When: Tonight, 9 p.m.
Where: Upstairs Cabaret, 15 Bastion Square
Tickets: $25 at Lyle’s Place, Ditch Records, and eventbrite.com
MIKE DEVLIN
Times Colonist
A living piece of hip-hop history will make his way to Canada this week for his first Victoria performance.
Consider yourselves warned.
Clarence Reid, 74, who began his professional career as a soul singer in the 1960s, eventually found success as the world’s first dirty rapper, a masked and caped character known as Blowfly. Cut from the same cloth as street poet Rudy Ray Moore and comic Redd Foxx, Blowfly made racy records in the early ’70s that were strictly underground until modern-day musicians began paying tribute. And that’s where the resurrection of one of the first rappers ever to cut an album began.
Blowfly music has been sampled by hundreds of modern-day artists, including Beyoncé, Ice Cube and the Wu-Tang Clan. Reid doesn’t receive any royalties from performers who use his work, having sold his rights to the material years ago. He could be living comfortably. Instead, he is fighting to save his Miami home from receivership, due to delinquent property taxes.
Though he did not profit greatly from his renaissance, Reid said he is happy to be still playing music.
“I’m a third grader, and I’ve got brothers who are college graduates who, because of drugs, can’t help me in no kind of way. They’re in and out of jail.”
Artists such as Snoop Dogg (who is perhaps Blowfly’s biggest devotee) have kept Reid’s career alive over the years. His original out-of-print records, once a goldmine for collectors, have been reissued due to popular demand. That is enough to keep Reid on stages around the world, for tours such as the one that brings Blowfly to Victoria today for a date with 2 Live Crew, his raunch-rap brothers from another mother.
For today’s show, Blowfly will sport his trademark mask and cape. He will also be armed with his most dangerous weapon: His dirty mouth.
Reid remembers when people in his native Cochran, Georgia, made $4 a day. He came home with $30 once from singing X-rated versions of popular hits, profane parodies that would make adults hoot and holler.
“As a kid, I remembered all these songs by heart, but I changed the lyrics. Everybody laughed at that,” he said.
His mother was among the unimpressed.
“She thought I had stolen the money,” Reid said with a laugh. “When I told her how I made it, she said I was a disgrace to the black race and no better than a blowfly.”
It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. A talented, silky smooth singer, Reid, penned songs for soul shouter Betty Wright as far back as 1968. The following year, he released his debut, Nobody But You Babe, the first in a series of competent but under-promoted soul and funk recordings credited to Clarence Reid. Soon, he became a songwriter-for-hire, authoring material for Wilson Pickett, Dusty Springfield, and KC and the Sunshine Band.
By the late 1970s, however, Reid had all but given up on a legitimate career as a soul singer and songwriter. He had nine Blowfly albums out by 1980, which put him at the forefront of the then-burgeoning rap movement. Though cited as an inspiration by an entire generation of early rappers, he was still a cult figure who couldn’t get a song on the radio.
In character, he is an equal opportunity offender. Blacks, whites, homosexuals, heterosexuals, men, women — no one is safe from Blowfly. During our interview, he broke out with his own, profanity-laden aria from Rossini’s opera, The Barber of Seville, with the character of Figaro changed to Nigaro. “The [stuff] just comes to me,” Reid said with a shy laugh.
He doesn’t lose sight of the real world very often; comedy is one thing, real life is another. Reid is charming in person and not the least bit insincere.
“I was in Mississippi once and blacks were talking about whites and whites were talking about blacks. I said: ‘I don’t know why y’all gotta be racist. I don’t care how much money you have or how high your IQ, we all eat food that comes from the ground.’ ”
Reid would love it if more people knew him for his honest work, the Miami soul sound he helped create during the early ’60s. But if being Blowfly helps get his music heard, even titles such as The Weird World of Blowfly, Porno Freak and Funk You, so be it.
Even if his daughter, professional basketball player Tracy Reid, might not necessarily approve.
“She was playing for [WNBA team] Miami Sol, and they asked Tracy if they could get her daddy to sing the national anthem,” Reid said. “She said: ‘Sure, but you’ll regret it.’ They knew me as Clarence Reid. She told them Clarence Reid and Blowfly were the same person, and they said: ‘Oh, hell no.’ ”
