Nipsey Russell biography

Synopsis

Early Life

Nipsey Russell was born as Julius Russell around 1925 in Atlanta, Georgia. Because his birth certificate has been lost, his precise birth date remains unknown, but upon his death in 2005 friends said that he was 80 years old. Russell received the nickname "Nipsey" as a baby — "My mother just liked the way the name Nipsey sounded," he explained. Russell began performing when he was only a toddler, and at the age of three he joined a children's dance team called "The Ragamuffins of Rhythm." By the age of six, he had become the singing and dancing master of ceremonies for a local Atlanta children's troupe run by the jazz musician Eddie Heywood, Sr. Russell traced his interest in comedy back to seeing a performance by the African-American performer Jack Wiggins around the age of nine. Russell recalled, "He came out immaculately attired in a well-dressed street suit and he tap-danced. As he danced, he told little jokes in between. He was so clean in his language and was lacking in any drawl, he just inspired me. I wanted to do that."

In addition to his knack for performing, the young Russell was also a precocious scholar with literary inclinations. By age ten, he was devouring the works of English poets such as Chaucer, Shelley and Keats as well as working through Homer's epics in the original Greek. He graduated early from high school at the age of 15, having spent his senior year living with an aunt in Cincinnati so that he could attend the University of Cincinnati tuition-free. However, Russell's studies were interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. He served a four-year enlistment in the Army and was commissioned as a captain in the field. Upon the conclusion of the war, he returned to the University of Cincinnati and graduated with a degree in classical literature in 1946.

Comedy

After graduating from college, Russell decided to forgo academic pursuits to try his luck as a standup comedian. At the time Russell embarked on his show business career in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the United States remained deeply segregated, and he performed in exclusively black comedy clubs on the East Coast, in the Midwest and in Canada. However, by the late 1950s, Russell was booking shows at the top Catskills resorts as well as at the Apollo in Harlem. Around the same time, he began a seven-year tenure — the longest in the club's history — at the Baby Grand, a Manhattan nightclub that, largely due to Russell's act, began to attract white crowds as well as black. It was at the Baby Grand that Russell refined his comedic style, an intelligent, often overtly erudite routine that dealt with a wide variety of subject matter. "I use mother-in-law jokes, kid jokes, tax jokes — anything that works," Russell explained. He defied the stereotypical roles associated with black performers by persistently refusing to use dialects or play a fool.