Print
Email
AT A GLANCE
Foxx, Redd
2 articles on Foxx, Redd
Foxx, Redd
Source: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition
Word Count: 375 Includes: Bibliography1922–1991
African American comedian and actor, known for his television role on Sanford and Son. Redd Foxx was born John Elroy Sanford in St. Louis, Missouri. Called Redd because of his red hair and light complexion, he added the name Foxx after baseball player Jimmy Foxx. Redd Foxx dropped out of high school to play in a washtub band with friends. In 1939 they went to New York, calling themselves the Bon-Bons, but the band dissolved during World War II (1939–1945).Rejected by the army, Foxx began to perform standup comedy in nightclubs. Teamed with Slappy White, he worked the African American nightclub circuit from 1951–1955. After the two broke up, Foxx moved to the West Coast to work. In 1956he recorded the first of his fifty “party albums,” comedy ...
Read full articleFoxx, Redd
Source: African American National Biography
Word Count: 1193 Includes: Further Reading(9 Dec. 1922–11 Nov. 1991), comedian, was born John Elroy Sanford in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Fred Sanford, an electrician, and Mary Carson, a radio preacher and domestic worker. He spent his early childhood in St. Louis. After his father deserted the home in 1926, he and his mother moved to Chicago, where she worked for the vice president of the Chicago White Sox baseball team. While attending DuSable High School, he and two friends formed a washtub band, the Bon Bons. In 1939 the trio hopped a freight train to New York, where they met with sporadic success. Although they performed mostly on street corners and in subway stations, they occasionally appeared at the Apollo Theater and on the Major Bowes Amateur Hour.Friends nicknamed Sanford “Chicago Red” ...
Read full article
