Rudy Ray Moore
Moore, who was in his 30s at the time, was ripe for some inspiration. He’d been poking around the entertainment industry since he was a teenager, but he couldn’t seem to catch a break. As a kid in Cleveland, he’d billed himself as the Harlem Hillbilly, singing R & B-inflected country ballads. A little later, after some coaching by a local dancer named Billy Nightengale, he moved to Milwaukee and hooked up with a traveling revue, in which he donned a turban to become the gyrating acrobatic stepper Prince Dumarr. As such he barnstormed the midwest and the south until 1950, when he was drafted.
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What Rico recited on that fateful day was a profane narrative starring a folk hero called Dolemite–an urban updating of characters like Railroad Bill and Stagger Lee, who’d populated African-American toasts, rhymes, and dozens sessions for generations. Outlaw tricksters who hustled, fought, and fucked their way through life on their own terms, they were descendants of the likes of Brer Rabbit and the cunning slave John, who duped his slow-witted master into giving him his freedom. Many folklorists believe their lineage extends all the way back to African deities like Eshu, the shape-shifting guardian of the crossroads. But unlike Eshu, John, or Brer Rabbit, outlaws like Stagger Lee and Dolemite were as willing to raise hell in their own communities as they were to challenge established authority. Their status in respectable black society was only marginally better than it would have been in white society–had whites any idea they existed.
Only occasionally had the hard-core street culture from which they sprang ever been represented on record, even in the blues tradition. The most notable example was probably Lucille Bogan’s “Shave ’em Dry,” from 1935: “I got nipples on my titties big as the end o’ my thumb / I got somethin’ between my legs make a dead man come.” Moore, realizing this, lured Rico to his house with “reefer and some wine,” taped him telling his stories, and then recorded his own versions. He’d bankrolled several of his own projects in the past and, figuring he had nothing to lose, compiled his recordings into a full-length album called Eat Out More Often. He hand-delivered copies to distributors; he played the LP in person for record store owners.
I’m the bed-shaker, the slat-breaker, the baby-maker!
The baaadest pimpin’ hustlin’ motherfucker
“My very dear friend Earl Calloway, I got to give him a lot of credit. Earl Calloway did so much for my career. He wrote in the Chicago Defender–I still got the article–‘Dolemite is not fit for a blind dog to see. It’s coarse, bold, crude, and rude.’ And, of course, this made people say, ‘We’re going to see how crude and rude this Dolemite is!’”
