Clarence "Blowfly" Reid

Clarence Reid was born in 1939. As a boy, while working in the cotton fields of Georgia, he passed the time by singing dirty parodies of popular songs - "Do the Twist" became "Suck My Dick." When his grandmother heard what he was doing she exclaimed, "You're a disgrace to the human race, and no better than a Blowfly!" And so a legend was born.

When he was 13 he hitchhiked to Miami to live with his mother and pursue a career in music. He began by singing at local record "hops" where he met many of the people he would work with throughout his career, including his future songwriting partner and producer, Willie Clarke. In 1964, in exchange for studio time, he worked stacking records in the warehouse of TK Records, run by recording legend Henry Stone.

In 1965 Clarence recorded the world's first rap song, "Rap Dirty," the epic story of Blowfly as a truck driver, driving coast to coast and battling the KKK in a redneck bar. The song wouldn't be released in the US until 1976 but firmly cemented Blowfly as the world's first rapper and godfather of hip-hop.

From 1969 to 1975, Clarence had the most successful phase of his career. He wrote and produced the #1 R&B hits "Clean Up Woman" for Betty Wright and "Rockin Chair" for Gwen McCrae. He also wrote KC & The Sunshine Band's first hit, "Sound Your Funky Horn." In 1971 he unleashed Blowfly on the world and released the first full-length Blowfly album, "The Weird World of Blowfly."

Since then Clarence has written, produced, and recorded hundreds of songs, including the Blowfly classics "Porno Freak," "Shake Your Ass," "Hole Man," "Funky Party," and "Suck It." His career has outlasted all his contemporaries, the disco era, and TK Records, the record label powerhouse that was his home for over ten years. In 2003 Clarence met Tom Bowker, then a freelance journalist and music promoter, and since then Tom has been Blowfly's manager and drummer.

Blowfly continues to record and tour - in 2008 he played in front of the biggest crowds of his career and had his first "clean" Clarence Reid show in Miami since 1973 - and his popularity grows year after year. His songs are now increasingly heard on radio and TV shows, in feature films, and are sampled more frequently by music producers in modern R&B and hip-hop tracks. Tragically, due to unpaid taxes and mounting debt, Clarence sold his writer's royalties and now sees no royalty income from his life's work.

Jonathan Furmanski, Director/Producer

Jonathan Furmanski has been working in the film and television industries for over 15 years since graduating from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in Film Production in 1993. He is a member of IATSE's Local 600 camera union and has worked as a Director of Photography on numerous independent films, episodic television shows, commercials, and music videos. Since 2002 he has focused on shooting documentary films, including loudQUIETloud: a film about The Pixies, Arctic Son, I Am An Animal: The Story of Ingrid Newkirk and PETA, and Unstrung. THE WEIRD WORLD OF BLOWFLY is his directorial debut.

Cy Christiansen, Editor

Cy Christiansen graduated from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in 1998 and immediately began working in post-production on projects with Michael Moore and Jay-Z. Since 2006 he has edited various projects for PBS, MTV, and @radical.media, including In the Heights, Britney Spears - For the Record, and Two Roads to the Taupo 1000.