The co-authors of a book about a Chicago comedy club that helped launch the careers of numerous top comedians spoke to students today at the Fort Hayes campus. One of the writers has ties to the school and Columbus.
Mike Foley reports.
Cedric the Entertainer, D.L Hughley, Dave Chappelle, Steve Harvey, and Chris Rock are just some of the comedians whose careers benefited from performing at All Jokes Aside in Chicago. Raymond Lambert opened the club in 1991 to give comedians something he thought they were lacking at the time, opportunity. Lacking his own resources too, Lambert’s big break for the club came with the help of this medium.
“As fate would have it, we did two or three shows back to back to back which really came about from radio. Radio had introduced us to a whole wider audience. One of the radio programmers had one of those lucky fate things, came to a show and thought this is great, and why don’t you bring a comedian on the air and I’ll let you promote him for five minutes, and that was Steve Harvey. That sort of changed the whole dynamic and obviously launched his radio career at the same time.”
The commonality among the comedians who went on to do bigger and better things – work ethic and a unique perspective according to Lambert. All Jokes Aside also had the distinction of being the only black-owned comedy club at the time with a dress code for the audience and the comedians.
“Because everybody is going to be looking at it as if one – are you capable of running something in a professional and a well-mannered business that’s well run and respected – even within the black community, it’s going to be looked upon that way. So for me the expectations had to be high – how the club looked, how people dressed when they came, what the comedian’s material was, how we managed it, how the staff was trained…I wanted all that to be top notch so we could blow all those myths and all that negative baggage that we even carry internally in a lot of instances out the window. So we had to have that kind of discipline in order to do it. And when you get dressed up to go out, you act differently.”
Lambert encouraged students to be obsessed with their field rather than simply passionate about it. He wrote the book with Columbus journalist Chris Bournea, a graduate of Fort Hayes. Bournea’s message to students:
“You can create art anywhere. You don’t have to necessarily move to New York or Los Angeles. That’s one pathway, but I was born and raised in Columbus. I’m still here. I just mainly want them to know that whatever their dreams are, if they decide to stay in Columbus or venture out, it’s possible to achieve their dreams.”
Some believe the comedy club’s closure in 1998 left a void that’s never been filled. Lambert agrees and says he’s planning a four or five-day comedy festival for next year in Chicago. Lambert and Bournea will be signing copies of the “All Jokes Aside” book in Columbus Wednesday evening from 7-9 at the Easton Barnes and Noble.
For additional information, contact Eric Troy ejtglobal1@gmail.com
