Club taking its humor up Strip to the Sahara

By Jerry Fink

Monday, July 20, 2009 | 2 a.m.

After almost 20 years at the south end of the Strip, the Comedy Stop will try its luck at the north end.

The club owned by Bob Kephart provided some of the funniest comedy in town at the Tropicana until Kephart walked away from the faltering resort on April 2.

The club reopens tonight at the Sahara’s historic Congo Room. “The Sahara bent over backward to bring in the club,” Kephart says. “They have really, really gone out of their way.”

The Comedy Stop will share the room with the Platters, Cornell Gunter’s Coasters and the Marvelettes, who perform at 7:30 p.m. Comedy takes over at 9 p.m. nightly. The first week’s lineup features host Jimmie “JJ” Walker, Rick Crom and Louis Ramey.

Over the years the Congo Room has been home to the likes of Charo (who recently opened at the Riviera), George Carlin, George Burns, Buddy Hackett, Don Rickles, Lena Horne, Eddie Arnold and Liza Minnelli. Sonny and Cher were to perform there in 1974 — but three minutes before show time they announced they were splitting up and canceled the show.

After he closed up shop at the Trop, Kephart says, he got offers from four other venues on the Strip. He liked the Sahara’s best.

“It really fits. I think about all the old stars that came out of the Sahara over the years and I think about all the comics I hired over the years who became stars,” among them Vegas regulars Ray Romano, Lewis Black and Drew Carey, he says. “The Sahara matches our personality.”

The Comedy Stop opened at the Tropicana in 1990. It closed on April 2, a few days after “Folies Bergere.”

Kephart says the Tropicana decided it could manage a comedy club better than he could and did not renew his contract. He fell behind in his rent and now is being sued.

“I never gave a thought of walking away from Vegas,” Kephart says. “We won the Best Comedy Club award three days after we left the Tropicana. That was hysterical to me.”

He still has his original Comedy Stop at the Tropicana in Atlantic City, which he opened in 1983 with a $700 investment.

“We opened in the middle of the winter and Atlantic City only had four casinos,” he says. “Everybody said ‘You’re crazy,’ but the reason we were successful right off was because the other four casinos had no other shows on Dec. 16. We were the only show in town.”

The club was open three days a week and every show sold out. Soon the club was open seven nights a week, playing to sold-out houses.

“The reason I’m so successful and stay in business is that I open the shows with comedians who would be the closing act in other rooms,” Kephart says.

“When the curtain goes up, the show should start. No one wants to sit through two or three boring comics and before finally getting to the headliner. A show should be funny from Jump Street. You shouldn’t be falling asleep in the second act.”