The team with which he is best known is "Redd Foxx and 'Slappy' White". Foxx and White met in Harlem in 1947 and formed a comedy team. They toured from coast to coast with the Billy Eckstine Orchestra for more than four years. Some years before, White had met and married Pearl Bailey, when both of them were still relatively unknown professionally. Bailey's career was on the way up. She was performing in the better nightclubs with people like Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway while White was still struggling in lesser venues. The marriage was in trouble at the time White and Foxx first met. The couple divorced. Years later, when White and dancer Bill Bailey, who was Pearl's brother, teamed up for an act, White joked that the act would be billed as "Rev. Bill Bailey and his ex-brother-in-law".