Redd Foxx was signed to Loma Records, the R&B subsidiary of Reprise, in 1966, and when Loma was folded in 1968, he was moved to Reprise's parent label, Warner Bros. Records, for the 1969 album
Up Against the Wall. But while
Foxx may have been working with different label bosses and the title suggested the new militancy of the late '60s,
Up Against the Wall was pretty much just what fans had come to expect from
Foxx. Recorded live at
Foxx's nightclub in Los Angeles,
Up Against the Wall documents what was doubtless a typical set for the comic, a collection of short bits and one-liners usually dealing with sex and race in a good-natured but sharp-tongued manner.
Up Against the Wall keeps up with the times in the sense that it's a bit raunchier than
Foxx's albums for Loma, arriving at a time when the rise of the counterculture and the appearance of the movie rating system led to a franker degree of public discourse, but
Foxx's bits about newlyweds, salesmen, old maids, and drunks are in the grand old tradition of "blue humor" that he helped to popularize with his long series of adults-only "party records." In fact, the number of
Redd Foxx albums on the market may well have been why this was his first and last album on Warner Bros.;
Foxx had been able to negotiate a non-exclusive deal with Loma, and his major-label albums ended up competing in the marketplace with material
Foxx leased to King Records as well as a steady flow of LPs on his own MF Records imprint. But
Up Against the Wall enjoyed greater circulation than most of
Foxx's other albums, and it's an enjoyable document of the man's cheerfully rude standup act as the 1960s were drawing to a close and the '70s (which would propel
Foxx into stardom on television) were just around the corner. ~ Mark Deming