It’s many days until the Presidential Election, and Rudy Ray Moore is not on the ballot; today the man is largely remembered as a key precursor to rap and as the star of the grindhouse classic Dolemite, but way back in 1972 this departed spieler of comedic smut put a topical spin on his rhyming routine by defiantly growling out Dolemite for President.
Before hitting upon the persona for which he’s best remembered, Rudy Ray Moore worked as a singer, dancer, and comedian. Cutting a succession of solid if not spectacular R&B singles for numerous labels, he also worked up enough material for three comedy albums; ’59’s Below the Belt is accurately pegged as risqué, but follow-up The Beatnik Scene differs markedly from the X-rated style that eventually brought him success.
It’s now well-established that the 1970s ushered in a loosening of mores concerning sexual explicitness, violence, and language; regarding the latter, George Carlin, Redd Foxx, and Richard Pryor rode atop that wave like champs. Moore achieved considerable success as well, but due to the sheer explicitness and yes, blackness of his material, he ultimately didn’t cross over. Instead, his productivity served a tighter-knit community, and he eventually became a cult figure.
According to lore, it was while employed in a Hollywood record shop that Moore nabbed the Dolemite character from stories told by a wino named Rico. Expanding upon the long tradition of the Dozens, Moore adapted Rico’s toasts and gave them jazzy-bluesy musical backing on a string of LPs beginning with 1970’s Eat Out More Often; the raps were dirty, the covers were salacious, and by the start of the ’90s the vinyl was quite hard to find.
Like many white kids in the suburbs, I was first tipped-off to Moore’s existence through namedrops by Ice-T and The Beastie Boys; there was also a collab with Big Daddy Kane, but it took a rental of Dolemite, its VHS tape box already tattered, to cement the guy’s foulmouthed and sharply-dressed legend into my memory for all time.
A very low-budget independent production directed by actor D’Urville Martin (who plays the antagonist Willie Green), the true auteur of the 1975 picture is Moore. Dolemite is rude, colorful, and unapologetic in its bizarro-roughness, riffing upon prior Blaxploitation features but with none of the Hollywood softening, and the main attraction is unquestionably the title character.
That Xenon Pictures either accidentally or deliberately used an open matte print of the film, leaving shots of the boom mic intermittently visible, encouraged the viewpoint that Dolemite was an utterly inept undertaking. Although undeniably rugged (some might say artless) in conception, Vinegar Syndrome’s 2K restoration Blu-ray alleviates the schlock and replaces it with an infectious and self-aware sense of fun; e.g. late in the film in a hospital scene, a loudspeaker pages Dr. Feelgood.
Akin to many comedy albums of the time (see Laff Records for evidence) Moore’s LPs are also low-budget affairs, and while he lacks the polish of his more established comedic contemporaries, there is never really any question about competence. But where his string of movies (amongst others, there is The Human Tornado, Petey Wheatstraw, the Devil’s Son-In-Law, and Disco Godfather) are part of the grindhouse/ Blaxploitation impulse, the albums and their jackets and titles, haven’t aged as well.
When the ’70s temporarily blew propriety to smithereens, a whole lot of weird and sometimes ugly stuff ended up in movie theaters, bookshelves, and record collections. Moore’s routines are fairly pegged as sexist, and by Dolemite for President were less comedic than simply audacious; occasionally straining to top himself, “Bulldaggers” comes off like an especially explicit Moore bit crossed with the Austryn Wainhouse’s translation of de Sade’s Juliette and Rankin-Bass’ Mad Monster Party, but his work is also rightly assessed as part of a long collective release after decades of pent-up inequality-based tension.
Moore’s posthumous rep is frankly best served by Dolemite, though Eat Out More Often, This Pussy Belongs to Me (featuring classic “Signifying Monkey”) and his other early ’70s records surely possess a cool time capsule appeal. They combine very well with LPs by LaWanda Page and Moore’s Petey Wheatstraw costars Skillet & Leroy and Wildman Steve Gallon (whose own starring vehicle Supersoul Brother aka Six Thousand Dollar Nigger has also been restored and reissued on DVD by Vinegar Syndrome) to paint a portrait of raw, pre-cable TV adults-only humor.
But here in 2016 a small portion of Moore’s work suddenly carries a different weight. Dolemite for President’s opener “Campaign Speech” is its only topical entry (the rest being adequate Moore raunchiness), alternating between bits of truth telling and brazenness while promising to legalize marijuana, prostitution (Dolemite is a pimp, after all), stealing and “every other motherfuckin’ thing you want to do.”
To this day, nobody reels off obscenities like Moore did. And it was 1972 remember, the year Nixon helped to unequivocally bury the ’60s with a 49-state landslide over George McGovern, so the candidate takes big digs at “Dick Agnew,” McGovern, and even Hubert Humphrey while paying due respect to Shirley Chisholm.
The section where Moore responds to reporter’s questions with zingers, some pointed and others goofy, drives home the piece’s essential nature; Dolemite would’ve been a terrible president. And yet after it’s over it’s hardly more outlandish than what’s been on display since the start of the Republican primary. For one track anyway, Rudy Ray Moore’s larger than life character has veered unexpectedly close to reality; ain’t that a motherfuckin’ bitch.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B+
