George Carlin performed in Rhode Island roughly a dozen times, both at the old Warwick Musical Theatre and at the Providence Performing Arts Center, starting in the early 1970s and running through 2007. Larry Bonoff and his father, Buster, booked those performances, and yesterday Larry Bonoff remembered Carlin as “an amazing human being.”

Carlin “grew with the baby boomers, yet his material was timeless,” Bonoff said. “… He will go down in history as one of the greats who withstood the test of time.”

Bonoff first saw Carlin on Johnny Carson’s Tonight show, doing his Hippy-Dippy Weatherman routine, and Carlin made his first Rhode Island appearance later that year as the opening act on a John Davidson package tour including Joey Heatherton.

Carlin was a rough-edged performer who didn’t care about offending people; in fact, he relished the opportunity to upset people’s preconceived notions.

“He would always love offending every member of his audience at least once a show,” Bonoff said. “He’d come off and I’d say, ‘Oh, the church is gonna kill me tomorrow,’ and he’d say, ‘Yeah, I know.’ ”

At the same time, Bonoff says, Carlin was a show-business guy “in his own radical version” — someone who was “extremely nice, extremely pleasant” and willing to do the meet-and-greets and interviews with small-town newspapermen that are part of the business and that many people of lesser stature felt too big to do. “He always understood where it came from and how it was done. …

“Business was always good to great,” Bonoff says, “and his show was consistent.”

While Carlin faced legal troubles at various points in his career for the off-color material he would put in his act, Bonoff says that no one ever objected to his booking Carlin before the fact — only after.

“The only objections I ever got were from the Catholic Church. We are the largest Catholic state in the Union and he used to just abuse them terribly. Those were the only problems I had with George, and I knew they were coming. And from parents who let their kids come to the show and didn’t realize what the show was.”

(While Carlin leaves big shoes to fill, Bonoff says that comedian Doug Stanhope might be the one to fill them: “He is truth about life; he offends everybody; he is hysterically funny, and I just think that if the media doesn’t crucify him, he’ll make it.”)

Bonoff says Carlin’s passing was a shock but not a surprise; his health problems were well known. And he will be missed.

“He would want us all to laugh and tell funny stories; I know that.”

rmassimo@projo.com