Reid was born in
Cochran, Georgia, in 1939 and moved to
West Palm Beach, Florida, in his adolescence (c. 1949). His stage name was given to him by his grandmother who he would visit in Georgia occasionally. During this time, Reid would make explicit parodies of the
country music that was popular on the airwaves in Cochran then, prompting his grandmother to brand him a "
blowfly". During this period he was also a recording artist, cutting many of his own songs, including "Nobody But You Babe" and his first XXX record, "Oddballs" which was reworked into "Rapp Dirty" several years later. Reid wrote sexually explicit versions of hit songs for fun but only performed them for his friends at
parties or in the
studio. In 1971, he along with a band of
studio musicians, recorded a whole album of these songs under the name Blowfly. The album,
The Weird World of Blowfly, features Reid dressed as a low-rent
supervillain on its cover. Blowfly continued to perform in bizarre costumes as his Blowfly character and record sexually explicit albums throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Reid claimed to be one of the first artists to perform in a mask, and transitioned from a "tuxedo like Dracula" or a "buttless" Clint Eastwood inspired outfit, to the spandex suits that he became known for in response to public demand. Blowfly's profane style earned Reid legal trouble. He was sued by songwriter
Stanley Adams, who was
ASCAP president at the time, for spoofing "
What a Diff'rence a Day Makes" as "What a Difference a Lay Makes". Reid's own compositions have been sampled by dozens of hip hop, R&B, and electronic artists but Reid received almost no money from sampling due to signing away most of his royalties. Blowfly's
Zodiac Blowfly LP (also released on CD in 1996 on Weird World Records) includes the songs "
If Eating You Is Wrong, I Don't Want To Be Right", "
The First Time Ever You Sucked My Dick", and "Ain't No Head Like My Woman's Head", as well as a version of "
Clean Up Woman", which he co-wrote. Another album of this period is
The Weird World of Blowfly.
2000s In 2003, Blowfly sold the rights to his entire catalog after years of debt. After 17 years of sporadic touring and occasional re-recording of his classic raps, Blowfly signed with
Jello Biafra's
independent record label Alternative Tentacles in 2005.
Fahrenheit 69, the first album under the new contract, featured appearances from
Slug of
Atmosphere,
King Coleman, Gravy Train, and
Afroman. ''
Blowfly's Punk Rock Party'', a 2006 album release from Alternative Tentacles, features several
punk rock classics given the Blowfly treatment—including a rewrite of the
Dead Kennedys song "
Holiday in Cambodia" recast as "
R. Kelly in Cambodia", which features Biafra (the song's composer and original singer) playing a trial judge. The album also includes "
I Wanna Be Fellated", "
Gotta Keep Her Penetrated", "
I Wanna Fuck Your Dog" and "
Should I Fuck This Big Fat Ho?". Blowfly completed his first tour of Australia in March 2007, and toured Germany with
Die Ärzte in 2008. He performed at the 2010
Big Day Out music festival, held in Australia and New Zealand. The movie
The Weird World of Blowfly was directed by Jonathan Furmanski and premiered at
South by Southwest in 2010;
Illness and death On January 12, 2016, Blowfly drummer "Uncle" Tom Bowker announced in a statement on the Blowfly Facebook page that Reid was suffering from terminal liver cancer and had been admitted to a hospice facility in Florida. According to Bowker, the singer would release his final LP – entitled
77 Rusty Trombones – in February 2016. Reid died on January 17, 2016, from cancer and multiple organ failure at the hospice facility in
Lauderdale Lakes, Florida, aged 76. == Family ==