BILL MESNIK OF THE SPLENDID BOHEMIANS PRESENTS: THE SUNNY SIDE OF MY STREET - SONGS TO MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD - EPISODE #72 - QUINCY JONES - SANFORD AND SON THEME “THE STREETBREAKER” (A&M, 1973)

Redd Foxx was one funny motherfucker. And, hell on wheels. Apparently, he was the scourge of taxi drivers in Las Vegas, where he lived, worked, and is buried - because he would either throw up in the backseat of their cabs, or refuse to pay his fare, or both. As the “King of the Party Records”, Redd made 50 dirty albums (I have a few on 8 track) - before hitting national gold on Sanford and Son, that show about a junkman and his boy that ran for six seasons, starting in 1972. I just found out that Foxx’s birth name actually WAS Sanford - a factoid that makes me smile. If fact everything about him made me smile. I loved it each time he’d clutch his chest feigning a heart attack, and groaning “Elizabeth, I’m comin’ to join you, honey!” And, now, hearing Quincy Jone’s theme song again, I’m sporting a broad grin again in remembrance. Q was a master of innumerable musical genres, coming up as he did as Dinah Washington’s arranger, Sinatra’s band leader, Film scorer par excellence, and Michael Jackson’s record producer, etc, etc. Here he’s channelling Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man” - and the funky clavinet makes me want to bob my head along with the syncopation. Although the character of Fred Sanford was supposed to be in his sixties, Redd was only in his 40s when he made Sanford and Son, and he was only 68 when he died in 1991, having exhausted himself through a jam-packed roller-coaster existence. Rumor has it he died broke because the IRS has seized his assets two years earlier, so Eddie Murphy footed the bill to pay for his funeral. As Arthur Miller once wrote: “Attention must be paid!”