Redd Foxx showed he could play nice if he had to (well, relatively nice) on his first comedy album for a major label, 1966's
The Both Sides of Redd Foxx, but his follow-up, 1967's
On the Loose: Recorded Live!, found the legendary "blue" comic in more familiar form.
On the Loose is still a somewhat cleaner and neater affair than the dozens of albums
Foxx cut for Dooto or MF, but here
Foxx sounds more at home and gives his raunchy side freer reign than he did on
Both Sides, telling stories about a stripper who gets stuck to the stage while doing the splits, how to grow hair through oral sex, and why short buffalo were popular with cowboys, and concluding with the words "If anyone here in the audience has been offended by anything I might have said or done in the course of my trying to entertain you, I want you to know sincerely and from the bottom of my heart, I don't give a s**t."
On the Loose finds
Foxx jumping from one bit to another with machine-gun precision, generally avoiding longer routines, and his performance is at once more relaxed and better focused than on his first set for Loma Records. (There's also a bit on the virtues of blowing your money, which given
Foxx's money troubles later in his career suggests he may have taken a bit too much of his own advice.) The material is a little less risqué and the recording quality is better, but
On the Loose is otherwise a reasonable major-label re-creation of the sort of act that made
Redd Foxx one of the legends of American comedy in the '50s and '60s, and his funky humor and wise-guy delivery still bring laughs 40 years after this was recorded.