Tony Woods is a stand-up comedian, comedy writer and an original member of Russell Simmons’ Def Comedy Jam and P. Diddy’s Bad Boys of Comedy. Born in New York and raised in Charlotte until he was seven, then moving to D.C., Woods was an early mentor of Dave Chappelle. When Chappelle accepted the Mark Twain Prize for comedy, he compared his influence to that of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie on Miles Davis, saying, “I was trying to play like you….You were the first person I ever saw do it absolutely right.”