Kyle Parris, one-note fanboy

You’re a stand-up comic, but when you’re in the audience, your laugh is always recognizable—an operatic vibrato that eclipses everyone else’s chuckles. What gives?

I didn’t used to laugh like that. I didn’t used to laugh much at all, actually. Not that I was morose or anything. But when I was a little kid, I had, like, a breather laugh. [Low, snorty sound] Like that.

One day, the other laugh sort of came out. I was about 15, at home.

I feel it in my throat, and it takes something really funny to get me to do it. If I laugh like that two or three times in an evening, that’s pretty fucking amazing. Not that I think the show sucks, but I see comedy at least three to four nights a week. My threshold for comedy is a lot higher than a regular civilian.

Sometimes, audiences don’t like it, but when I was in Kansas City [a few years ago], people would laugh more at my laugh than at the comic. In Chicago, there are comedians who judge the quality of their work based on whether or not they hear me laugh. They think, Okay, that joke works.

It’s odd because I’ve never known a person to be famous for their laugh, unless it’s Eddie Murphy. I’ve been compared to him, and it’s not just ’cause I’m also black. Ba-dum-ching.

Parris hopes others sing his praises at Pressure Open Mic Thursday 14 and the Globe Gong Idol September 1.