If comedian Deon Cole tell you he has a story to tell, you’d better stop what you’re doing and listen, because it’s gonna be good. From the time Stevie Wonder stole his girlfriend to the time singer Stephanie Mills planted a kiss on him during an interview with ‘The Breakfast Club,’ he’s got enough amazing anecdotes for a page-turning memoir.
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Now, Cole is sharing an unbelievable story about an experience he had with a famous heckler that is both hilarious and tragic. In a recent sit-down with Tank and J. Valentine on the ‘R&B Money Podcast,’ Cole revealed that the late legendary R&B singer Phyllis Hyman was one of his toughest critics, heckling him relentlessly until what would tragically be the last weeks of her life.
“Phyllis Hyman would always come to the shows in Chicago. She would sit in the back of the room and heckle me to the all end,”Cole said. “All the way up until her death.”
Cole said he was a frequent guest host for a variety show put on by fellow Chicago comedian Bernie Mac at a local nightclub, Milt Tranier’s. Hyman was in the audience and was not shy about letting Cole know that she was not amused.
“One time, I was hosting the show, and you just hear her go, “Boo!” he said.
Cole said he tried to keep his cool, but the boos didn’t stop. When he finally fired back at her, he said someone in the band let him know that his heckler wasn’t any old audience member. The Philadelphia-born singer made a name for herself in jazz clubs in New York City and singing jingles for brands like Clairol and Burger King before signing with Clive Davis’ Arista Records in 1978 and releasing hits like “You Know How to Love Me” and “Living All Alone.”
“I was like, ‘Shut up, b*. Why is you booing me?’” he said. “And then one of the band members was like, “That’s Phyllis Hyman…the chick from ‘School Daze,’”
But rather than the sophisticated lady he recognized from her performance in the 1988 Spike Lee musical film about HBCU life, “School Daze,” Cole said the Hyman who was giving him a hard time at the club wasn’t nearly as polished, wearing jeans, a cropped white leather jacket with shoulder pads set off by messy hair and no makeup.
Cole said Hyman’s heckling kept going throughout his time on stage and even followed him to another Chicago club.
“I leave, and I go to another club called the Cotton Club, and I’ve been waiting on these five minutes for a whole week,” he said.
But his five minutes of fame wouldn’t last long. No sooner than he could introduce himself to the audience, Hyman was back to booing.
“We don’t give a f* who your name is,” Cole said he heard from the audience. “I look, and it’s her again.”
According to Cole, Hyman’s harassment didn’t stop with booing.
“[She] came on stage, took the mic from me, started talking about me, dissing me and s*t in front of everybody,” he said.
Cole said the incident brought him to tears and even intimidated him from taking the stage again.
“The last time she did that s*t to me, I was like tearing up,” he said. “You gotta wait a whole week for 5 to 10 minutes and she kept f*ing it up and I don’t know what to do because I can’t win because everybody loves this chick.”
But just when he was ready to give up, Hyman approached Cole with a proposition that was almost too good to be true – a chance to open up for her on tour.
“Look man, ain’t nobody trying to f* with you like that. I like you. Actually, I want you to go on tour with me, open up,” Cole recalled. “I just wanted to see if you can handle this s*.”
Sadly, the opportunity never materialized. Three weeks after that invitation, Cole said he heard the news that Hyman had passed away. The singer, who struggled with depression and addiction, died of a drug overdose on June 30, 1995, just days before her 46th birthday.
Hearing the tragic news, Cole said he went down a rabbit hole, listening to Hyman’s music. He said that although he knew the songs well, he never knew the troubled woman behind the music.
“She was different, man. I think she was so scorned like them last days,” he said. “She looked nothing like in ‘School Daze.’ You wouldn’t have even known it was her.”
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