Clarence "Blowfly" Reid

Born on Valentine's Day, 1939, Clarence Reid worked in the cotton fields of Georgia as a boy. He passed the time by singing dirty parodies of popular songs - "Do the Twist" became "Suck My Dick" - and 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 pursue a career in music. Clarence began singing at local record "hops" where he met many of the people he would work with throughout his career. In 1964, in exchange for studio time, he worked stacking records in the warehouse of TK Records, run by recording legend Henry Stone.

By the late 60s Clarence had become the central figure in the growing Miami soul, funk and R&B music scene, writing, producing and performing on countless tracks. He wrote and produced the #1 R&B hits "Clean Up Woman" for Betty Wright and "Rockin Chair" for Gwen McCrae, and he wrote KC & The Sunshine Band's first hit, "Sound Your Funky Horn" (their first gig was at Clarence's wedding).

In 1965 Clarence recorded the world's first rap song, "Rap Dirty", an epic story of Blowfly as a truck driver, driving coast to coast and battling the KKK in a redneck bar - that particular song wouldn't be released in the US until 1976 but it firmly cemented Blowfly as a pioneer in rap and hip-hop - and 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 label powerhouse that was his home for over ten years. Blowfly continues to record, tour - in 2008 he played in front of the biggest crowds of his career - and show the world how weird it really can be.

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 the OWN Network, including In the Heights - Chasing Broadway Dreams, Britney Spears - For the Record, and Masterclass.