Tommy Chong |
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Thomas "Tommy" B. Kin Chong (born May 24, 1938) is a Canadian comedian, actor and musician who is well-known for his stereotypical portrayals of hippie-era stoners. He is most widely known for his involvement in the marijuana-themed Cheech & Chong comedy movies with Cheech Marin, as well as playing the character Leo Chingkwake on FOX's That '70s Show.
Chong was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, the son of Lorna Jean (born Gilchrist), a waitress, and Stanley Chong, a truck driver. Chong's father was of Chinese descent and his mother was of Scots-Irish ancestry. Chong graduated from Victoria Composite High School, a school now recognized in Edmonton as a major performing and visual arts K-12 International Baccalaureate school. When Chong was still young, the family moved to Calgary, Alberta, to a neighbourhood Chong refers to as the Dog Patch. He says that his father had "been wounded in World War II, and there was a veterans' hospital in Calgary. He bought a five-hundred dollar house in Dog Patch, and raised his family on fifty dollars a week". He later went on to graduate from Victoria School back in Edmonton, Alberta.
By the early 1960s, Chong was playing guitar for a Calgary soul group called The Shades. The Shades moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, where the band's name changed to "Little Daddy & The Bachelors". They recorded a single, "Too Much Monkey Business" / "Junior's Jerk". Together with bandmember Bobby Taylor, Chong opened a Vancouver nightclub in 1963 called the Blues Palace, formerly the Alma Theatre. They brought in the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, which had never been to Vancouver before. Although Little Daddy & The Bachelors built up a small following, things soured when they went with Chong's suggestion and had themselves billed as "Four Niggers and a Chink". (or, bowing to pressure, "Four N's and a C") before taking on the moniker Bobby Taylor & the Vancouvers.