Released October 17, 2000 Length + 7 hours | ||
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Recorded September 1968–October 17, 1992 Producer Robert MarcheseRichard PryorDavid BanksBiff Dawes Awards Grammy Award for Best Album Notes | ||
...And It's Deep, Too! The Complete Warner Bros. Recordings (1968–1992) is a compilation of all of Richard Pryor's recordings with Warner Bros. Records. It contains material recorded between 1968 and 1992 and was released in 2000 through Rhino Entertainment. The collection won an award in the Grammy Awards of 2001 for Walter Mosley's liner notes.
Background
The collection includes eight CDs released on Warner Bros. between 1968 and 1983: plus a ninth CD of previously unreleased material. These albums include:
His 1968 self-titled album contains conventional standup material. In contrast, his 1974 album That Nigger's Crazy featured the comedy style which made him famous focusing on racial issues with plenty of swearing. That album was a breakthrough for Pryor, going platinum, and winning a Grammy in the Grammy Awards of 1975 for Best Comedy Performance.
...is it something I said? was another success critically, topping the Billboard black charts, going platinum and winning another Grammy for Best Comedy performance. Bicentennial Nigger won him his third Grammy award in three years and went top 5 in the black charts. Pryor won a fourth Grammy for Live On The Sunset Strip in 1982.
Pryor's career suffered a major setback in 1980 when he was badly burnt while freebasing cocaine, which he acknowledged in his "Live on Sunset Boulevard" performance. During this, he waved a lit match around, and stated, "This is Richard Pryor, Running down the street!" In 1986, Pryor announced that he had multiple sclerosis and this eventually led to his retirement as a standup comedian in 1992. This album features some material from his 1992 concerts.
In 1998, Richard Pryor won the first Mark Twain Prize for American Humor from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. This album contains all of the material that earned him that award.
The box set went out of print sometime after and was later re-issued in 2013, albeit without the first and last discs, as The Warner Bros. Albums (1974-1983).