As I wrote in this post about the very beginning of my stand-up comedy career (such as it was), Dave Chappelle was a regular at the comedy club in Washington, D.C., where I made my debut. This was back in 1991, so Chappelle was only 17, based on the birthdate given for him on his Wikipedia page (talk about deep research!). But I distinctly remember being told back then that Chappelle was 19.

So either 1) Wikipedia has his birthdate wrong, 2) Dave was 17 but said he was 19, 3) Whoever told me Chappelle was 19 either was wrong or high (or both), or 4) I was wrong or high (or both). All are equal possibilities.

I mentioned in the earlier post that the Comedy Cafe’s regular open-mic host, The Fat Doctor, always introduced Chappelle as someone who was “going to be a star.” And you could see why, especially knowing how young Dave was. It’s not like Chappelle was blowing the other open-micers off the stage, it’s just that he clearly was a cut above them. Dave had more polish than anybody there — no hesitation in his delivery, no forgetting jokes, no monotone, good eye contact with the crowd, a complete lack of discernible nervousness or fear.

Having said that, Chappelle still wasn’t great by any stretch. He was just the best of an open-mic crowd. Dave wasn’t nearly as good as any number of comics you’d see back then on “Evening at the Improv,” the Budd Friedman stand-up comedy show that ran for years on A&E. But how could he be? They were seasoned, professional comedians. Chappelle was a work-in-progress, someone who had training (he had gone to — or maybe still attended — a performing-arts high school in D.C.) but lacked the years-long experience of trying out jokes, honing them, discarding the weak ones — in other words, building an act.

In the video below, Chappelle uses a joke that was in his set back in early 1991. Actually, it was more than in his set, it was one of his big laugh-getters. He might even have closed with it at the time (at least at the open-mic nights). It doesn’t come until the 0:58 mark of the video. It’s his “Batman” bit.

Word for word, Chappelle’s “Batman” joke in this video — which probably is from a performance in the 1994-1998 range — is virtually identical to the way I had seen him do it several times in 1991, especially how he delivers the punchline. What’s different in the video is his much stronger facial and body gestures, his use of space and vocal tone in the set-up — in other words, he now is performing the joke, not just telling it. Which comes from familiarity with the material, stage time and confidence. And if there’s one thing you sense from watching Dave Chappelle perform, it’s his confidence and apparent sense of ease.

I emphasize apparent because when you watch Chappelle in the clips below being interviewed by James Tilton for a segment of Inside the Actors Studio, he appears awkward and uncomfortable (though humble and honest). Dave talks about his early days in stand-up, bombing at New York’s Apollo open-mic night (and how it liberated him), and his fondness for weed.

There are some good clips from Chappelle’s show that I’ll feature from time to time in The Bonedaddy Kingdom because, well, they’re funny.