It’s Staff Writer Dulani Wallace’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Dulani! And, swell guy that he is, he’s spending it remembering St. Patrick’s Day birthday twin Rudy Ray Moore, better known as Dolemite, raunchy spoken word poet and influential DIY record producer:
As St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated in cities big and small, go to your local record store, find a Rudy Ray Moore album, spin it, and listen. I double dare you. Coincidentally, on today, March 17th, the same day we honor a former slave who would be canonized, I tip my hat to one of the last century’s most influential comedians. Listen close; he’ll have you in stitches.
Rudy Ray Moore was of rare pedigree. His appearance was slick and urbane, if you can imagine the ideal of a Southern gentleman, but his words were quite the opposite: brash and crude, yet hysterically funny. These toasts, as they were originally called, evolved into lengthy narratives of that parodied society, politics, race, and sex.
By the late 1970s, a movement of Moore fans had grown since 1959, the year his freshman album Below the Belt was released. His records were released through a Compton, California-based record label called Dootone and advertised in Ebony Magazine. In spite of the exposure, his fandom remained underground. This was largely due to America’s racial divide and music during this period. Moore’s albums were wildly popular at house parties in African-American homes — when the kids were put to sleep.
Rudy Moore made his own records for distribution. His DIY approach to album making required a pen, a dirty mind, knowledge of verse and iambic pentameter, uptempo piano and bass, and some friends with good humor. They were recorded in his own home.
Like many notable storytellers, Moore created characters that recurred in his epic poems. Shine and Dolemite — the latter, by far his most famous and the subject of a feature-length film — made marquee appearances in his gut-busting tales where they took on the extraordinary, like escaping the sinking Titanic and taking on Hurricane Annie. These two characters were particularly reflections of his id: a badass, cussing Lothario whose words packed more of a punch than a physical one.
Rudy Ray Moore died in October 2008. Fortunately, he lived to see his influence live on within the fraternity of West Coast rap artists. N.W.A. and Snoop Dogg were most intrigued by his legacy of trash-talking. In the ’90s, Moore made appearances in Snoop’s videos as his alter ego Dolemite.
Moore’s popularity surged in the late 1990s with a tribute website and a database. The site, run by someone simply known as “Webmasta,” queued up snippets of Moore’s classic homegrown pieces. It should be the disposition of an avid party record collector to go out and pick up an album and play it for friends. His comedy was so raunchy that he made Redd Foxx seem like a parishioner.
Happy Birthday to you, Randy Ray Moore, and rest your soul!
