Hot comic Rickey Smiley headlines MLK tribute weekend

Rickey Smiley

Comedian Rickey Smiley's schedule over the next few days will put him at the heart of the African-American experience. Tonight the black comic headlines the Third Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Peace and Freedom Tribute Celebration at Sam's Town Casino's River Palace Entertainment Center.

Then, following a sold-out show in Biloxi, Miss., Smiley heads to Washington, where his top-rated syndicated morning radio show will broadcast from the inauguration of the nation's first black president, Barack Obama.

Rickey Smiley

"Is this a wonderful time or what for our people, or what?" says Smiley, who met Obama when he performed at a fundraiser last year for the President-elect. "I'm just so glad to be alive right now. I'm glad to be in this position to experience all the change that is happening."

The position Smiley is in right now is that of one of the nation's hottest young comics. In the business 15-years, he has already become a multimedia threat: He has starred in movies like the Ice Cub comedies Friday After Next and First Sunday. His television work includes a stint hosting "BET's Comic View" as well appearances on "Showtime At the Apollo" and "Def Comedy Jam." He's even had success on stage, appearing as his beloved character, the elderly, irrepressible church organist Bernice Jenkins, in the play "Didn't Nobody Call and Tell Me Nothing."

His biggest success, however, has been on the airwaves as host of "the Rickey Smiley and Deez Nuts Morning Show." Smiley began broadcasting the show for Dallas' KBFB in 2004 and today the show is heard in 32 markets. (It is does not currently air in Memphis.)

All this has added up to a success the self-confessed smart aleck could not have foreseen when he was causing trouble in high school in Birmingham, Ala.

"(Comedy) was a passion," he remembers. "You know the class clown. Well, I wasn't the class clown. I was the guy who always used to make the other person get in trouble. At some point I realized: Hey, I could do this for real."

While attending Alabama State, Smiley made his first forays into professional standup.

"I was struggling to make money at the time," he recalls. "Back then I used to go from city to city making $100 and glad to get it. Me and Mo'Nique and some more of us in a car just grinding it out."

As a young comic, Smiley found inspiration in older comedians like Steve Harvey, whose encouragement allowed Smiley to not only continue performing but also to be himself and not work blue just because everyone else was.

"I think comedy can be funny without being nasty and raunchy," Smiley says of his comedy, which pushes good taste as far as it can go without crossing the line into vulgarity. "Everything doesn't have to be sex, sex, sex. I have a church-based crowd, so I'm going to be bringing funny in a clean way. It's going to be edgy, but you're not going to be going home saying, 'Rickey cussed and Rickey did this and Rickey talked about sex.' "

In his early days, Smiley became famous for the characters he would create on stage, oddballs like Jenkins and the petulant bespectacled grade schooler Lil' Daryl. Such characters are still a part of Smiley's infamous prank phone calls, bits that form the backbone of Smiley's radio show. Next month, Smiley will release his sixth CD compilation of prank calls.

But the characters have been largely absent from Smiley's stand-up in recent years. But he says audiences shouldn't be surprised if one or two make an appearance tonight.

"All those people are in my mind so they're going to be there no matter what," he says, "and you just never know when they're going to come out."

Third Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Peace and Freedom Tribute Celebration with Rickey Smiley

8 p.m. Friday at Sam's Town's River Palace Entertainment Center in Tunica, Miss. Tickets: $35; available at the Sam's Town box office (800-456-0711, ext. 45712) and through all Ticketmaster outlets. Visit samstowntunica for more information.

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