These lyrics from the Doobie Brothers' classic '70s hit "What a Fool Believes" sums up the position me and my friend Raymond Lambert found ourselves in, in November 2014.
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| Herbie Hancock's autobiography offered insights on how to tell Raymond's story. |
Raymond and I co-wrote the new book "All Jokes Aside: Comedy Is a Phunny Business." The book tells the story of how Raymond rose from a working-class childhood to become a successful investment banker and later co-founded the legendary Chicago comedy club All Jokes Aside.
Raymond made a well-received documentary about the club titled "Phunny Business," and "All Jokes Aside" goes more in-depth into telling Raymond's life story. The book also includes extended anecdotes about the famous comedians who got their start there - the likes of Chris Rock, Dave Chapelle, Mo'Nique, Steve Harvey, Adele Givens, Cedric the Entertainer, D.L. Hughley and many other kings and queens of comedy.
Raymond is a great storyteller, and we worked in tandem, writing and editing each other's work. For some reason, when we started writing the book in 2013, we told Raymond's story in third person. For example, instead of writing, "I picked Chris Rock up from the airport for his weekend engagement at All Jokes Aside," we wrote, "He picked Chris Rock up from the airport..."
Initially, the text seemed to flow better in third person.
By the time came to turn the book into the publisher in the fall of 2014, Raymond and I felt that we had a pretty strong manuscript. It helps that Raymond's life is an inspiring Horatio Alger-type tale, and it certainly doesn't hurt that the story of All Jokes Aside happens to include lots of celebrity name-dropping.
Our publisher, Doug Seibold at Chicago-based Agate Publishing, was awesome to work with, giving us lots of personal handling. He didn't hesitate to let us know the strength and weaknesses of the manuscript. He was diplomatic in informing us that he couldn't publish a book billed as an autobiography that was written in the third person.
So, this is where those Doobie Brothers lyrics come in: we had to recreate what had yet to be created, start all over and rewrite Raymond's story in first person.
In tackling this overwhelming task, reading other biographies and autobiographies helped a great deal. One book that was very helpful in structuring Raymond's story was "Stork Club: America's Most Famous Nightspot and the Lost World of Café Society." Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Ralph Blumenthal's book about the legendary Big Apple nightclub also chronicles the life of its colorful founder, Sherman Billingsley.
"The Stork Club" came highly recommended by Washington Post reporter Wil Haygood, who, like me, is a native of Columbus, Ohio, and got his start at the Call and Post Newspaper. Raymond had initially approached Wil about co-writing "All Jokes Aside" and Wil referred Raymond to me - a "solid" for which I'll always be grateful to Wil.
Another book that was especially helpful in converting Raymond's story from third to first person was Herbie Hancock's autobiography, "Possibilities."
One of the challenges of telling Raymond's story was how to include comments from people who were instrumental in the success of All Jokes Aside, such as club manager Ben Ross. That's where I took a cue from Herbie (whom I interviewed by phone a few years ago for a newspaper article) and how he included quotes from those who were instrumental in his life and career. For example, Herbie writes, "Here's how Wayne Shorter remembers that one incident with Miles Davis..."
Because of my passionate interest in music, I read a lot of musicians' autobiographies. While co-writing "All Jokes Aside" with Raymond, I also read "Shining Star" by Phillip Bailey of Earth, Wind & Fire and "The Universal Tone" by Carlos Santana. Both of these books provided answers on how to put together the puzzle of Raymond's story.
For example, Raymond and I quoted from Phillip Bailey's autobiography when talking about how black customers tend to wait until the last minute to buy tickets to entertainment events - something that happened at both EWF concerts and All Jokes Aside comedy shows.
These examples illustrate why reading a wide variety of material is important as a writer.
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