“Party records were albums that people would play at night after the kids went to bed, records you weren’t supposed to have. They weren’t on the shelves at record stores. You would have to ask for them, then they would reach under the counter and put them in a paper bag. It was almost like you were doing a drug deal!”
Laff Records was the label that really cemented the party record genre in the 60s. Comedians who recorded on this blue/comedy label included Richard Pryor, Redd Foxx, Lawanda Page – along with Pipe Layin Dan, Tina Dixon, Skillet & Leroy, and Richard & Willie (a ventriloquist act once described as "Pryor with a dummy"). Even George Carlin recorded his album Killer Carlin on Laff Records.
Integral to the success of the Party Record in the late 1960s was the influence of a mysterious x-rated band by the name of Snatch and the Poontangs. In fact made up of father and son musical legends, Johnny and Shuggie Otis. The release of their first filthy-folk-law-psychedelic-rock album in 1969 ushered in the rediscovery of traditional african american storytelling and x-rated comedy, an artform which Rudy Ray Moore aka The Dolemite would find great success with in the mid 1970s. The Johnny Otis Show also promoted and appeared live with acts such as Skillet & Leroy.
Party records helped to integrate the stand-up comedy scene. The label worked with black comics who were touring through the chitlin’ circuit. These comedians were ignored by larger record labels. Party records proved that these comedians were wildly popular, but who otherwise may have slip through the cracks at a major label. Perhaps one of the most underrated things about Laff was its openness to female comics. One of the best acts on the label was the rawest chick this side of the Mississippi, LaWanda Page, who played devoted Baptist brimstone hauler Aunt Esther on Sanford and Son - the US version of Steptow and Son. In her earlier days, Page was a dancer and a fire-eater who billed herself as the “Bronze Goddess of Fire.” Turning to comedy when she was already over 50, anyone who listened to Page’s debut Mutha Is Half a Word (1971) or the gold-selling sophomore disc Watch It, Sucker! (1972) expecting the Bible-thumping shrew from Sanford was in for a surprise. Skits titled “Husbands & Whores,” “Open Drawer Whores,” and “Freaks” say it all.
While some ’60s era black comics like Dick Gregory and Nipsey Russell performed in Las Vegas and dressed in tuxedos on television, most of the Laff artists toured the chitlin’ circuit, playing Negro resorts and urban clubs. Yet, according to comedy historian Daryl Littleton, not all comedians wanted to be in the desert entertaining crossover audiences and amusing the Rat Pack. “All comics have to be true to themselves or they end up killing themselves,” Littleton says. “These comics simply wanted to play for a crowd that appreciated them for what they were. This was who they were, and they figured their true audience would find them.” Drozen felt the same way with the label. When asked by Billboard why he didn’t import his records to the UK, he replied, “They may understand English, but they never seem to understand the humor.”
The album covers for Laff Records - shot mostly by Bud Fraker and Dominic Belmonte - weren’t even visible when they landed on the shelves of the record stores. Just like the display of pornography at the time, the records were sometimes sold wrapped in brown paper and the words: “For Adults Only.” Covers would often include scenes of topless women with the nipples covered by stickers, which you could choose to peel off. Meanwhile, the back covers had liner notes written in a brilliant carny barker style sales pitch, authored by the one time Laff Records bookkeeper, Shelby Meadows Ashford, who discovered a gift for smutty rhyming couplets.
“A parade of clowns and jesters…so, like it or lump it, hate or hump it…your lights are gonna be blinking bright over this risqué disc…Blackfolk taught Whitefolk how to dance and then they taught Whitefolk to LAFF…spend another XXX filled evening with another XXX filled album.”
Other legendary party record performers such as Rudy Ray Moore and the weirdest motherfucka of them all, Blow Fly, stayed totally independent, releasing most of their catalogue via their own home-made labels. Recording, cutting, manufacturing and distributing these dirty gems almost entirely by themselves.
