Grady Was a Popular Neighbor on “Sanford and Son,” With a Theme Song by Quincy Jones

TV’s Sanford and Son spawned not only a theme song by a future music legend, but a beloved supporting character who headlined a spinoff show.

by Rich Watson 

This post is for the Neighbors Blogathon, a blog event spotlighting neighbor characters on TV and in film. At the end I’ll tell you where you can find more posts like this.

Sanford and Son was an American remake of the sixties British sitcom Steptoe and Son. It had an instrumental theme song composed by musician and record producer Quincy Jones.

Redd Foxx, a former nightclub comedian made famous through his raunchy comedy records, starred. His supporting cast included a character who starred in a spinoff series of his own.

Quincy Jones’ theme song, “The Streetbeater”

Quincy Jones spent years playing trumpet with jazz luminaries such as Lionel Hampton, Tommy Dorsey and Duke Ellington until joining Mercury Records, beginning in 1957. At one point he became vice-president. He also composed film scores, including the one for 1967’s In The Heat of the Night. 

In 1969 he joined A&M Records, where his Body Heat album went gold. In 1971 he became the first black to conduct the Academy Awards ceremony.

Around this time, S&S co-executive producer Bud Yorkin approached Jones to write the theme song for the forthcoming series.

Jones knew of Foxx, having worked with him on the “chitlin circuit” at venues like New York’s Apollo Theater. He couldn’t believe someone as lewd as Foxx would become a TV star, but Yorkin reassured him it would work. 

Jones wrote “The Streetbeater” in about twenty minutes. He included it on his 1973 album You’ve Got it Bad Girl, which he produced.

Sanford and Son: crude yet entertaining, like Foxx

S&S debuted the year before, on NBC. It peaked at number two in the ratings during the 72-73 season and went on to a six-year run.

Foxx and co-star Demond Wilson played proprietors of a junk-dealing business in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. According to white writer Ted Bergman, Foxx was less concerned about social issues facing black people at the time and cared more about laughs:

[Foxx] wasn’t really interested in social injustices, other than he was a Black man in 1975, ten years removed from the [civil rights] march in Selma [Alabama] and water cannons and attack dogs. I just wrote what I thought was funny and let the cast handle the rest.

That cast included characters with whom Foxx’s Fred Sanford maintained a cantankerous relationship: Lynn Hamilton as Foxx’s sometime girlfriend Donna, Nathaniel Taylor as Wilson’s friend Rollo, and especially LaWanda Page as Fred’s sister-in-law Esther.

One supporting character in particular did well.

Whitman Mayo as Grady

Whitman Mayo was only in his forties when he played Foxx’s buddy Grady, who looked and acted at least twenty years older. Mayo said he had always enjoyed playing older: “Older people are like children. They can do and say what they want and get away with it.”

He was Norton to Foxx’s Ralph, so to speak, not terribly bright but good-hearted and always involved in one of Fred’s get-rich-quick schemes.

At one point during the series, Foxx temporarily left due to a contract dispute. For six episodes, Mayo took a more central role.

In 1975 Mayo starred in the S&S spinoff series Grady. His character moves from Watts to Westwood and lives with his daughter. Future movie star Joe Morton (Brother From Another Planet, Terminator 2) appeared in it, as did future What’s Happening!! star Haywood Nelson. 

Foxx reprised his role as Fred for the initial episode, but it only lasted for nine more before cancellation.

Also in 1975, Mayo opened a travel agency in Inglewood, which expanded to Dallas and Washington DC. In later years he became a college professor, a youth counselor and motivational speaker.

Grady, however, disappeared after the seventies, but Conan O’Brien initiated a search for him.

Quincy Jones in later years

As for Jones, his career exploded in the eighties when he produced Michael Jackson’s 1982 album Thriller. A year later it had sold 32 million copies. It became the best-selling album of all time. 

In 1985 Jones co-produced the all-star charity song “We Are the World,” which helped raise over $80 million to combat famine in Africa. That same year his score for the film The Color Purple received an Oscar nomination.

His 28 Grammys are third on the all-time list. Among his many awards include two honorary doctorates and the National Medal of Arts from former President Obama.

@byrichwatson

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More posts in the Neighbors Blogathon can be found at Taking Up Room, from May 24-26.