Rudy Ray Moore, the actor, comedian and musician who was perhaps more responsible than anyone for creating the lasting urban archetype of the flamboyant, hustling pimp, has died at the age of 81. The man born Rudolph Frank Moore in Fort Smith, Arkansas passed away yesterday in Akron, Ohio of complications from diabetes, according to a family friend.
Moore, whose own past as a lowlife hustler has always been difficult to trace -- given that he was the only source, and grotesque comic exaggeration was his stock in trade -- came of age putting out so-called "party records" for black audiences. Unapolagetically ribald and wild, often distributed on the gray market and issued at a rapid clip, "party records" were also where Richard Pryor and Redd Foxx saw their first success, but Moore never found a mainstream audience as did those men. His work was always ruder, cruder, and more sexually explicit than even Foxx's blue material -- which made him a natural for the blaxploitation era. His two most famous roles were honed from characters created in his stand-up and party-record days: Petey Wheatstraw, the Devil's Son-in-Law, and the unforgettable super-pimp Dolemite, the role which brought him his greatest fame. So closely was he associated with the role that many fans simply called him "Dolemite" for the rest of his career.
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