traditional jokes was, the familiarity of Moms Mabley’s humor consisted not in its material—ulk of which was original and topical— in its style and intent. Her jokes were her own, but the contours of her humor were so traditional that it was probably indistinguishable from folk humor to her audiences.
Moms Mabley dealt with her audiences not as a professional entertainer but as a member of their community. Her audiences responded as participants laughing, commenting, urging her on to speak for them all in cathartic, integrative ritual of laughter.
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