With his boisterous rhyming, highly developed braggadocio and salacious, profanity-laced routines, Rudy Ray Moore was a stand-up comedian and film actor who was credited with having helped to shape modern hip-hop culture.

He called himself “the Godfather of Rap”, and those who have included samples of his recordings in their own releases include the hip-hop artists Dr Dre, Big Daddy Kane and 2 Live Crew. “Without Rudy Ray Moore there would be no Snoop Dogg, and that’s for real,” one of hip-hop’s biggest stars declared in 2006.

Born Rudolph Frank Moore in 1927 in Fort Smith, Arkansas, he moved north to Cleveland, Ohio, as a young man during the Second World War. He developed his skills as an entertainer after he was drafted into the US Army in 1950, performing as “the Harlem Hillbilly”, a daring excursion for the time across the racial divide in which he sang country and western songs in a black R&B style.

After his discharge, he released several records as a singer under the name Rudy Moore, enjoying minor success with songs such as Hully Gully Papa. By the 1960s he was making comedy records, his rhyming, beatdriven routines rooted in a story-telling tradition that could be dated back via plantation folklore and Uncle Remus to the folk art heritage of the West African storytellers known as griots. Moore populated his rhyming stories with a vivid cast of characters such as “Petey” Wheatstraw, Pimpin’ Sam and Hurricane Annie, whose salacious sexual escapades were recounted in a rude, rollicking style that exceeded even the close-to-theknuckle routines of black comedians such as Richard Pryor.

Several of his comedy records featured nude photographs of Moore and various women in suggestive poses and had to be sold under plain brown paper wrappers. While this kept him out of the mainstream, with little exposure on television, it helped to build him a cult following and a supportive fan base.

In 1970, when he was working at a record store in Hollywood, he began to develop a character called Dolemite, based on an articulate pimp that he worked into his comedy routines and records. Moore then immortalised the character in the 1975 film, Dolemite. Produced for just $100,000 — he poured all the earnings from his records into making it — the film became a cult classic among aficionados of “blaxploitation” movies, as Moore outrageously exaggerated his black character in a manner that transcended the stereotype he was spoofing.

His character’s declaration — “Dolemite is my name and rappin’ and tappin that’s my game, I’m young and free and just as bad as I wanna be” — was an obvious precursor of the rap style and, as hip-hop culture took hold in the 1980s, Moore found himself elevated to a cult hero. He appeared on Big Daddy Kane’s 1990 album Taste of Chocolate and 2 Live Crew’s 1994 album Back at Your Ass for the Nine-4, and Snoop Dogg paid generous tribute to his influence in the liner notes of a 2006 reissue of the soundtrack to Dolemite.

In 2000 he reprised his Dolemite character in the film Big Money Hustlas. Moore made his final recording in 2008 when he resurrected his Petey Wheatstraw character in the song I Live for the Funk.

Moore is survived by his daughter.

Rudy Ray Moore, comedian and actor, was born on March 17, 1927. He died on October 19, 2008, aged 81